Category: Life in Bengaluru

20 winks in 20 seconds

9am, rainy monday morning. Blues in the offing. 3 columns of ten cars in front of me. I drive up behind them and stop. Knowing MG road for the past two and half decades I switch off my car. Closed my eyes. Was thinking about having some personal time for myself in this fast paced world. I could see images flashing past my eyes. My son was playing by me. Wife was all smiles. No phone calls, no office, no one to bother me. The hassles were missing. Beauty abound around me. Serenity manifested all around. Calmness prevailed.

The sun shone into my home. Its rays sifting through the dust particles bringing in energy and freshness into every breath I took and illuminating my home with all brightness. This was THE life. A perfect one minus the daily struggles. 🙂 Oh how nice the feeling.

Cuuuuuuuuttttttttt! Eyes wide open. Realized I am in the middle of traffic. The three columns of cars in front me had vanished. A quick look at the rear view mirror showed no one behind me. Or to the side of me. Or around me. Far away the signal showed green. And the pedestrians were waiting wondering what I was upto and what move I would make next. There was only one thing left. I jammed the accelerator and shot off to the corner to make it on time before signal went red. Made it on time.

Had I slept, or was it a situation of getting deeply carried away by thoughts which contained the stuff I was yearning for even for a single moment? I cannot say for sure. Whatever it was it did not have the daily struggle from the toothbrush to hitting the bed. And it was a good 20 winks in 20 seconds.

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From Orange to Black in one year!

Buy a house, get a mercedes free, Buy a flat stay along with a cricketer all your life (wondering doing what? batting and bowling along with him leaving my daily duties?), Buy a house, get gold jewelry in kilograms absolutely free. Wow. The way they were marketing their properties itself made a person feel Orange properties were upto nothing. Adding fuel to the fire they even started off a furniture mela, and an electronics exchange mela. Again things which were unbelieveable.

Well within a year, the colour has worn off. They are Black (listed) properties with criminal proceedings initiated against them now. Why? Since they did not deliver anything of what they promised but only ran away with investors money! Unbelieveable? well not really so. It was masterminded to absolute predictability. Yet we people never learn to listen to our intuition. Check it out yourself.

 

 

Living with lethargy or dying with swine flu

Girl has flu. School does not notice. Hospital doesnt care. Wrong diagnosis. Late treatment. Girl dies of swine flu. Media makes merry. Court has its share of authority in suing the hospital atleast surfacially. Some usual blame games. Entire pune city swarms hospitals. Ill equipped hospitals invite more wrath.

Police ‘control’ crowds coming for irrelevant meical tests. Tv shows ask users to vote against mentality of hospitals. Telcos make rs.7 for each of the millions of sms sent. Next event waits to happen.

India is not a citizen friendly country. It wont be even after 100 years. On the matter of the girls death god give strength to the downtrodden family. Amen.

Posted by Wordmobi

Real estate is back on a roll, get ready suckers :)

Someone told me the economy would take at least one year to recover. And I believed it to be so, until I saw these advertisements in the papers a few days back. Most of the ads seemed to scream: “Now is the time to buy an apartment, don’t let this chance go away, at just only yours truly 1 crore”. My quesiton is whether even 1/4 of the educated India population know how many zeroes are there to a crore. Yeah obviously only businessmen would buy such properties you and I may think, but there are a few ABCDs who are now ABReturnedDs who are smelling of green bills and some unfortunate mortals who also believe that they are in the same league only with a 75 lakh housing loan which will kill them shortly and eventually.

Look and click at the ads and you know what I am referring to.

While Mantri and Confident were just as usual marketing unaffordable stuff in some unnamed corner of Bengaluru, there are now a new set of new entrants of new offshoots of known big builders who are trying to cater to the “LOW END” 😀 people of Bengaluru who have now been pushed to being low end, due to their fate rather than anything else.

Our very own DSMax contributed to some newspaper real estate with their mini offerings all over Bengaluru. ND, Nitesh Estates and Salarpuria were showing off their age old offerings in a new colourful photograph. The ozonegroup was marketing its already marketed property “evergreens” for which it has found no takers until now.

Artha money is the new Orange Properties ka Baap trying to help every disoriented developer sell off his assets. I know how life can get when one gets disoriented. Even a small advice can make someone so gullible that he will fall for anything and everything. Its the same logic what some great netas use on the “aaaaaaaam admi”. Barring these Purvankaras new arm provident homes, and CSC led by mphasis ceo jerry rao and others of jaanagraha fame, are perhaps the only affordable stuff around Bengaluru. Note that I said “Around Bengaluru” – not in Bengaluru 😀 These guys are promising affordable homes at 17 lacs and 7 lacs respectively. We have to wait and see whether a person can enter a 7 lac house in the first place!

