Infinite thoughts

Just started with the famous one - Games Indians Play by V. Raghunathan. Came across a very powerful thought - A Glorious past can hardly be a consolation for a sorry present!! WOW!!

Very good taste; good service; adequate menu and nice ambiance - this how Xia could be described. Located off Karve Road, Near Sharada Center, this is definitely a new addition in the list of destinations for Oriental food lovers. Priced at an affordable rate (Approx Rs. 250-300 per head for 3 course veg meal) Xia offers a different taste for it's food items. To name a food - Thai Curry (Red/Yellow), Burmese Noodles, Indonasian Rice in the main course, Veg Tempura, Crispy Corn Chilly Pepper for starters. The restaurent has two storied seating arrangement, one is outdoors and the other closed one. Outdoor place is very close to the road and hence one may find it pretty noisy. If you want somewhat peaceful meal, choose the other one. The seating arrangement on first floor is much better than the ground floor and if you are a group of 7-8 persons, upstairs would be the right place for you. Overall, it's a good place to visit, definitely more than once :)

Recently attended nth corporate training - for a change this time it was actually good and I was completely hooked onto that through the day. Plenty of "Role Plays" and the discussions after that taught a lot. One common thing that I don't like about all these trainings is initial introduction part and to be specific - Tell us something unique about yourself!! Given the fact that I have been attending similar training since past 2-3 years and that there is very less churn in the company personnel at my level, I happen to attend the training with same folks most of the time. And every time everyone ends up with same "unique" thing about himself/herself. It gets so boring at times. I can imagine that the trainer is new and thinks not all participants know each other very well, but how does this unique thing help, God only knows...

Without breaking the suspense, I would just say 8x10 Tasveer is a one time watchable movie that too not in any multiplex. One can wait till it is available in video library or even till small screen premier. The story is about a person having super-natural power of going into the past 1 minute through any photograph. While he uses this to the rescue of the needy persons, he lands up in a situation where he needs to use this power for his own sake - to find out if his father's death was an accident or a murder. Once the plot is set, the story takes kind of predictable turns. It becomes easier to guess what the end is going to be and fails to keep the audience locked in the story. Akshaye Kumar is okay, Ayesha Takia-Azmi doesn't have much scope for acting as such, she just needs to be around. Anyone could have done that role. Frankly speaking no one leaves the feeling that this role couldn't have been done by anyone else. Movie seriously fails considering that it's a N...

If you cut lane, that is okay. If you rash drive that is okay. If you don't check emissions, that is okay. But if you park your vehicle, just two inches outside the faded marking, you gotta pay for that. Then it doesn't matter whether you have parked in the parking zone/side. It only matters if traffic police van passes from there. No, it didn't happen with me, thankfully. But I keep on seeing these kinds of incidences everyday, near my office and other places as well. Has anyone from the traffic department really thought why the mechanism of toeing vehicles to police station is not having any permanent effect? Why do people keep on parking vehicles in no parking zones or apparently just on the border? Do they want to take chance or are really unaware of the traffic signs or just be ignorant? Or is it a case that the fine/punishment is not at all acting as a deterrent? I feel all these questions should be considered by the authorities and see how to solve this problem.

It was time to use the gift voucher I had received sometime back. The voucher was issued by Popular Book House located on Deccan just next to Good Luck. I had never been to this book store and hence I was very enthusiastic to check out this shop. The shop is there for quite a few years, but I never had visited it. Being a regular visitor of Crossword and Odyssey, I am used to the kind of book arrangements, space etc. I had my expectations lowered, given that the shop was not a big one, but definitely was expecting some organized display. But to my disappointment, the shop turned out to be much more chaotic. The section names and the books in that section were not really matching. Cooking, Health and Yoga are stacked in rack. Management, Self Help books were scattered all over. It was very difficult to check if you were looking for a particular category. Meghana had a reference of one of the management books - name and the author. Thankfully the owner (or manager?) knew the book and wh...

Irrespective of some group likes it or not, let's express our feelings to the loved ones :) Ultimately what matters are your loved ones and not some group who only knows how to spread hatred!! Happy Valentin's Day!!

Recently, the instances of not accepting credit cards in stores/shops has increased. Most of them have given the reason that the machine is not working. I wonder if this is because of the cost cutting measures that every shop-owner is implementing. I am told that these people need to shell out some 2 to 2.5% of every transaction to the bank issuing that swipe machine. In that case, my conclusion seems logical. I look at the credit card as a means to keep track of all my expenses. Given the consumer culture in India, not every establishment accepts the credit card; but I try and find out if credit card is accepted. For me, it's more of tracking mechanism rather than 45 days of interest free loan. Considering the recent trend of swiping machines getting vanished from shops, I think I'll need to start carrying cash again...

