Mid year update

Here is me announcing when my next post would be :)

Taking a break from blogging for a few months, will be back by November 2010!

Laptop Crash!
Due to my carelessness, a trojan entered my laptop and stopped all my activities! I couldn't clean it up normally as it blocked any anti-virus scan or online scans. It also prevented safeboot and finally lead to BSOD. Thankfully, my Thinkpad had some options to recover data and restore everything to factory settings!So after nearly 2 days, my laptop is back in action. Here are some of my key learnings/discovery during the restoration process:
1. Patience is very key during such restoration process. It is really frustrating, but you need to outlast it for tasting success.
2. Google is all what you require during such a task. I had another laptop in working condition, which i used to parallely browse and troubleshoot during the recovery process. I happened to come across some wonderful blogs which offered excellent solutions, which almost worked.
3. Vendor sites mostly suck! Neither Thinkpad site (for restoring laptop) nor BSNL site (for setting up broadband) helped me anyway. All the time, Third party amateur bloggers helped a lot!
4. Being in Software industry for more than 7 years, i really struggled to set up the internet connection in my laptop. Usually, many of my friends help me with it. But this time, when i did it alone, i really struggled a lot. Though i learned to do it now, i can really think of the trouble which non-technical folks face during such configuration. Plug and Play is still long way to go, i guess!

End of Geekiness?

I unsubscribed Slashdot feed from my feedreader today…J I have been reading Slashdot for over 8 years now and I don’t feel like reading it anymore!

Taxing times!

It is that time of the year when we are made to run around for submitting Income tax proof documents. It is no surprise that our tax laws are quite complicated (at least for my tiny brain) and we are left wondering if it is worth taking that effort to find information about tax laws. Adding to the woes, the standard template which the Tax department gives is always ambiguous; I had to talk to 3 people to figure out what I should fill in the column “Housing Loan-Total Interest paid” in form 12C [Is it Total interest component of the EMI? Is it only ‘my share’ of interest, considering the fact that it is a joint loan? Does it include pre-EMI interest?] And after 2 days of deliberation, it finally turns out that I need not fill form 12C as it is a self-occupied property! I am so glad that I don’t have anything to fill in other place holders, such as income from other sources, capital gains etc. Well, it is surely good to make extra money, but I have already had enough headache to fill in the existing ‘valid’ columns ;) The moment I dropped the tax proof documents in the drop box (at my workplace), I sensed a huge relief that I need not worry about this for another year, sigh!

Oops! I was cheated again (almost)!

If you are a frequenter of Jayanagar 4^th block commercial area, I am sure you would have visited a lot of famous eat outs there. Fourth block is one area where you get all good stuff, right from cakes and pastries at Iyengar bakery and Mayura bakery (which is closed now and has changed to a Canola outlet), chat items at Hot Chips, awesome lunch at Nagarjuna/Nandhini (and recently Maiyas) and Cothas coffee at several outlets. I used to be a regular visitor of fourth block, mainly for its variety food items and electric shopping atmosphere. One of my favorite food-stops was a famous Dosa outlet near a traffic signal.

This Dosa outlet is a famous landmark in fourth block. It even won awards for Best Dosa and Coffee two years back. I can vouch for the quality of Dosa and coffee there and I had even recommended this place to several of my friends, until recently when I found out that not all is well there! I found out that it is so easy to lose cash at the counter, when you buy your stuff, as the cashier doesn’t hand over exact change! This has not happened just once or twice, but it has happened during last 5 of my 6 visits!

Earlier, the outlet doesn’t have any board displaying the price of the food items. So the customer was at the mercy of the cashier to collect the exact amount and the customer assumes that the change given back to him is correct. Couple of months back, when I had been there, just out of curiosity, I asked the  cashier for the price of individual items. Once the cashier told me the individual items price, I realized that he hadn’t given back the exact balance and it was short by about Rs 20. So I asked for the balance and he handed over the balance Rs 20 to me. I thought it was probably a casual mistake and ignored the incident. After a few weeks, I again visited the place and once again I found out that the cashier at the Dosa outlet had given me about Rs 15 less. I had to again ask him for the line-item wise price and had to ask for the balance Rs 15. This time, something told me that I had to watch out the next time as well. During my next visit, after ordering dosas there, the cashier again gave back about Rs 30 less. It was easy for me this time to spot out that he had cheated, so I asked him for the change even without him giving me a line-item wise price list. The fourth time when I went there, I was expecting the cashier to cheat me with change, I had even told my wife that it will happen. Expectedly, he gave about Rs 12 less and my wife was totally shocked. I again argued and demanded the change back and the cashier handed over the change reluctantly. I lost trust on this “popular” Dosa outlet and decided not to visit this place too often.

