Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Mega crowd in Mall

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Here is the photo that I took on 25th of December, 2007, in Forum Mall in Bangalore. It was so crowded that one could not walk.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Corruption crashes China's anti-graft website

After a long time a news that is almost funny. This could have happened anywhere but the fact that this happens is itself funny.
The website of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, which was set up to collect information on corrupt activities, was so popular it crashed on Tuesday, just one day after it was launched.

What the new item does not mention that the fact that a government website crashed itself points to some corruption in itself. The news item claims that the website received more than 20 pages of comments. I would say that on internet 20 pages in not really that large. Anyway life goes on..

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Shelfari and Yaari social networking sites

Recently some of my friends mentioned that they got invites from me in two of these social networking sites. It sounded strange since I never sent invites to those people. Now my fears have come true. Both these sites are misusing information that one provides to these sites. See following links.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

King of spain, chavez and hit ring tone

A ringtone based on the incident of King of Spain telling Venezuelan president chavez to shut up has become hit and earned approximately USD 2m.





Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Finally

India won, for once we snatched victory from jaws of defeat. I thought bhajji had almost gifted the match to Pakistan. Anyway, all is well that ends well. Congratulations to all India team supporters, to other who don't like us winning, go to hell.

T20 cricket finals

I decided to give a miss to the T20 finals. May be I will go an watch the second innings. Just now checked on rediff.com, Yuvaraj has just departed at 14 off 19 balls. I think irrespective of what happens to the match, this is good for the team in long run, otherwise the good old dad of Yuvi would have really gone berserk.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ulta Pulta Alliance

Today again I heard this news item that CPI warns the UPA, so I thought there is too much warning going on now-a-days. Just to validate my doubt, I did google search for "CPI warn UPA". See the results for yourself. All these news items are not necessarily from the same day. So I don't know about UPA's common minimum program, their common minimum program seems to have become to warn the UPA

CPI warns UPA govt

Karat warns UPA govt over nuclear deal- Hindustan Times

Left warns UPA against ties with US @ NewKerala.Com News Channel

Left warns UPA against ties with US - Yahoo! India News

Left warns UPA against ties with US - India

India eNews - Left warns UPA against ties with US

Nuke deal: Angry Left warns UPA govt-India-The Times of India

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Ram Sethu

There seems to be a whole lot politics going around the Ram Sethu. I am not sure if it was made by vanar sena or somebody else. But I think the fact that we want to clean-it up is bizzare.

Even Archeological Survey of India which filed the affidavit that resulted in the political mess, agrees to following.
The Rameshwaram island evolved approximately 1,25,000 years Before Present.

The Dhanushkodi sand pit appears to be a feature of coastal processes and shoreline emergence and its orientation appears to be along the dissipation of wave energy patters of Palk Bay and Gulf of Manor.

Now my point is that keeping aside the fact of it being built during the time of Rama or not, this is a extremely old structure/formation. That fact itself should be used to not-destroy it but rather develop it as some kind of tourism attraction. If you really see, Grand Canyon is just a large hole in ground but they do not go around filling it.

I think the whole direction of debate it misplaced. Irrespective of the fact, who build it, something that is so old should not be allowed to be destroyed by some people who are hell bent on doing it because of ego.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Really bad food quality

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Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to eat in my office cafeteria after a gap of 2 years. I thought that in last two years the food quality would have at least improved little bit. But my hopes were shattered. See for yourself.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Mclaren and F1

As if F1 racing was not interesting enough, now it has additional angles of espionage and deceit. So Mclaren have been stripped of their constructor points but most confounding angle to the judgment is following statement.
However, due to the exceptional circumstances in which the FIA gave the team's drivers an immunity in return for providing evidence, there is no penalty in regards to drivers' points

Anyway, these seem to be interesting times that we live in, if you are a F1 fan.

Today's morning commute

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=lm1kPwGg8ac]

Yesterday night it rained all night. So morning commute was full of detours and water logged roads. See for yourself.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

How does a Tech MNC catch mice

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The first surprise is that the MNC has its facility completely infested with MICE. The second surprise is that they seem to be using a home built mouse-trap. I would think they would be using some high-tech solution to get rid of mice.

Bizzare traffic in Bangalore


















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You can never guess the direction of traffic.

Mother of all traffic jams







I generally try to get to office very early in the morning to avoid traffic jams. But it seems the big bad world has figured out my plan. See this traffic jam at 7AM.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Is organized retail really good thing?