Yet another year is passed by. Yet another year has been awarded to me. It happens constantly year after year. But every year was way different than the earlier gift. And I am sure even this is going to be another amazing year in my life. Last year same timeframe, Meghana and I were anxiously waiting for our then-yet-to-be-born-kid. The Gynecologist had kept us on high alert and secretly, Meghana was hoping that the kid and I would share the birthday. But it didn't happen. After a long wait of another 15 days, she gave birth to our cute little son - Mrunmay. Next 3 weeks were completely devoted to Megh and Mrunmay before I resumed my duties. Then it all started ... spending extravaganza. March to June turned out to be most expensive months so far and I was kind of getting worried where it all is going. Firstly, my beloved Palio had to be admitted the hospital for nervous breakdown. And since such diseases are usually not covered by insurance, I had to shell out a huge buck to get h...

Finally, the good news came in .. The much awaited NSG waiver has been announced and that gives us a good reason to rejoice. TOI has a special coverage for the same. What is more important is that Manmohan Singh has established himself as a very good and strong PM. Oppositon and Left have exactly opposite view (what else they could see when they are in "opposition" :) ) Few days back these people had taggen the PM has the weakest PM ever, but now that doesn't matter any more. The hurdle for Neuclear trade is cleared. Now, even if we face some opposition in/by the US senate, we are still eligible to obtain the Neuclear supply for other countries like Russia and France. So the options are now open. How to play the cards is entirely upto our government!! Some are afraid that what if tomorrow US stops the supplies? The answer could be - we need to reduce the dependency on the US anyways. We'd need to create newer friends and newer ties which would keep the supply continu...

Related post: Way to Passport - Part I If you are hoping that since the passport office is asking you to take an appointment, you will not have to face any queue, then you would be totally wrong. The appointment is only a way to force people to come on the specified date and deter others from stamping the passport office. One will still have to go through a big queue (approximately 70-75 persons) But the good part is that if you are in the queue before 1:30 PM, by all chances, your application will be accepted on that day. Some tips for the day of appointment Be there around 40-45 minutes in advance. Things to carry with you - a book for reading, or an iPod to listen to music or something else to keep you busy through the queue (unless you are interested in bird watching :) and birds are no more rare species at the passport office!! ) A water bottle 3 sets of document (self attested). The office asks only for 2 sets, but it's good to have one more. Original set of papers All of you...

As my passport was expired, couple of months back, I started searching for the means to get it renewed. To make this process smooth, government has put up a website - http://www.passport.nic.in or http://www.passport.gov.in which has all the details required for getting a fresh passport or renew/re-issue the same. While the site is very useful, it still has some gray areas which resulted in some inconvenience (read: multiple trips to the passport office) for me. And hence thought to share the tips with the world out here. The recent procedure requires the applicant to fill up the application online, take a printout and submit the application along with supporting documentation in the passport office on the day of appointment. Before filling up the online application: First and foremost: Read the checklist carefully. There are few ifs and buts which one needs to understand correctly. Address proof has to be in the applicant's name. That means, applicant's name should clearly b...

Don't think so. At least in the context of Indian market. As per the established belief, market becomes a better place for consumers if there is fair competition. However, contrary to this, Indian market is establishing a fact that we don't care about the consumer, we all are competing against each other for the sloppiest service award. You might very well be aware about my opinion about the retail outlets like Reliance Fresh, More, Spencer's. They have one thing in common - not having stock when the consumer needs it most (weekends, holidays, month-ends etc) . On top of that all of them have started putting air-conditioning off or to the minimal level. In my opinion, most of these places have been built assuming that there will be artificial ventilation provided in terms of A/C. So when you turn off the A/C, people inside the store have no choice but to get drenched in sweat. When asked, the rep would embarrassingly tell you that A/C is not working. Recently, Pune has bee...

While shifting to the new place near chandani chowk, we didn't know that we would need to struggle even for easy things. Since both of us work in a software industry, availability of the internet connection at home was a MUST. Nope, none of us is a workaholic, but it gives us the flexibility of working from home at times. Considering the fact that we were the first movers to our society, I was sure that no one would be providing broadband services to my locality. So I opted for Reliance data card , which is supposed to give you high speed internet connection, although not a broadband. The promise about the speed looked attractive, even if it was on a costlier side. The promised figures were in the range of 60-70+ Kbps. However, on an average, we get not more than 25-30 Kbps. If you are really lucky, then only one could see the speed exceeding 60Kbps for few minutes. Otherwise it was always a spike going to maximum speed of 150Kbps and for rest of the duration hovering around 20-30...