Yesterday, after several months, I visited this Dosa outlet and this time, I was glad to see the price tag for individual items displayed on the board. I was happy that the customers can be vigilant now and it would lead to lesser “cheating” attempts by the cashier. I ordered 3 Dosas(Rs 60) and 3 coffees(Rs 18) and gave Rs 100 to cashier. He gave me back Rs 2 and started attending other customers! I was furious and demanded the balance. He then casually looks at the bill and gives me balance Rs 20! I was totally shocked at the way this reputed Dosa counter is consistently cheating its customers at the cash counter!

It is such a shame that this famous Dosa counter is right next to my favorite shopping destination in fourth block, about which I have blogged here and here. Dear proprietor of the “famous” Dosa outlet, please learn from your neighbor on what excellent customer service is all about!

 

Solar Eclipse in Bangalore

Just caught a glimpse of Solar Eclipse from my office (using good old techniques of reflection and computer monitor shades)…It was an awesome sight! Though I can’t guess how much percent sun was covered, it was amazing to see a crescent out of Sun J

Outside it is bit dark. The best part is that I don’t see any traffic on the Bannerghatta road!

 

Why Chetan Bhagat has to move on

Note: Spoilers inside, read it at your own risk

Before going to the main theme of this post, I would wish to reveal why I am interested (or rather curious) about the 3 Idiots – Five Point someone debate. First, I have read FPS and I really enjoyed it, mainly because of the way I could connect it with my college days. The simple style of writing and the interesting twists in the story made it a very good read for the common man. Second, 3 Idiots was shot in my college campus (IIM-B) and I have seen the trio (Aamir, Maddy and Sharman) several times. I have even seen Aamir, Chetan Bhagat and  Raju Hirani together in the campus ( I wish I had that photo today, I am sure it would have come up in the media). One of my current professors (Prof. Raghunath) even makes a brief guest appearance!

After having seen all the debates on TV and other media regarding the issue of rightful ownership of “3 Idiots” story, I was curious to watch the movie and managed to get tickets for Sunday afternoon show (had to book it 3 days in advance). After watching the movie, I feel that

a)      The movie is significantly different from Chetan Bhagat’s book “Five point someone”(FPS)

b)      The story and screenplay definitely belongs to Abhijit Joshi and Raju Hirani. Except for the concept of 3 friends in Engineering college, ragging, stealing question paper, there is no similarity between the book and movie.

Above all, the fundamental concept behind the book and movie is drastically different. The FPS book talks about “What one should not do in IIT”, whereas the theme of the movie is “Excellence in education”. Even if Mr.Bhagat claims that the idea of 3 friends in college, ragging, stealing paper are his, haven’t we seen such things in cinema before? For that matter, Raju Hirani’s earlier film “Munnbhai MBBS” even featured a similar ragging scene. I am not convinced with the claim of “70% similar to book”. Some key points in the movie such as Chathur Ramalingam’s bet, Rancho’s original identity, “The” speech, “Follow your passion” twist (for Farhan and Raju) are all fantastic twists which doesn’t figure in the book. Don’t even try comparing the book and the movie!

Chetan’s problem is that his credit did not appear in the beginning titles and was pushed to the end of the movie . In fact, most multiplexes don’t even screen the end credits to save time. Since there is a legal contract which he has signed, he should have probably been cautious about this issue, if he really cared about the location of his credit. But should that really hurt you Mr.Bhagat? You are the “India’s most widely read English author”, you have a fan following of your own and I am sure that you have lot more good stuff in you! Five point someone is an excellent book and your fans want it to be remembered only for Five point someone and not for 3 Idiots controversy. Even without this controversy, the media was writing that 3 Idiots was based on Five point someone, so that connection has been inherently established. I humbly feel that just by placing your name in the beginning of titles won’t make much difference.

If you haven’t read the FPS book, go ahead and read it. If you haven’t seen the movie, go and watch it. I am sure you will like both!