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I don't think so. See the really bad quality of potatoes in Big Bazaar on old madras road in Bangalore. If you can't really get decent potatoes, then who needs shopping experience.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Forum mall launches free Wi-Fi

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Forum mall in Bangalore (Bengaluru), India has launched free Wi-Fi. I tried to access it with my N95, it did not work. May be I need some setup.

Monday, August 27, 2007

My neighbour's door

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I came out of my house and saw this really beautiful flower setting at the door of my neighbor. Looks pretty.

Coffee in south india

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I am not a coffee drinker. But if I am in a South Indian restaurant, I prefer coffee to tea because I have always found the quality of coffee to be better than the quality of team. Another thing that has always fascinated me is the way coffee is served in any South Indian restaurant. See the picture. It was taken in restaurant called South Indies, Indiranagar, Bangalore. The tumbler and the bowl. What is really fascinating that you get this combination in different sizes but the volume of coffee in the tumbler is always exactly same as the volume of coffee in bowl. So if you get coffee served in this combination and you can fearlessly pour whole coffee from tumbler into the bowl. It won't spill.

Deserted forum mall

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Here is the forum mall in Bangalore at 11:50 PM on a Sunday. You won't find space to walk at any other time.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Communists and their self-proclaimed national interest

The communists and their drama is on again. They show up on TV and claim to be only people interested in national interest when in the past their behavior has suggested time and again that they should not even try. Except in WB and Kerala, nobody falls for their theatrics. See this story. To quote a para from the story.
It is not without significance that the vigorous campaign of the leftist parties -- particularly of the CPI-M -- against the recently concluded Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation and against the growing strategic interactions between India and the US in particular has coincided with the beginning of the Chinese campaign against the so-called quadrilateral strategic interaction involving India, Japan, the US and Australia and the naval exercise with the additional involvement of the Singapore navy.

The leftists' campaign against India's relations with the US reflects more China's concerns and interests than those of India. I have never been excited over the Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation. Nor do I share Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's [Images] enthusiasm for US President George Bush [Images] and the Indo-US agreement. I am inclined to feel that what we are seeing now is a one-night stand between Dr Singh and Mr Bush. Like most one-night stands, the happy thoughts thereafter will become an embarrassment in course of time.

At the same time here is another story in a newspaper. To quote a para from that story.
China and its â??all-weatherâ?? ally Pakistan are discussing an agreement similar to the one India has reached with the US on the civilian nuclear cooperation to maintain the regional security balance, sources said.

Now, somebody needs to explain to me, how does civilian nuclear cooperation results in regional security imbalance. Civilian nuclear cooperation is supposed to be about energy needs of a country and should have nothing to do with regional security imbalance. That point aside, communists seem to have no issues with that. Till the time it is "India" that gets shafted, communists are happy.

Here is another story. To quote from the story.
The fuel shortage situation has started telling on the performance of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). Currently operating nuclear power stations with a capacity of around 4,000 MWe, it has been forced to slash power production levels.

The overall plant load factor (PLF) has come down from a high of 80-90 per cent to around 60 per cent in some three years â?? a drop of 30 per cent when thereâ??s power shortage in the country.

â?¢ NPCIL Chairman-cum-Managing Director S K Jain says the fuel shortage-led fall in PLF has already resulted in a loss of Rs 800 crore potential revenue.

So, to summarize, India needs fuel for its existing power reactors leave alone for the new ones that need to be built. India does not have this fuel available within. I know there are people with swadeshi angle who would want us to build everything inhouse but the fact is after 60 years of independence and 40 years of first nuclear test, we still produce abysmal amount of nuclear power and that too is dwindling. There a country who is willing to provide us this fuel which will let us generate more power but we believe because they are willing to give that power there must be something wrong either with them or with us.

I think we have enough diplomats and lawyers who can read the text of any treaty and figure out where it has that small print that is making us worried. I have not seen anything from anybody (except the fear psychosis created by communists) that would suggest that the deal is really bad for us. I have hear arguments that it is good for us or probably we don't gain much.

I think we should have confidence in being able to handle ourselves with determination if in future something new props up, but to mortgage our present because we don't believe in ourselves and our governments to be able to handle ourselves better in future is stupidity.

And by the way, these communists needs to be kicked out. Please, friends in Kerala and WB, kick them out.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Pressure on children

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Here is a notice that I saw in one of the apartment complex notice boards. Unless there are really good reasons, this sounds like too much pressure on a three year old. Having tuitions?

