Hotel Kodai International Review

During the long holidays, I had a chance to visit Kodaikanal for the first time in my life. While I will write a different blog post on the route I took and other iternary related information, this post is just to review my stay at Hotel Kodai International in Kodaikanal.

I was expecting that the hotel was setup in the midst of a tea garden, but my expectations were shattered when I reached the hotel. It was in the middle of the town, just couple of kms away from the really charming Kodai lake.

**Reception lobby**

The reception area is large and inviting, and there is a reasonably useful car porch outside. There are sofas placed around the reception area with a nice front desk. The experience of checking in was pleasant. There are also couple of restrooms for public which are neat. Also, there is the cafeteria/restaurant which has access from the lobby. This also has a very small play area with colored balls for small kids, but I found it to be near useless and with no light or air, making it very clautrophobic.

I must mention though that there are housekeeping staff who are waiting to take your luggage to your rooms and it seemed to me they were a bit over courteous in expectance of some tips.

**Room standards**

Before we dwell further let me explain to you a bit more on the room rates so you know what you would expect out of this hotel. The per room rates were nearly around 5000 Rs. per room per night. When I emailed them and spoke with them, I was sepcifically told that the checkin and checkout timings were 24 hours and not the nearest 12 hour window.

Now obviously one would expect climatized airconditioner, great beds, some reasonably soothing lighting and last but not least, really good sanitation facilities. However I was in for a surprise when I got into my room. I felt that the room was old fashioned, the beds were the hard mattress types (which I personally like, but many others dont appreciate). The lighting was lacklustre and failed to instill the needed peace of mind of being in Kodai.

Coming to the toilet, here is my main grouse. There was a large stain on the floor which I thought was left behind by the previous occupant of the room, hence I requested room service to clean it up. The lady managing the room service was indifferent to my request and said its a permanent stain due to water leaking from – hold your breath – the ceiling. Now imagine having a room with water dripping on you when you are doing your most important morning job.

Now before you start judging the hotel, let me tell you that all rooms may not have had this problem, but a problem is still a problem and with the amount of money being charged for the hotel upkeep the least expectation is most definitely not a leaking roof.

The room service lady asked me whether she can place soap for my use. While this question is reasonable when I am already in the room, is it not etiquitte enough to have all this in place before even I enter the room in the first place? I have been informing from days and even for the last several hours of my whereabouts so that the hotel understands when the guest is likely to arrive. Each time my mail was even acknowledged. But at the end when you enter your room, many things are still not in place. We had to request an extra towel as well.

**Room service**

Normally in any hotel review, the room service will find a mention but in a small way. If I have to dedicate an entire section about room review in my my blog post then you can imagine my frustration on this topic.

The room service in this hotel was almost as if it was non existent. The rates for room service was through the roof at nearly hundred bucks a coffee to 200 bucks a hot chocolate which was available just in the common area of the hotel itself for 1/4th to 1/8th the price. What you do expect for this price is for those items that are easily prepared in lesser time, the items be available in a jiffy.

For the money being charged every room service order of mine had to take at least a minimum of 3-4 reminder calls to let them know that there was a guest waiting for something. Perhaps they have a shortage of staff or something, or perhaps they were just acting indifferent which is something I am not sure of, but what I am sure of is that there was no such thing called efficient room service.

**Other nitty-gritties**

* The bathroom thankfully had hot water at all times mostly which is a plus considering a 15 degrees C temperature in Kodai early in the mornings.
* I did not remember seeing a coffee making machine in the room
* The soaps could have been better at that price
* There was no centralized air conditioner in the room
* No sufficient towels in the room even after specific request
* The room provided to me was very close to the main boiler area which was heating up water to the rooms, so it was not the best room in the resort, but it was not noisy
* Room service is extremely exorbidant and its a rip off at the stated prices – perhaps the hotel is encouraging guests to step out of their rooms and socialize a bit 🙂

**Cafeteria/Restaurant**

I decided to have dinner at the cafeteria and it was an a-la-carte menu. I must say that the dishes done there were of good standard and some dishes were outstanding. Coming to the price part, the cafe/restaurant was again quite on the pricey side, but then that is how expensive hotels are bound to be.