 

p.s: I also watched Avatar-3D, it is awesome! But as my wife rightly said, had it been in 2D, it wouldn’t have run for so long in India J

Go Goa

Last few years, it has almost become a custom for me to go for a short trip outside Bangalore, during Christmas time. Until last year, I used to go out for trips with the usual suspects RSAS (comprising of myself, Goldfather, Kasri, RL, Gethu…). This time, I went to Goa with my wife during the Christmas holidays! Not much has changed in Goa between my last trip in 2003 and this trip. We stayed at Palolem, a beach village in South Goa, which was made famous by the movie “The Bourne Supremacy” starring Matt Damon. Apart from visiting the usual tourist places in Goa, we spent a whole day on the beach, swimming and floating on water! It was so good to live a couple of days without thinking of space and time (yeah! I hardly used my watch there). Though Palolem is far off from the tourist attractions in North Goa, if you are planning a second trip to Goa, I strongly recommend a stay at Palolem beach! We also went for a short boat trip to Butterfly island, which probably had the shortest beach in the world! The best thing is that the weather was awesome during our visit, it was bit cloudy and wasn’t too cold.

Coming to the Goan people, almost everybody here speaks all South Indian languages! Though we were lucky to get  a good driver, who didn’t rip us off with high fares, we could see that the foreigners were being taken for a ride (just like in all places!). I was told that this time, the foreign crowd is less in Goa and during peak seasons, they would have 4 times as much crowd as in this season. During their golden days, vendors sold tender coconuts for about $10 each (approx. Rs 500 now per drink!).

On the way back to Airport, while everyone else were anxious to reach the Airport on time, I was eagerly awaiting to cross the gates of “BITS Pilani – Goa” Campus. I was delighted to catch a glimpse of entrance as well as the campus. The campus looked really different from the one where I studied! I don’t know if there is a purposeful strategy by the BITS management to locate its campuses far off from any big city (But I assume that the guys in Goa campus will have bikes to head to the beaches every weekend).

In the airport, we also came across Sreesanth, the Indian cricketer famous for his dancing capabilities or rather infamous for “Bhajji Slapgate”. Thankfully, he didn’t show any residual symptoms of Swine flu J

We landed in Bangalore on Dec 31^st evening. While I was driving back home, I tried to think of my 2010 New Year resolutions and sadly, I couldn’t think of anything! So I guess I will keep 2010 free of any resolutions and take it up in 2011 ;)

Wishing you all a wonderful 2010! 

Nostalgia...

Sometime in 2001, on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Pilani, I wandered in the hostel corridors and landed in my friend’s room. The rain outside had made that day very special in that part of the country, which is known for its arid weather. Me and my friend decided to watch a movie and started sifting through the CD’s that were around. My friend picked up a movie CD with a weird name “Shawshank Redemption” (well, if you removed the ‘w’ in the first word of the title, it became the name of many kannada folks in our college J ). Once the movie started, we were able to confirm the fact that the first word was definitely not a typo error on the CD cover. Little did I know of the impact that the great movie featuring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman would have on me. Though some of my friends didn’t like the slow pace of the movie and actually “missed” the ending(!), I watched it couple of times for the sheer performance of the crew and the powerful dialogues.

Fast forward to 2009. A rainy Sunday afternoon in the silicon valley of India, which is quite common in the second half of the year. After a great lunch, me and my wife decided that it was time for a good movie and just when we switched on the television, “Shawshank Redemption” had just started on one of the channels! The movie still had the same charm, even though I had seen it many times during my college days. I highly recommend this movie to anyone asking me for a movie recommendation! It is very hard to pick a best scene from this movie. One of my favorites has to be this:

Andy (Tim Robbins) is just out of 1 month in solitary confinement, after playing Mozart in the public sound system inside the prison. During lunch time, an interesting conversation happens between Andy and Red (Morgan Freeman):

 

Someone: How did you manage a month?

Andy: I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company...[points and taps his head.] It was in here. [gestures over his heart] And in here. That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you. Haven't you ever felt that way about music?

Red: Well... I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it, though. Didn't make too much sense in here.

Andy: No, here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.

Red: Forget?

Andy: That there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That there's... there's something inside that they can't get to; that they can't touch. It's yours.

Red: What are you talking about?

Andy: Hope.

 

It just struck me that Chetan Bhagat has a liking for having numbers on his book title, notice the pattern

· Five point someone (movie version: 3 Idiots)

· One night at the call center

· Three mistakes of my life

· Two states

So can we expect “four” in his next book title?

Note: I just finished reading “Two States” (a typical CB style, bollywood oriented book). I could empathize with CB on a lot of aspects mentioned in the story, though I (or rather we) didn’t have to struggle that hard for our marriageJ