Since we had moved to our new flat, we were struggling to get LPG connection. The society where I am staying is supposed to have a piped gas facility, to be supplied by the builder. It's been more than 2 years now, but the scheme is not yet complete and residents are still struggling to see the end of the tunnel. In an attempt to get rid of this problem, we decided to apply for new LPG connection. The search of a right distributor landed us with Jitesh Gas Agency in Waraje, who agreed to provide the connection and home delivery to my residence. The application was done in January 2008. After wait for few weeks, we got hit by the ban on new LPG connection because of the shortage of supplies. After it got resumed, finally, we got an appointment for Apr 17th with the distributor to get the new connection. On that day, we reached there with the required documentation and within few minutes the processing started. When it was time to pay the amount, we were told that we need to purchase...

Came across a post on results of Android developer challenge on TechCrunch site. They had announced a challenge for the developers to submit the application ideas for the android platform. While announcing the top 50 ideas/applications, the authors have also documented the process they used for the evaluation. I must say this is one of the most elaborate evaluation process I have ever seen documented. The author goes to the details of how extreme/exception cases were handled and what care they had to take to minimize the impact of exclusions/exceptions. To me the biggest task in any evaluation, when it is by multiple persons, is how to normalize the scores. It is likely that a particular judge likes the application because he/she has some personal interest in that application, while some other judge simply dislikes it for some other reasons. Even if it is expected that judges do a fair job during scoring, one can't forget the human element. And the process explicitly tries to tak...

Few days back, I got to know that PMC is issuing the voter's ID card on the spot. It came as a very pleasant surprise to see that PMC is using the latest technologies to make the life simpler for both, citizens as well PMC officials. Taking advantage of summer vacations of the schools, PMC had put up booths in the schools. As a preparatory step, they distributed to the leaflets having the their personal information to the individuals. And then everyone was requested to approach the specified booth. The setup and process was very simple. Few laptops, webcams, lamination machines and printers. ○ Register yourself to complete the records ○ Approach the person with a webcam ○ Allow him to take the photo ○ Wait for 15 mins ○ Go out with your laminated voter card with photo printed on it!! This surely was a smoothest ever interaction with PMC/government department. There was another instance where Meghana registered a complaint with PMC website about the garbage collection. To ou...

After yet another long break of two months. As you might have guessed it rightly, my kid - Mrunmay, kept me busy through out my non-work hours. And there was very little time to do anything else but to cater to the needs of the Prince. It is really a great thing to hold the new born in your hands, to see him smiling, to see him making sounds, to interpret those sounds - which you know doesn't really mean much literally, but still put you in seventh heaven... Whatever tiredness you might have got through the day, it just disappears the moment you see the face of your baby or the smile on his face. It's really a great experience. Now that the baby is a bit older, I am hoping to get some free time to start with the blogging again. Lot of things have happened in last few months and most likely I would be writing about those things in coming days. Let's see how much I can do.

A powerful thought - make your customer to stay with you by choice and not out of compulsion!! One of my fellow colleagues spelt it out so well, it covers the basic principle of maintaining/increasing your customer base. The other day I needed to buy some sweets from the franchisee of a well known sweet mart. When I placed my order, I saw that the sweets, the pedhas, were all broken. I brought this to the notice of the salesperson, who outrightly rejected to change the broken pieces. To my surprise, same was the reaction from the shop owner. I decided to leave the shop without taking anything and proceeded to another franchisee few kilometers down the road. Thankfully, the salesperson was good and gave me good pedhas and some othe stuff. Looking at this whole episode now, I realized that I was visiting the first shop out of the need of a shop closer by and not as my choice. That fellow definitely has lost one customer now. If he'd have provided me with good sweets, I would have vis...

After a long wait of 9 months, the little angel has arrived in our life. Mrunmay, that's how he would be known, made to this world on the evening of 24th of January, 2007. As you might have guessed, that is the main reason for this long gap on this blog. His arrival was marked by one of the coldest days in this winter season and hence the angel decided to keep quiet for a long time. Now that the mother Nature is turning a bit warmer, our prince has started showing the signs of activities and keeping us awake till late nights and throughout the days. Albeit, it's fun to have a baby in your life, taking all of your attention, forcing you to change all your priorities, forcing you to reconsider your schedules/tasks everything. Everything in the day is centered around this new person and all that is paid off when you see a cute smile on Mrunmay's face. Although this reward is quite rare as of now, it's worth a watch :) This blog may still see some not-so-unusual breaks, but...