The ultimate guide to employment based green cards in the US

Tens of thousands of aspiring residents enter the United States every year to work for a company here. Some of them choose to settle permanently and apply for green cards. This flowchart is meant to be a high level guide for getting a green card.

* As of March 2023, the Indian green card priority date is at 2011 for the Eb2 category and 2012 for the Eb3 category. Indian citizens are expected to wait 150 years to get a green card

Facebook to Quora Migration

Now that Quora is the next big thing where all the cool guys are hanging out, it is time to migrate there. This post presents a guide to migrating all your content including posts, photos, videos, polls, notes from Facebook to Quora.

Achievement posts
instead of

now it is,

Actually, the Facebook post should have been more like this

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Life events

Life events can be added as well

changes to

or perhaps this

The above were dummy examples, the following is a real practical example of sharing your life on Quora.

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Year in review

Facebook has a new feature called year in review which can be shared in public or on your timeline.

Why let a machine do your work when you can do it yourself on Quora? 

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Frustrations

One doesn't have to stick to just accomplishments, frustrations can be shared as well.

can be changed to

If you don't want to share your frustration in answers, you can always share a new question instead.

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Advertising/Promotion

We all know how you promote your accomplishments and frustration to the public and pay for it. Good news Quora has the same feature for free.

changes to

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Quora as Instagram

Who says you can't post your food on Quora?

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Relationship updates

can be posted here

The relationship is most likely going to end if you do this but there are plenty of fish so you might as well take a shot.

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More Advertising

Paid advertising

Free advertising

So far, we have only used pre-existing questions, one can also post his own question to appropriately suit the answer she wants to write.

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Witty posts

Funny photos and videos

(yep, a question on the most hillarious pie charts still counts as a knowledge question)

Comics

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Getting attention

To get someone's attention, one can either PM him/her or vote up/thank/share a users posts and/or comments.

So, in summary, Quora is the new Facebook (and 9gag) and it may be worth an engineer's time to write a script and an automated classifier to classify content into an appropriate category and migrate all Facebook posts to Quora. If you haven't noticed the sarcasm yet, please read more posts on my blog.

Quora in a nutshell

Flatulence
What are some of the most mind-blowing farts you have ever heard or smelt?

Anonymous
1870 votes by Rajdeep Kumar, Abhinav Vaidya, (more)

My mother's . And yes, yours too.

13+ comments - share (2) - Thank - Report - 8 Mar

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Balaji Viswanathan
4873 votes by Ashray Adappa, Siddharth Kulkarni, Arjun S Nath, (more)

Colloquially, flatulence may be referred to as "farting", "passing gas", "breaking wind" or simply (in American English) "gas" or (British English) "wind".

• Flatus (intestinal gas) is mostly produced as a byproduct of bacterial fermentation in the gastrointestinal  tract, especially the colon. There are reports of aerophagia (excessive air swallowing) causing excessive intestinal gas, but this is considered rare. More than 99% of the volume of flatus is composed of non-odorant gases.
• These include oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane. Nitrogen is not produced in the gut, but a component of environmental air. Patients who have excessive intestinal gas that is mostly composed of nitrogen may have aerophagia. Hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane are all produced in the gut and contribute 74% of the volume of flatus in normal subjects.
• Methane and hydrogen are flammable, and so flatus containing adequate amounts of these can be ignited. However, not all humans produce flatus that contains methane. For example, in one study of the feces of nine adults, only five of the samples contained archaea capable of producing methane.

Hope that answers your question.

24+ comments - share (5) - Thank - Report - 15 Mar

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Suresh Kumar
498 votes by Rajat Khandelwal, Karan Kumar, Lee Hanxue, (more)

It most certainly has to be this guy's though I haven't heard or smelt it first hand.

2+ comments - share (1) - Thank - Report - 12 Mar

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What are some famous jokes or memes about farts?
Ayush Goel
324 votes by Song Zheng, Marc Bodnick, Vikram Rout (more)

Here I sit, broken hearted,
Tried to shit but only farted;
Then one day I took a chance,
Tried to fart but shit my pants!

14+ comments - share (3) - Thank - Report - 17 Jun

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what are some of the funny incidents that you have come across while farting?
839 Anonymous
Once I was in IIT Delhi... (more)

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What does Jimmy Wales feel about flatulence?
94 Jimmy Wales, I am Jimmy Wales and therefore have a reasonable amount of knowledge about what I think and what I have done.

This is the question that is currently tops in my "most asked to answer" list but of course that's a bit odd... (more)

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What is it like to hear an IITian fart?
94 Sameer Jhunjhunwala, once an IITian always an IITian

In, one word, "Really Good".