I so happened to glance at the kitchen of the hotel when I was at the restaurant and I must share here some positive words regarding the quality of the kitchen. It was impeccably clean and very modern. This is one part of the hotel stay that was really pleasing to me.

Just outside the restaurant, there is a HKI Tea shop which serves hot masala chai and coffee at specified times. Though at the time of me going there it was beyond working hours the cook was kind enough to ask If he still needed to make coffee for me and this kind of request is highly appreciated as it means going out of the way to please a guest. Also the rates for coffee was almost 1/4th of room service rates and made me go there more than once.

**Dance floor and other entertainment areas**

***Dance floor***

There is a dance floor with disco lights and some beat songs that are played from 7:30pm onwards upto about 10pm. Thanks to my room being somewhere close by, I had to put up with the loud noise this area was making within my room as well. This inspite of closing doors and windows to my room. Almost a little past 9:30pm I grew so tired of this noise I had to literally call up front desk and request them to shut the music out soon as I was very sleepy after such a long drive.

This was so different from the [destiny farm stay](http://www.chowchowbath.com/2013/05/26/the-destiny-farm-stay-ooty/) at ooty which I have written about earlier to this post. In the resort they had the same dance floor as a completely indoor area which did not create noise for other people at the resort.

***Campfire***

Coming to the campfire request at the Kodai hotel, they specifically requested us to come to the campfire. After taking the walk upto there we were informed there is no campfire on that given day which is not acceptable. What I mean is its not acceptible to give wrong information, though it may be okay to me that there is no campfire.

***Children’s play area***

This resort also has children’s play areas which have slides, swings, merry go rounds, hammocks, and the likes which make this a unique hotel. If you have kids like me, rest assured they will be extremely happy running around the place. I did find that some slides which are the really old ones, which we as kids used to play with and they are uneven, made of cement and hurt kids. These needs to be replaced by the hotel with more of plastic based toys. Of course this will mean some money but then that’s what’s needed to attract more people. Safe kids play area can be quite a relief to many parents.

***Gym and other games***

This hotel has a gym which I did not use. However from what I hear, this should be a decent one. The dance floor also had table tennis tables.

***Rose garden and waterfall***

There was a rose garden for guests, and also a private waterfall within the hotel. I did not try and access it since it was late evening already, but guests I believe can go there and go up above to view the waterfall in closeup.

**Animals & Birds**

From what I understood this resort had some emu birds, and rabbits and perhaps a few ducks for kids to see and enjoy. Though the emu enclosure is safe, sometimes unattended kids who are left near the enclosure can get a knock or two from an emu if they go too close.

**Housekeeping**

The housekeeping was as similar as the room service. They acted indifferent, were not there on time at the room and generally needed lots of reminders that something was requested.

**Final words and advise**

The hotel is a mixture of good and bad. The room rents are high, but the rooms themselves are not of high standards matching the rates. The room service is highly expensive. There is hot water all round the clock thankfully. Food in the restaurant is on the expensive side, but good to eat. The dance floor is somewhat of a failed effort in bringing people together. The children’s play area is a nice touch, and there is also a temple within the property along with the waterfall and other such areas. There are big lawns as well where people can casually play games like cricket, etc. The tea shop is a nice touch too.

I was shocked out of my wits to learn that the checkout time was 9AM and not 24 hours as told to me earlier. I feel the hotel goofed up in properly stating this to me and felt let down after I stayed there due to this fact. One good thing is I paid after I went there rather than book upfront as is the usual norm these days.

There are properties in Kodai which are more perfect for the facilities offered as compared to the Kodai International, for the stated price.

In my opinion, I may not stay there again.

Pronto car wash review

Though I’ve been a regular at the Pronto Car Wash at HSR Layout, I only got some time to blog about this facility now due to many constraints.

The Pronto Car wash is fully automatic car washing system like you find in other countries. While other countries offer many different options like waxing, foam, etc the car wash facility here is a set of simple soap wash, water wash and air dry sequences.

There is also a manual water wash and interior cleaning done by the people working these which include shampooing of seats and vacuum clean and drying before the car goes in for exterior wash.