One thing is clear. As long as suckers like you and me are there in India, the builders will continue the exploitation and take us to even greater depths of agony, insolvency and bankruptcy. Happy home buying suckers!

 

An evening at the Food Street, Sajjan Rao Circle

Its been a long while that I blogged, and it feels really strange to me that I have actually not blogged so far. So let me get ahead with today’s experience – dinner at Food Street. After a rather long day slogging on a weekend, and many missed chances of being at Food Street, I finally decided to check it out today.

 

Me and my friend reached Sajjan Rao Circle and expected something like a long street full of nice restaurants selling all varieties of food. Also knowing Karnataka I expected all these to be Darshini’s, or the fast food type of eateries. It was similar, but with one obvious difference – we had to eat the food ON the street! Nowhere to sit. In fact the food itself was being cooked ON the street. Now you get the point in the name dont you? – FOOD STREET.

The eateries are very small rooms or sometimes excuses for a room in terms of shape where things are prepared. Mostly the food is prepared right on the street and only raw materials occupy these so called odd shaped rooms. Business starts at about 6pm after sunset and gets brisk around 7:30. The atmosphere is charged up with youngsters and elders alike pouring onto food street. Steam fills the air from freshly prepared mouth watering Rice Rotis, Butter dosas and other items. Chats, juices, are everywhere. The vendors are more than courteous and show off their marketing skills extensively. Even the most disinterested person will finally succumb to the marketing skills exhibited by these vendors!

There are also stalls that sell north indian fare, such as Vada pavs, chats, and Gobi manchurians. Tucked away down the street is also the arya vaisya restaurant (correct me if i may be wrong!) where people buy snacks at all times of the evening.

Each shop feels like it belongs to a more bigger theme – food street! No shops lags behind another in what they sell with respect to time or quality or price. They work in unison to achieve the charged up atmosphere where crowds return each night for savouring some good food.

With just about a hundred bucks, my stomach was full. It was ages since I tasted such good food. It was an evening well spent chatting away with my friend and generally enjoying a cool evening with steamy food preparations! And for those of you who want to go shopping around don’t forget to visit VB Bakery at the end of Food Street. VB has been the dominant bakers since two decades in this area. The sheer stuff they have makes them a superlative bakery in Bangalore. And don’t forget to buy the delicacy they stand for even today – Dumroot – a pumpkin based sweet preparation that is sure to melt in your mouth!

If this article has triggered your taste buds to get more, sprint to Food Street after 6pm every evening. It will be an evening of a different kind and something that stays in your memory for a long while for the uniqueness of the concept.

25000 km review of Swift Diesel Vdi

I clocked a new record, in my ownership of cars. A coveted 25000 kilometres of driving within Bengaluru city. Its been a dream of owning a good vehicle and its exactly two years ago when I took different test drives, and zeroed in on the Swift Vdi. You can read more about it here.

While I wont go into details of the earlier ownership, as you can find it on the link specified, I would speak rather about the car as it stands now or as it drives now compared to two years ago, so that readers can get an idea how good the Swift would be after two years and 25k of run! 🙂

So without beating around the bush here are the salient points:

First the good ones!

  • Good power and torque, and if used in the right RPM ranges, gives that ultra cool kick which shoots this car out of the traffic in a jiffy. But a word of caution is to use this feature with full knowledge of what you are doing – it may have disastrous consequences if used the wrong way!
  • Easy driving in city – this car stands for this good point. Its very maneuverable, always all the time. With its ultra short turning radius, you can take this car everywhere anytime!
  • The ability to cross places you deem it not doable – This car has not had a single scratch even on rough terrain for quite sometime now. You know when you think this car cant make it, through a ditch or rugged road, it surprises you with its no-nonsense driveability
  • The engine – this is the real gem in this car, and I believe I have completed only about 10% of its real usability. This engine can go on and on for another 2-3 lac kilometers without the slightest sign of weariness! Next to Honda and Toyota, I love FIAT for their engines. Though maruti called it the DDIS, full credit goes to Fiat for its engine technology. They are truly pioneers in this field!
  • Roominess of the front cabin – The cabin is grey/black with orange lighting theme which makes it soothing at any time of the day. The front cabin is also roomy and for a two people kind of usage this car fits the bill perfectly with respect to front cabin space
  • Suspension thrills – I have taken this car through some really glidable humps at 80kmph and taken turns at 65kmph on flyovers and highways and the suspension just keeps up all the time. Kudos to that aspect.
  • Stability – none need to question the stability of this vehicle. In its category its stable even at 150kmph provided one has atleast 195 tread tyres, the more the merrier.
  • Fuel efficiency and cost of services – To put it point blank, I have never got below 16kmph at any time, and the service costs have never been above about Rs.1200 bucks at any time. So that speaks a lot about the car.

And now the bad points: (Surely every car will have its cons too otherwise we are in an ideal world!)

