Cyriac George

Do you know how to make fire from ICE ? Yes you read it right, F.I.R.E. from I.C.E. cool-condensed form of water.

Its a simple question, the answer is also very simple and sounds logic to me. Please dont think too much and make fire by “burning your head” .

Before giving you the answer, let me explain a bit about how i stumbled on this question. I got this question from a movie, “The Edge”, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Its a decent film of a billionaire and two other persons who are lost in the woods and trying to make their way back to the shack. In between they have to survive the rough nature and few bear attacks. The way they kill the bear is simply marvelous, i mean they kill a “man-eating” bear with bare hands and primitive weapons made with wood and rock, now thats survival.

Any way, there’s a part where Alec Baldwin is really pissed about loosing a rescue helicopter and then Anthony Hopkins asks this question. There Baldwin has given a beautiful performance by getting more angry on Anthony. Infact we would also feel its a bad time to ask some tricky question, but yet we would like to know the answer. But what they realy show is, as Baldwin is pissed about loosing rescue helicopter, how Anthony Hopkins is keeping cool about that situation. That really adds to his character, he doesnt over react to anything, he likes to face any situation.

So lets get back to the question. “No matter what we do”, you think, “we cant make fire from ice”, right? I mean we cant burn it, its condensed water. We cant hit it with a rock and expect for a spark or rub two ice blocks and expect them to light up. Then what’s the answer ???

Here goes the answer. Anthony says, “You take it in your hands and mould it into a lens and concentrate sunlight with which you can make fire”

After a little research in internet, i found this can be done practically, although not exactly as Hopkins said. Here are some images.

What do you think about this idea ? If you had any other idea while reading then please share it below.

Recently me and my friends were going to EKM from Pala on my car. I dont have to mention the condition of the roads here in Kerala. Its near to pathetic at some places. So while on the main road i took a short cut and we reached an narrow inclination. The road was so broken that it seemed only an off-roader could go through it.

I asked “Why the hell are our roads like these ? Where to the f**king road taxes we pay go to ? “. For that my friend Lijo answered. He said, “Hey this is not a broken road as you see. Its actually a part of a big project that our government is running”. We all wondered what he is talking about. Lijo continued,

“We all know that Kerala faced a severe water shortage few years back. After some studies its told that Kerala has very poor ground water reserve. Its happening so because the rain water flows to rivers and seas as soon as they fall. So these “guys” engineered a plan to collect the rain water. They told if we make pits on the surface of earth it will collect water and wont let it flow away, instead will seep into the crust, which will solve all the problems. And our government found another brilliant way to achieve this. Instead of making new pits they let the road suffer serious damage, this will collect the rain water and do the rest of the trick. In addition this method is cheap and practically doesn’t cost a “paisa” to the state.”

We all burst into laughs at his rubbish (by the way he did it knowingly) yet logic joke. Isnt it people ? This might be a possibility for the pathetic roads we have. Even if it isnt the reason, is it due to this we are now having plenty of water ? You decide whether it has any logic or not.

This is a small funny story of my uncle, Sabu Jacob who recently got promoted as Chief Manager and had a transfer to Delhi. He has never been out of state and doesnt know Hindi too. So he went there and after a few days he got the hang of it and learned to adjust with hindi people.

One fine day he decided to take a rikshaw to bank. Its not so far, he asked the rikshaw-wala whats the fare and he replied, “Pachees rupya saab”. Uncles said, “nahi nahi, theess rupya dega”. Rickshaw-wala, “Nahi saab pachees bas hai”. Uncle finally agrees on the rate and went to the bank.

For those who are not well in touch with hindi, heres a small reference: pachees-25, theess-30, pachaas-50. My uncle thought the rickshaw-wala was asking for Rs.50 for a small ride and he had a good deal with bringing the rate down to Rs.30. But actually the guy was asking for only Rs.25.

We all had a good laugh hearing this. Theres one more story from uncle. So after he has been in Delhi for about one month, when he returned for a family function, my cousin asked him whether he learned hindi and replied yes, a bit. So as a test my cuz asked him to tell the hindi of a number and he randomly selected 137. My uncle paused for a minute and the replied, “its ek-so-sainthees” (hey me too not sure about the exact hindi, but something similar to that). We were all amazed at this and asked how did you manage to learn all those numbers with this short time ? He said, “Who learned its the door number of my house which am staying and thats the only number i know in hindi”. We all burst into laughs again.