The cleaning system itself is made of a heavy frame with moving parts and three cleaning brush sets. It also has sprinklers under the chassis at floor level which sprays water jets for the belly of your car. The dryer module is one that adjusts itself by height as it traverses the car by automatically computing its current height so as not to damage the car. The dryer unit is powerful and ensures that the car is perfectly dry (well, almost) once the whole sequence is done.

So how long does this take? 7-8 minutes to be precise for the automated wash, another 10 minutes for the manual. Interior cleaning can take more time and there is also a wait time since there maybe other vehicles before you.

Ok, I got it but this must be expensive? Owning and maintaining a car is definitely expensive business. And the pronto is no cheap either. But its not so expensive that will make you opt out. For a basic body wash its 300 bucks. Drying manually is another 50 bucks (service you see!). Interior cleaning can set you back anywhere between 300-400 rupees more. The end result is a clean vehicle leaving you satisfied.
The guys remove your car antenna since that can interfere with the pronto system and fit it back later.

So, how often must you clean your car this way? Well honestly – its upto your wallet heaviness. I keep a target of maximum of once a month while the remaining times I am happy with my Karcher. For others who can afford more, you can do once a week. I also time it based on my tiredness to clean it at home or how dirty the car has become that it needs immediate attention.

Ok don’t you have that guy who comes daily and spends an hour and bucket loads of water at home cleaning your car – I feel thats cheaper? Yes it is cheaper, but there is no thrill of seeing an automatic system clean your car spotlessly in 8 minutes. Besides, I have a karcher which is almost a mini pronto by itself minus the dryer. So no human beings cleaning my vehicle please. Besides doing it myself means some physical exercise and if I clean my wife’s car then I get some brownie points at home as well.

If you want to see the always talked about automatic cleaning and you have not done it until now, I suggest you head upto Gnan Srishti School of Excellence and further down the road leading to HSR BDA complex and you will find Pronto on the right side.

Enjoy the show !

Sygic Android mapping app short review

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I had a chance to test the Sygic maps app for my LG G2 android phone for using it on my second trip to tiruvannamalai this week. Some of the observations I noted about the app are listed down here.

* The developer is not from india
* The installation itself was fuss free and took a while to download the app and relevant maps of Karnataka and TamilNadu.
* The user interface theme is a bit colorful and may not be to everyone’s tastes
* The layout of the map and associated informaton on the panel is very good and provides a reasonably good readability during all times of the day
* Offline maps is an advantage like we have with nokia here maps
* Keep alive sound that says the GPS system is still on and working. Available even on lock screen. good touch!

Some of the things I noticed while using this app was more related to the road conditions on that day. I needed to take a right turn and while I knew I had to be on the right the app confused me into taking a left by saying something like “keep right and then take left”, and one time even “keep left and then take left” – when there was really no left turn at all.

I lost my way due to this and the app immeidately asked me to take the nearest u-turn by keeping on the right. But the unfortunate part is that the app said “take a u-turn if possible” – really these kinds of approximations show how much the company is aware of the actual data on the ground. What if there was no u-turn? Then was I supposed to take a left turn? In that case do I need the map app anymore? That’s anyones guess!

Due to some silly suggestions I lost about 10 km of drive before I managed to return to the suggested path even that was not accurate. Another thing I noticed was that the app takes a while to update the most immediate information. This means for example a recalculation of route takes a while. And if you are driving more than 80kmph there is a good chance that the route it suggests is already outdated by the time it shows that on the screen. This is not a good thing. I missed a critical right turn and ended up doing a journey on a road that I never wanted to take in reality and was never relevant for the journey.

The only reason I installed this app was because people suggested that it was really accurate even where Google maps wasnt. And the reason I didnt use google maps is that the last time, I neither had a mobile signal, nor data connectivity thereby making Google not to load the map on the screen. Of course we can always think of saved maps etc, but those things dont make sense as much as a real time navigation.

Also Sygic’s option screens are a bit edgy looking in terms of polishedness of the interface and many times the search option was looping not allowing me to type anything new by stopping the old search.

Sygic failed me where Google wouldn’t have. Personally I do not recommend Sygic since I feel they need to take some time to improve on their capabilities. Also the maps can be made more minimalistic than what it is now.