  • Rattles – A product costing a bit over six lakh rupees, cannot have consistent window pane rattles from day one of the purhcase.  I mean its absurd. If you pay about the same amount of money and buy a FIAT Linea or a Honda Jazz, you wont expect window panes to rattle your brains out would you? Even after writing to Maruti on these issues, I have not got any call from them on this either for rectification or for some in depth study of the problem. Shame on a big automotive giant for once again showing their high handedness w.r.t to such customer issues. I am bored/tired of the rattles this car generates and this could be one reason for me to sell this car a bit later, since I cannot live with rattles for 2 lac kms of mileage! Sorry maruti, but you will lose a customer soon.
  • Visibility – time and again I have commented on this aspect and yes this is one of the downsides of this car. Without side view mirrors, you cant but help scraping the car during its lifetime once or twice even if you are an expert driver. You can hardly notice what is standing next to you and this in my opinion is a recipe for some really silly accidents or dents. Well since the car is designed that way, nothing much can be done about it.
  • No safety/luxury options – no airbags, mine doesnt even have ABS, no climate control (only ac), no stereo controls on steering, no tiltable steering, nothing. This is surely a shame in modern times when every other car at this price range comes with all these as default stuff or atleast an option if I am willing to pay more money for it. Negative points to maruti on this count unless they respect safety. Full marks to Honda for thinking in this direction. Even if the Jazz is costiler.

Well, what did you think? The bad points list would continue for ever and ever? You know the best part of this car is its minimal negative points. A hot hatch and a super performer on the roads, with all but praises for its durability and stability will go a long way in winning Maruti another laurel for a close to outstanding product.

For now I leave you with other images of this cool car!

 

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Victimized! But got a life!

Wondering what this post is about? Hmm … so finally I too fell into the trap, after a cool decade of driving. I am referring to the great petrol pump prank. My dad had a surgery and I was returning from the hospital early one morning. Needed fuel, so drove straight into the pump. Usually there would be one guy to whom I would specify how much fuel I needed and also hand over my credit card for billing purposes. He would fill in the fuel and then do the needful (read that as never give me a bill 🙂 )

So today there were two guys, and I asked one guy to get Rs.700/- worth of fuel filled up. I also gave him my card and he started asking me questions which beyond a point sounded strange to me. He asked me if I needed a bill, he asked me then if I needed the car number on the bill. I must state here that I have never got such a question in my life so far anywhere leave alone a petrol pump! Now who the hell would put in the car number on a bill and for what reasons? Atleast he set me thinking to buy himself some time.

It is then that the other guy told me he had filled the fuel. I looked up and saw that the meter read Rs.100. I told him that I needed Rs.700 and not Rs.100. Another six hundred later he again pointed to the meter which read Rs.600. And told me he had done his job. Its then I realized I was the bakra of the day. I wanted him to realize that I was not a worthless guy! So this time I decided to do gandhigiri on him. I just asked him only one question:

I told him: “I would you ask you only one question, only one time, and I want an honest number from you only one time and nothing more than that. Tell me did you REALLY fill in fuel for the first Rs.100/- or was it just a fake drama of meter fixing ?

He then replied: “ Sorry sir.”  

And then the unthinkable happens. He fills in another Rs.100 worth of fuel and smiles at me. I told him a few more things after that on how not to ruin the name and fame of the IBP petrol pump in Koramangala which has served me so far in life so well. I also told him not to try such tricks on customers who are regulars to the pump and know how things go on. To that to my utter surprise he casually remarked to his friend thus:

“Hey lets not play this trick on regular customers!”

I was pretty tired that day, so I went to meet the manager a few days later. I spoke to him about the incident and he asked me to look around the pump. He had replaced a whole bunch of guys who were into this organized racket and replaced them with new people. The people who he trusted had betrayed him! This is not the only place and time where people like me and you are fleeced. Just spend two minutes to think of all the places where you are conned. And you would be surprised that the list of such places you realized is a pretty huge one!

 

The Compaq HELL final episode – hibernate crash solved

Ever since I bought the Compaq Presario laptop, I have been running around to the service center in Bengaluru every other week to get a multitude of problems fixed. First I made a bad decision of going for a laptop without an OS, next I decided to install Windows XP knowing little that these days laptop manufacturers have moved to support Vista OS instead of XP. When half the drivers and functions failed to work on this laptop with XP, I decided to finally buy a legal copy of Windows Vista.

The problems did not stop there. The webcam failed, and I had to leave my laptop at HP service center for a replacement of the webcam. But knowing these gadget manufacturers way of handling in warranty products, they changed my entire display for solving a webcam issue. Only I know what pain I went through to test the webcam without much progress. So much so that I also installed Acer’s webcam driver on my Compaq to test if the device works! Why? Since it was the same company who manufactured the webcam for both HP and Acer laptops.