Ads in protest signs

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to hurt anyone or make fun of their protests. If you are protesting right now, the author wishes you all the best and is in full support of your cause.

Protests happen everyday and are all over the news. This sparked the author's thoughts and he came up with a really cool idea of using the protest signs to advertise products. A lot of real estate on the protest signs are unused and it could potentially generate revenue for both the corporation and the protestor.

Here is a small demo of how corporations could potentially add ads in protest signs and provide them for free for protestors. The new innovative idea seems like a win-win situation for both corporations and protestors unless of course the protesters are protesting against the corporation.

"A certain ethnic group is under attack, drink Pepsi and chill out you damn attackers!"

"Do not tolerate violence against women, instead go to Subway and eat fresh!"

"Hey! Injustice! Have a break! Have a kitkat!"

"I am Julian Assange and I studied at IIPM, #1 in intellectual impact and global exposure."

"The 99% are killing the 1%, so I wore fastrack goggles and moved on"

"Don't eat this tree, for no one can eat just once!"

"Don't be a homo! Eat Lijjat Papad instead. Tasty bhi, healthy bhi!"

"This is my protest sign and I use a fairness cream that is meant for me, a man! <Fair and lovely men's fairness cream> It may not be chemically different but the ad says this is for men and this is what I will use!"

Wedding for noobs in 7 days.

Marriages are usually made in heaven, but in some places like India, they are man-made. In an older post, I had talked about Indian marriages and how they are arranged. I had investigated the scenarios closely and my analysis made a logical conclusion that arranged marriages have far more advantages than love marriages which around 90% of the audience agreed as logically consistent and complete. In this post, I will however describe the wedding itself rather than the marriage. The post tells you what you can expect at a wedding. If your wedding is scheduled to 7 days from now and you have no idea what happens in a wedding, this post is for you.

Disclaimer: The post is about what happens during the wedding and In no way does the author promise to discuss any stuff that happens the night after the wedding and in any case if the reader is of such an impression, he is strictly advised to stop reading immediately. Now that the reader ignored the advice and has proceeded to consume the rest of the post, he is also encouraged to offer constructive comments and to share the blog post.

Uniform

The costumes is the first thing you notice at the wedding. Usually even in the most traditional of weddings, there is a theme and you can see the groom wearing a dress to match the theme. The last few weddings that I attended were greatly influenced by the latest movies from Hollywood, as can be seen from the two pictures that were taken in the weddings I have attended. The X-men franchise of movies seems to have made an impact on the minds of Indians.

Rice throwing

In traditional Indian weddings, during the rituals, the audience may have to throw red rice, flowers, and other foreign particles at the couple on stage. The legend has it that this ritual is performed to let the ignorant gods clearly know who the people getting married are, so as to avoid any confusion whatsoever. It was an easy task then because of the small audience but nowadays throwing rice several meters away could be a challenging task. The price one has to pay is having the gods confused as a result of the rice falling on random people. It is a personal recommendation to the people to carry a small catapult along for good impact and range. Do practice shooting some targets before the actual event to gain some proficiency at it.

Music

Usually, music is organised for entertainment. The reader is advised to avoid head banging or any other kind of vigorous movements as it might be considered as an effect of evil demons in your body.

Drama

There is a lot of drama that happens just before the weddings. The groom initially pretends to be on a journey to some god-city and the bride's father tries to stop him. The groom tries to reject the offer thrice and eventually agrees. The following is a rough translation of what a typical conversation sounds like.


Groom: I am going away to Kashi, I have had enough of this monotonous life...
<A few seconds of silence>
Groom: I said, I am going away to Kashi...
<A few more seconds>
Groom: (tapping the bride's father's shoulders) Hey! I said I am going away to Kashi and I will never come back, ever!
Bride's father: Oh! Oh! Happy journey!
(Bride's mother pokes the father)
Bride's father: Oh! I mean, please stay! You can marry my daughter.
Groom: No, I really need to go, I have got some... umm... stuff to do there.
Bride's father: Oh! Alright then.
(Bride's mother pokes the father again)
Bride's father: I mean, please marry my daughter, she has come off age, she is almost 12 years old now.
Groom: No, I really, really need to go there. My friends are waiting and they have planned a lot of stuff and I am never coming back. There is no freaking way, I can not go there.
Bride's father: Please marry my daughter!
Groom: Oh! Alright then, if you insist.