Friday, July 6, 2007

Decline of a restaurant

There used to be this great eating place called Ramana's on Cunningham road on Bangalore. I always liked it very much and quality and taste of food there used to phenomenal.

I used to visit them regularly and then for last six months or so I did not get a chance to go to that part of town. Yesterday I again visited them and to my dismay, the quality of food was really poor to average. It was really sad to see another good restaurant go down the path of so many other in Bangalore.

I don't understand why that happens, every restaurant eventually degenerates itself into a shanthi sagar. May be it is the oft-repeated business model of every software company trying to degenerate itself into an sweat shop.

Anyway, one less place to choose from if you just want good food and nothing fancy.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

A company called Riya

So I am as usual surfing the net and I come across this interesting headlines from the times of India.
Wages killing Bangalore BPOs?

Now for most part I don't really give much credibility to what TOI writes but this one had this reference so I thought I should read.
In a blog posting, company's chief executive Munjal Shah, complained, â??Bangalore wages have just been growing like crazy. To give you an example, there is an employee of ours who took the first five years of his career to get from 1 per cent to 10 per cent of his equivalent US counterpart.

"He then jumped from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of his US counterpart in the next 1 year. During his time with us (less than two years) he jumped to 55 per cent of the US wage. In the next few months we would have had to move him to 75 per cent just to 'keep him at market."

I got interested in this because nobody ever offered me this kind of money. So I though let's search for this guy's blog which I found here.
Now the latest post in this blog talks about the fact that he closed his company's India operations and he let one guy come over to US after firing everybody in India and that guy is really grateful to him.
Dhiraj impressed the heck out of both of us. His dedication and attention to detail is amazing. He once drove to our IT guyâ??s house in Bangalore (who was not being super responsive), brought his laptop and made him fix something on the spot. Dhiraj is willing to call anyone in the middle of the night (including me and Azhar) to fix a bug if it is live on the site and critical.

As Azhar and I were making the list of people who should come to the US, we knew we needed Dhiraj. We knew he was someone we wanted by our side. He had earned it as much as anyone and we felt good to be able to give him the opportunity.

I remember the look on his face when we told him about the opportunity to come to the US. He looked like he was going to cry tears of happiness. He later told us that if he comes, he will be the first one from his village to every go to the US.

Now that sounded like non-sense. I was the first guy from my village to go to US I did not cry tears of happiness, my village is in UP which comes very close to Bihar in whatever way Mr. Munjal has mentioned it. Anyway this was no proof of the original TOI story, so I further in his blog and found this older post.

So the TOI story was right, not really BPO but we can't expect TOI to differentiate between a search engine and a BPO just like WSJ can't figure out that iPhone is not the first phone with a touch screen.

So I thought about the salaries quoted by him. I work for an MNC, have worked for last 13 years in India, in US and hired lots of people, interacted with hiring managers from other companies and for most part here is what I think salaries are in India.

  • Freshers get paid anywhere between Rs. 250,000 to Rs. 600,000. Only really few are picked up by companies like google at salaries beyond this range. That is more like between USD 6250 to USD 15,000.

  • Most of the people with 5-6 years of experience would earn between Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 900,000. i.e. more like USD 12,500 to USD 22,500.

  • People with 10 years of experience (if they are lucky) actually get paid above Rs. 20,00,000 i.e. USD 50,000.


Now I am not sure where this company was hiring its people from. Based on my knowledge of the industry, this looks like either they were running really inefficient operations or just got scammed by a bunch of high profile engineers. What really ticked me off what this comment by Mr. Munjal on his own post.
At the end of the day is it about productivity vs. costs. The wages of the engineers in Bangalore can rise all the way to the US level so long as the productivity is equal. Even if we assume that an top guy here in Bangalore has the skill and intelligence as the US, he still maybe less effective for several reasons:

His infrastructure is less reliable. I was just hearing from one the guys on our team (who is moving to the US) that he sometimes gets up early to work on stuff while he is fresh. Frequently, however, his power goes out and then he has to come into the office (where more people are likely to bother him).

He will lose more time in transportation - horrible traffic and no parking which eat up more hours of the day than they do in the US. Even his home broadband connection is slower and unreliable - impacting his productivity there.

These external factors even include things like food. Each month at least 1-3 people call in sick for food sickness or for a Bandh (rioting in the streets). This rarely happens in the US.