Next it was the great HIBERNATE issue. If I put my laptop to hibernate, it would crash with a blue screen of death as shown below. Putting it to sleep mode and bringing it back from there would also produce the same BSOD (yea, what can one do, there are abbreviations even for denoting HELL these days!)

The system would perform a memory dump since some driver accessed an illegal memory location, and then a restart happened. This was forcing me to live life with this laptop by always shutting it down after use, something that I did not fancy doing for short spans of working time. No amount of searching yielded any results on the net about how to solve this crash. Finally even another visit to the service center did not help. The only thing they ever suspected was either the BIOS or the NVIDIA display driver for GeForce 8200 MG card. No amount of reinstalling these drivers either from HP website or from the manufacturer website helped in any way. Distraught, I decided to scan the net until I found a solution before going to HP again.

This is when I found one of the websites that spoke about a Win DBG utility which can be used to analyze memory dumps that windows creates in C:WindowsMinidump. I opened up the last crash dump using the tool and expected it to give lots of details on which file is causing the error upon what function access, etc. But believe it or not the only detail I ever found was the possible name of the file that gave me the error. 🙂

CLICK BELOW TO SEE BIGGER IMAGES.

*********************************************************************
* Symbols can not be loaded because symbol path is not initialized. *
*                                                                   *
* The Symbol Path can be set by:                                    *
*   using the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variable.                 *
*   using the -y argument when starting the debugger. *
*   using .sympath and .sympath+                                    *
*********************************************************************
Probably caused by : RTSTOR.SYS ( RTSTOR+2a60 )

 

Ok, that’s good, atleast I found something of use I thought and began understanding what this file is all about. One search on the net for RTSTOR.SYS and it showed up that this file is from Realtek Inc, a Taiwanese firm doing this business:

Realtek devotes itself to offering a comprehensive range of ICs of exceptional value for the communications network, computer peripheral, and multimedia markets. By its continued commitment to innovation, quality, and service, Realtek has successfully built trust with its customers.

 

Alright, but still I could not understand what device Realtek was providing for my laptop. So a quick scan over device manager and I found this: (CLICK TO SEE A LARGER IMAGE)

So now I was one step closer to the solution. The driver for USB 2.0 multi card reader on my laptop was causing the hibernate crash. First step was to disable that and try hibernating. And guess what? The functionality worked like a charm, I could now hibernate my laptop for the first time in its purchase history! The next step was to check out if there was an updated driver for the device which solved this issue. And true to my assumption I found it on HP’s website:

I was using an June 2008 version of the realtek driver, and the current version was May, 2009 just released this month (which I assumed would take care of the hibernate crash it was causing on vista). Keeping my fingers crossed, I downloaded and installed this new driver version, and clicked on Hibernate. Viola! From today my life has changed for the better. Hibernate works flawlessly now on my laptop. I have put in this article for all HP laptop users, as well as others who want a way of understanding how to solve or at least figure out which driver is causing crashes.

Most websites only suggested disabling hibernate, but I disagree with this and feel that everything has a solution, one needs to only look deeper for it and understand stuff.

Simple steps to understand a crash:

  1. Install Win DBG utility to analyze memory dumps created by Vista or any other OS
  2. Open the memory dump from C:WindowsMinidump folder
  3. Check for the file name which is causing the crash, typically it would be a SYS file (driver)
  4. Google for the file name to find out which company codes that driver
  5. Find out which possible product of theirs is in use in your laptop, if you don’t get it straightaway, check in device manager on each entry until you find that company name
  6. Disable the driver and check if the crash occurs. Of course, PLEASE NOTE that IF IT IS A DISPLAY DRIVER, or some other required driver, you CANNOT DISABLE IT.
  7. Get the updated driver from the company website, and install it.
  8. Check if the problem is gone!
  9. IF NOT, you have to write to that company, or wait until they solve the issue with their latest driver versions. There is no OTHER hope if you reach this STEP. You must be the chosen (unlucky) one in this case 🙂

I hope you like this post. Do COMMENT on this post if it has helped you resolve the hibernate issue, or any other crash issue. Please feel free to STUMBLE this or DIGG this post if you appreciate it, so that others can benefit from this.

 

Sanjaynagar Magic Box finally opens up today

 

The BDA finally opened up the Sanjaynagar Magic (or Tragic as the case may be) box today after the CM inagurated the same. With this the entire stretch from Hebbal Flyover upto Raj Bhavan is now officially signal free 🙂 We all know the magic box fundas for sometime now, so I ll just leave you with some pictures to relish! Enjoy.

 

 

Hopefully BDA now realizes what it is to make the city signal free, and would now start off work on similar lines in other directions of Bengaluru – South, East and West too. Common BDA finish them fast, and Bengaluru will truly be a pleasure to drive in. And at some point you can also make this a toll based road so you can maintain it for sometime to come.