The Fire

The most peculiar part of an Indian wedding is the fire pit. Firewood is gathered and set on fire and the preist uncle keeps throwing all kinds of things into the fire including ghee, rice, flowers, popcorn, explosives, etc. This is supposed be a sacrifice to the gods. Anything that people burn, goes to the gods and people mail stuff to god this way as a positive reinforcement for all the good behavior. Every time god does something good in India, people reward god with rice and popcorn singing a Sanskrit sloka which roughly translates to "You have been very good god, here have some rice that you gave us. Enjoy your day, keep doing good things! Who's a good boy, who's a good boy? You are! Yesh you are!".

Leash Tying
The bride ties a leash around the groom and they go walking around the fire indicating the dude who just bachelor degree now also has a master. If you are getting married and you don't like being leashed, weddings are not for you. Back off before it's too late.

Canada

Disclaimer: This page has absolutely no factual information whatsoever (well D'uh!).  If you are studying for your geography exam and you have landed here, the author will not argue with your teacher for your marks in case you draw continents as triangles.

The American Triangles in bold,
The Bermuda triangle, centre.

This post comes after my one month trip to North America. (you may know it as 'North Ameriga' in some parts of Southern India and 'North Umreeka' in the north.) There are basically two types of America, North America and South America. There is also Central America but no one really cares unless there is a major earthquake which is when people discover countries that they have never known before. (They don't even seem to be playing good cricket any more.) The North America and South America are basically triangles on the map, not to be confused with the Bermuda triangle which is just a fictional character from conspiracy theory movies. North America is where most of the shows you watch on TV, Hollywood movies, all the big industries, over 17 trillion $ of GDP, major environmental destruction, etc. come from, and South America is where they ride llamas and play football. After having visited almost every major city in the North America (Montreal, Quebec and Mountain View, California to be precise), I present to you all the information I have gathered so that it can help you when you are in North America and you are sad, so that you can laugh with it.



The first thing I noticed about the North American people is that they tend to do everything the opposite way as us, on purpose. We use the metric system, they use the imperial system. We drive on the left side of the road, they ride on the wrong (right) side of the road. Even the steering wheel is manufactured wrongly. Since everyone drives wrong, the double negation somehow results in neutral safe roads. When everyone plays cricket or football, they play their own "football" which has nothing to do with the foot or the ball, just a bunch of people wrestling on a big field. When we go to sleep, they wake up to work and when we go to work, they go to sleep. With a low population density and an absence of manual labour, They lack the people to do most jobs and hence import people from other countries like Mexico, China and India. A lack of bus/train drivers has forced a poor public transport system resulting in everyone driving their own cars. A lack of handymen makes people rely more on machines. Since life is so precious, everyone (including little children) gets to carry a gun to protect himself. The lack of parents makes children grow up by themselves, often turning into thugs. There aren't enough people to put spices in the food, and hence the food there is tasteless (or at least that is what I think is the reason why food sucks). Montreal is one of the cities I visited in NA and it deserves a long mention in my blog.


Montreal

Underground City, Montreal

Baby meerkats coming out of their
burrow.

Montreal (en: Mount Royal) is a French city in the Quebec province of Canada. It was founded at around 1000AD when the Norse Vikings discovered Newfoundland and built settlements replacing the Intuit Igloos. The English and the French created Montreal as it is today. Montreal is considered to be similar to New York - it has centralized water purification and distribution system, an underground metro rail connecting various parts of the city, a centralized Air Conditioning system for the entire city. Unfortunately the centralized AC knob is broken with the temperature is set to some negative value and hence the city is always at sub-zero temperatures. To beat the cold, the people have taken up the task of building an underground city similar to rat holes. People stay in their holes all winter and come out of their rat holes only when they feel the heat again.

In Montreal, they have a rule saying exactly 1% of the budget for every building that is constructed should be spent on art. The result of the rule can be clearly seen in the following images.

One can see art everywhere almost everywhere, inside the buildings, on buildings, in front of buildings, as support for buildings, in metro stations. Montrealites are so obsessed with art that when a piece of the Berlin wall that was gifted to Canada in 1990, it was found vandalized converted into art the next day as can be seen in the picture.

This obsession for art did come at a price. During the Olympics of 1976, a stadium was constructed in the city for the games to happen and as you see in the picture, it happens to be the biggest inclined tower in the world. This magnificent structure was so beautiful that people considered the entire structure to be one massive chunk of art. Since exactly 1% had to be spent on art and that happened to be the price of the entire building, they ended up spending 100 times more to fix all the records with the builders and went bankrupt right after the olympics. As an effect, the next year New York was no longer considered a sister city of Montreal. I will conclude my post on Montreal with a positive note. Going bankrupt also had its own advantages over New York. Since people have no money, the crime rate is very low as there is no point trying to rob a poor man.

- Kashyap Puranik, combining facts and fiction since 2008.