Over time these things start to add up.

Munjal

In last 12 years in Bangalore i have seen probably 10 cases of rioting or bandh. That is more like 10 days of lost work in last 12 years and most of the software companies anyway make you work on a weekend to compensate for that. And the comment about food, he pays his employees salaries that are 75% of US salaries and they can't even afford decent food. He must be out of his mind.
For me personally this might be the end of an era. I spent six month a year in 2002 and 2003 in Bangalore. I loved being here and almost bought a house. I have some very fond memories of brunch at the Leela Palace on Sundays and partying all night at Spinn. I dont' know how much I'll continue to be in Banglore now, but it was a great part of my life for the last 4-5 years.

I was one of the biggest, India advocates you've ever met (I still am) but it is clear the primary business drivers of Bangalore are changing and with it the city must change.

Now probably his employees were calling in sick because they were having party at leela palace all night or something else but the fact is with people like Mr. Munjal Shah as advocates of India, I don't think we need enemys.

I can not attach any motivation to why Mr. Munjal Shah is doing what he is doing or writing what he is writing but I know for a fact that he is just exaggerating the facts or just does not know the facts.

Enough of a rant. I should have kept quite.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Banks and killing machines

Here is a recent story.
Y Yadaiah, 42, an electrician in the state medical and health department, had defaulted on a Rs 15,000 personal loan he had taken from ICICI Bank a few months ago.

Police inspector G Narasaiah said one Raju from Elite Financial Services â?? the loan-recovery agency which has a contract with ICICI Bank â?? along with some others, picked up Yadaiah from his office on Friday. Sunanda, the wife, said

Yadaiah had called her up sometime later, saying the recovery agents had detained him at their office. â??He was told he would not be allowed to leave until he returned the money,â? she said. Around 2 pm, Sunanda received a message from a hospital saying her husband had died.

Then ICICI Bank comes back and says this.
The ICICI bank said on Sunday that the 42-year-old Andhra Pradesh government employee, who had taken a loan from it, died after he felt â??unwellâ? at the office of its debt recovery agency in Hyderabad.

One would be inclined to give benefit of doubt to the bank but then if you also see this then you start thinking what kind of bank is this, people go there and start dying like flies.
This is the second incident in the last month in Nashik, where a person lost his life due to al leged harassment by recovery agents.

Suresh Chaudhari, a 54-year-old mechanic, died on the premises of ICICI Bank on January 13. His family alleged that the death was caused due to harassment by agents. The police filed cases against three ICICI Bank employees.

Recovery tactics employed by banks are increasingly coming under the scanner. The SC, on January 7, had strongly deplored the practice of financial institutions using musclemen to recover loans from defaulters and asserted that recovery of loans should be through legal means.

Some more.
Close to a fortnight after the Supreme Court deplored the use of musclemen to recover loans from alleged defaulters, 42-year-old computer engineer Manish Rajguru passed away due to the alleged use of strong-arm tactics and mental harassment by recovery agents of Nashik Merchant Co-operative Bank.

"We were facing increased harassment from the banks employees as well as the recovery agents deployed by the bank during the last one month. Manish had been tense and nervous due to the behavior of the recovery agents who would barge into our house and abuse us. The tension proved too much for him and yesterday he suddenly collapsed and passed away. I hold the bank responsible for his death," Manish's wife Dr Devang Rajguru a MD in Pathology told HT.

Manish's death was caused by cerebral haemorrhage. Manish is survived by two children and a cancer afflicted mother.

Not that it is an isolated incident. Here are some more barrage of cribs.
I cant help but credit ICICI bank for coming up with the punch line "hum hain na" apko loot ne ke liye...

Here is one more.
The very next day he had deposited the cheque in his account in the ICICI Bank, Mayur Vihar. When, after a few days, he checked with the bank, he found the cheque had not been credited to his account. He immediately contacted Vijaya Bank, Noida, which had issued the cheque.

Imagine Manojâ??s shock when he learnt that the cheque had been encashed. It was found that his name had been struck off and that of `Suresh Kumarâ?? had been written instead. The overwriting on the cheque had been clearly endorsed by fresh signature of the issuing person at two places.

Manoj has lodged a complaint with the Noida as well as the Delhi police while bank officials are maintaining a silence on the issue.

Here is another laundry list of problems.

But one things has to be said about them, they are not racist. They are trying to cheat every country equally. See here.
There are several reasons. The main one is that, despite having a presence in the UK for three years, ICICI Bank still do not comply with the UK Banking Code, which sets minimum standards for customer service. The second reason - related to the first - is that there is a load of anecdotal evidence that customers are still struggling to receive passwords, to have money transfers happen on time and of people generally tearing their hair out trying to get their savings sorted.

So, in the end what do I have to say about it. You become a customer of ICICI bank, they will abduct and get you into their office and then you will die and it will be a natural death. Why senior management of the bank are not taken to task for doing such goofy things. Why are they above law. At times I feel that reason that they have grown so much is because they are above law.

Here is another bright idea that I have, if you take loan with ICICI bank then take a really large pure term insurance policy also with them so that if they claim in the end that your death was natural, they would atleast have to pay for it.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Bluetooth in malls

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Here is an interesting idea, forum mall in Bangalore claims that if you turn on your phone bluetooth while in their mall, they will push interesting deals on your phone as png files. I did turn on my bluetooth and set it to discovery mode for around 5 minutes, I did not get anything, but that may be just timing.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Using GPS in India

I always wondered why there are no navigation services in India. Probably there are not enough customers. Finally I have found one decent road navigation solution that can be used in many places in India. It uses underlying google maps. If one is interested, here is how you go about doing it.

Buy a phone that can do GPS, I have used a Nokia N95 for this.
Subscribe to a GPRS plan from operator. You only need to access the web from phone so a airtel-live type of plan would be sufficient. You do not need the capability to use the phone as a modem, those plans are more expensive.
Go to http://www.gmap-track.com and create an account for your self.
Using the phone download the MGMaps application and set it up based on the instructions provided.

Now run the app on the phone and make sure that you are able to connect. Before running the app you should make sure that you have GPS lock on the phone. On N95 you can use GPS data application and make sure it shows you lat and lon.

Once the app is running, it will show your position on the phone and as you move it would track you on the map. The google maps are pretty accurate and current for many cities and highways in India. For bangalore it even shows you oneway information. Your family can also track you on the web if you share your web username and password with them.

The icing on the cake is that if you have a car TV in your car, N95 has a video out that you can connect to the TV and see the navigation on a larger screen.

Comment if you need more information or your experiences with solution.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Is organized retail about choice

After the organized retail started spreading in India in big way, one of the point in the favor of these guys was that it is all about choice. I liked them to start with but slowly I am finding that it is not really about giving choice to consumer but taking away from them.
I regularly shop with Food Bazaar, Food World, Spencers but the experience has been deteriorating over last few years. Now a days I shop with Food Bazaar and I find them concerned least about the end customer. I understand their need to negotiate the price with the manufacturers in order to give a good price to end customer but every now and then I find that some brands are unavailable with them and one of the reasons that I find from media is that they could not negotiate the price and hence they don't stock those goods.

  • Last year they had stopped stocking Head and Shoulder shampoo

  • Early this year, dawat basmati rice is missing from their shelves

  • For last some weeks Lays potato chips are missing from their shelves


I would say that they need to fix themselves. They could tag goods where they are able to get a better price with something like "Best Buy" but they need to keep everything in their shop. I may not really be interested in the cheap priced, cheap quality stuff that they have in stock.
I think it is time to go back to neighborhood store.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Old Konark Sun Temple Picture

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Here is a photo of famous sun temple in konark that we took in 1986-87. I just found the negative of this photo in a pile some days back.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Gujrati Namkeen in Sagar

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Sagar is a funny place, its main market is called gujrati bazaar. Its main namkeen is called gujrati namkeen. Here is the old authentic shop.

Sagar's famous sweet shop

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The dilapidated building in the picture is the chaudhary sweets (��धर� मिष्ठान्न भ�डार). His sweet made out of Melon Seeds (�िर���� �� बर्��). It seems the sweets were so famous that Indira Gandhi would refuse to believe that somebody is from sagar if they did not bring this sweets.

My old school

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Here is my old school where I did my HSSC in Sagar, MP. Nothing has changed in the school.

Who would have thought this is Bhopal

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Next to big lake (ब�ा तलाब), the street almost looks like some happening place in Kerala.

New Cafe Coffee day opening

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There is a new new cafe coffee day coming up opposite the boating area in Bhopal big lake. Good view of the lake from the restaurant.

Graffiti in Bhopal

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Here is an interesting thing that I saw in a small time restaurant in Bhopal. They have put a board where people can leave graffiti by sticking postit notes.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

McGrath and Tendulkar

Here is an interesting comment from McGrath about Tendulkar and Lara. Looking at current scenario, it does sound true though.
"I enjoyed bowling to Sachin and getting him out or changing his gameplan or just tying him up. You tend to lift your game a bit when you are bowling to guys like that and I felt I did," McGrath said.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Pathetic Indian Media

After the end of world cup I was trying to watch something useful on TV that is non-cricket, I came across a program on "Headlines Today" channel, where they were showing Kapil Dev and Sir Richard Hadlee playing a game of golf. On the same day Gaurav Ghei had won Bejing open golf tournament and they was no mention of him.

I can understand media's fixation with cricket but if they have to show a game of golf, they could have shown a proper golf player player golf, but then that is really asking for too much from them.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

MP Katara suspended by BJP

Here is an interesting news, I am not sure why somebody at that level would resort to something like this.
Katara, who represents Dahod in the Lok Sabha, was detained by immigration officials when they found out that the woman who was traveling along with him on his wife's passport was one Paramjeet Kaur and not his spouse Sarada Ben.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

म�� व�स� त� नव��त सि�ह सिद्ध� �ा ��� �ास ��न नह�� ह�� पर �� �न�� ए� व�्तव्य �� सुन �र म�ा � �या।
ब� स� स� �� �� न��र� �रना �र ब�दर न�ाना ए� ह� बात ह�।

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Lost some posts

I accidentally messed up the wordpress database and could only restore something that is 25 days old. Hence I have lost some of the posts that I did not last few weeks. I will try to repost these but let's see how successful I am.

Update: I have since, recreated all these posts, thanks to caching by google reader.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

IIT Students' political party

Around a year back we heard of some ex-IITans forming a political party with a difference, but this party like the other party with a difference has also turned out to be a joke. Read this. They are already undergoing splits etc.


�र�ब सवा साल पहल� यह �बर �� थ� �ि ������ �� �ु्� �ात्र�� न� ए� रा�न�ति� दल बना लिया था। �स समय म��न� �स�� बार� म�� �स ब्ला� म�� लि�ा था। �न ल���� स� �ु� त� �म्म�द थ�। पर �न ल���� न� ��� �ाम �रन� �� ब�ाय� रा�न�ति� दल�� �� बुर� बात�� पहल� स�� ल��। �स समा�ार �� द��िय�। �न�ा दल �भ� �ह�� �ुनाव म�� ल� त� नह�� पाय, �न�ा ��� �ार्य�्रम भ� �भ� त� म��न� नह� द��ा �र �न�� दल �� �ु��� ह� �य�। �ब बहुत �ल्द� ��� �बर �ए�� �ि �न्ह�न� �िस� ब�� दल स� समझ�ता �र लिया ह�।


Monday, March 26, 2007

Total Lunar Eclipse in March 2007


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Here is an interesting photo with multiple exposures of total lunar eclipse that I took. I thought it came out well.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

The cricket world cup and Indian people



So finally the cricket world cup is over, for Indian atleast it is. I feel so happy that I did not get sucked into joining the bandwagon of people who wanted to fly to Caribbeans or buy a 52� plasma TV to watch the world cup or get a satellite connection.

Now what I fail the understand is the reaction of Indian fans. Ok, so we lost the world cup. It is not that we are a country of people who excel in everything. We are mediocre at best. Look at our great software Industry, it fixes bugs for rest of the world and survives by wage arbitrage and we call ourselves IT superpower.

I have also not seen anybody burning the effigies of hockey players, I think they are loosing matches of all variety since last couple of decades. Now people are saying that we should bring the young team out. Where is this young team?

Anyway, enough about cricket. I think I can watch F1 peacefully. There is no India so no need to feel bad. May the best driver win.



Remedies for Indian Cricket Team

You can't help talking about cricket. So I again went to our trusty stats guru. How bad is really tendulkar. How bad is he compared to himself and how bad is he compared to his peers. The first chart is the life record of all the Indian players and here you can see that there is really no comparison. He has won around 50% of all the matches he has played. Only player who is higher then that number is Yuvraj Singh. The other criticism of Tendulkar has always been that he does not play for team. His average is higher when India wins. He has scored more percentage of centuries in the matches that he won compared to matches that he lost. life-record The other argument that I have heard is that he was ok but last one year he has not been performing well. To a large extent this criticism is true, but it seems none of the top batsmen in last one year have been doing well. If you see record of all the top batsmen, (other than Ganguly) they have been performing much worse in last one year. Now only common factor in last one year was the coach so I would go ahead and blame that on coach. Something went awry in last one year that all our top guns stopped performing. oneyear-recordThe last chart just compares all these players� records for life vs. last one year and you can see apart from Ganguly all of then have deteriorated in last one year. players-life-vs-last-one-year So my verdict for Indian team, fire chappel and everything will alright.

A really stupid robber

Here is one interesting story of a really stupid robber. He goes into an ATM and steams the CCTV camera while the camera records him.
The video recording showed the accused had entered the ATM twice, first for a recce and later to commit the crime. ââ?¬Å?We became suspicious when we saw the accused more interested in the camera at the corner of the room than performing any banking related task during his first visit. He entered the ATM counter again, 15 minutes later, wearing a cap to hide his face and removed the camera, the SP said. However, police had no problems identifying the culprit as he has used his credit card to enter the ATM.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Motorola Launches ROKR E6 in India

Here is an interesting Ad from Motorola that was launched today coinciding with the crucial world cup cricket game. I would say among the mobile phone ads, this one ranks pretty high.
Tell me how do you like it.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Google's innovative hiring

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Here is an interesting thing that I saw. Google had put-up a road show at the popular Bangalore mall (Forum) with a huge banner which said "We are hiring". This is something new in India. Let's see how people like it. Click on the photo to see a slightly better one.

Unknown Indian is billionaire No 4, shocking news!!

Rs 35,000 crores of wealth, 10 Swiss Bank accounts plus what's still not known! Have the I-T and Enforcement Directorate sleuths bumped into who could possibly be one of the top five richest Indians or the fourth richest man in India?

He is probably just one of the many.

read more | digg story

Yahoo apologizes to Indian housewife | InfoWorld | News | 2007-03-08 | By J

Here is interesting stuff, yahoo just copies stuff from somebody's blog and then claims that it was done by their outsourcing organization.

read more | digg story

Govt to make TV firms share sports feeds

Here is a stupid government, rather than worrying about making sure people get their share of food, water, housing etc, they think providing them with sports feeds is in public interest. Here is a country where hundreds of millions of people are finding it difficult to find enough money for two square meals but they think their priority is sports broadcast.
read more | digg story

I am Vishnu and my wife Laxmi, claims man

So here is an interesting news item that I saw.
A man in Mumbai claiming to be â??godâ?? and wanting recognition of his â??divine statusâ?? failed to get the judicial endorsement he had sought.

The reason that court gave to reject the application was very interesting.








 


The Bombay High Court rejected 30-year-old Dharmendra Mishra's application, saying it was not in its jurisdiction to respond to his prayers.

The person pleaded with the court
I am Vishnu, Buddha, Christ. I know everything that goes around.
I should be given the reins of the country and the UN as he was god.

Now what I don't understand that if this person really knows everything that goes around, how did he not know that court are going to throw out his plea.

Strange world this is.

read more | digg story

Thursday, February 22, 2007

US asks India to help Oracle up i-flex stake

This is an interesting story, If oracle wants to fully acquire a company's share, they could just increase price and buy out rest of the shareholders. Rather than doing that they approach American government to pressure Indian government to force minority shareholders to sell their stake to Oracle.

read more | digg story

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Microsoft at it again

This is a company that as soon as you feel like sympathizing with, they do something so moronic that all of a sudden you get rid of that feeling. See this.
Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.

Now who is to say what is inaccurate. The whole point of wikipedia is that people decide, here is a company that is taking away that right of people to decide. Microsoft can put up corrections on their own website, send out whitepapers to people or better still ask Bill G to write in his blog. But the fact is that they are paying to somebody to modify the wikipedia is not really the right thing to do.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Chavez sworn in, vows to radicalise Venezuela

Here is a story that really does not concern me. But I can not help but think that this country has screwed itself. I don't know why can't people learn after so many years.
Chavez, who won 63% of the vote in December, has amplified comparisons with Cuban leader Fidel Castro by forming a single party to steer his revolution, but insists he will always tolerate opposition.

I think in democracy, people will have to take responsibility for voting the leaders in power. For example in Kerala, if the state does not see development, I think people are responsible for that.

HC judge 'beats up' HC judge

I don't really want to say anything. Please see here.