The battle of the oats Part 2 – Britannia vs Quaker Oats

After reviewing the [Saffola and Horlicks oats earlier](http://chowchowbath.com/2014/03/16/the-battle-of-the-oats-part-one-horlicks-vs-saffola/), I wanted to review Britannia and Quaker in this post.

I did have a Britannia and Quaker oats packet the former of Strawberry flavour and the latter of Raisin and Kishmish flavour.

The original I intended to review was Strawberry and Lemony veggie mix but I realized thats not a correct comparison. Furthermore, I had received a free pack of Britannia Oats which was well past its due date of 6 months from date of manufacture (in this case April 2012) – so I didnt want to get food poisoned. Just to give it a fair chance, I also checked for a new pack at the store – but no store stocked Brittania anymore. Also a search for Britannia Strawberry oats shows up images for Quaker and Horlicks which shows where Britannia is in terms of sales figures or popularity perhaps.

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([Source](http://72b040d9d5abecc71a44-7e06aa69e7e6748c4ca7a4fede3e4166.r6.cf1.rackcdn.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/403×444/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/q/u/quaker_oats_kesar_flavour_with_kishmish_26g.jpg))

Given these technical difficulties, I will continue the review only on Quaker Oats instead.

**Ingridients**

Quaker Raisin and Kishmish flavour has Raisins and sugar added along with lots of other spices. It also had nature identical colouring and flavouring substances that are permitted. (I still do not understand what these contain so far, but you can [take a look here](http://www.understandingfoodadditives.org/pages/ch2p1-2.htm) to make your own assumptions)

The sugar present is 15.7g of every 100g, so for this sachet of 26g, the amount of sugar in the foodstuff is about 4g which is negleigible and okay to eat in my opinion for one serving.

**Preparation**

Unlike previous Oatmeals, this one is prepared with milk instead of water – obviously a milk meal tastes better as compared to water oat meal for this flavour.

**Taste**

I generally do not have much confidence on the taste part of foods that originate out of the country, but I must say Quaker has perfected the taste behind a good oatmeal much like Saffola and they are more spot on with respect to their Oats. You just need to eat Quaker to believe the taste and quality. The meal is satisfying, filling and generally not too much of sugar or spice – just balanced out a whole lot.

**Verdict**

Since the review focussed only on Quaker, and further the raisin and Kishmish flavour – the verdict is a big go from my side. Go for it, and you will be surprised your kids will slurp it up too so quickly that they must rename their brand Quicker instead of Quaker! 🙂

The battle of the Oats! Part one: Horlicks vs Saffola

Today I’m here to let you know a little bit about Oats (or oat grains) which we consume in plenty these days. The history of Oats dates back to 2000 B.C (ok, so that’s enough of believeable history behind it). Oats not only provide energy but also have all the essential nutrients that the body needs as specified below

**[Source](http://http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=54)**

What is interesting about Oats is that it can make different type of meals today including idlis, oat grain cereal, with milk, upma, and the likes. Only your imagination is left to where you can go with oats based meal preparations.

Some of the essential benefits of oats include:

* Lower cholestrol levels
* Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
* Prevention of heart failure
* Cardiovascular benefits for postmenopausal women
* Enhance immune response to infection
* Stabilize blood sugar
* Substantial lowering of type – 2 diabetes
* Protection from Breast cancer
* Childhood asthma prevention
* and many more ….

Naturally this is a market that both Marico (owners of Saffola) and GSK (owners of horlicks) wanted to exploit in India. Here we compare Oats from both manufacturers.

A little bit on taste. This is the single largest reason why people will like or dislike oats in this country. Irrespective of whether or not we are used to all other types of food or are diet conscious, if the oats don’t taste good, they will find their place in the dustbin. And Oats are supposedly very bland. Extremely bland so to say. For some (maybe like me) it also induces a nauseous feeling enough to pack it out of the house.

In this wavelength both Horlicks and Saffola have tried to make oats taste better by including lots of varieties such as Southern spice or Masala, or curry and pepper, etc. We do have some others such as raising and kesar, etc but lets stick to the topic.

A brief inspection of what the materials contain revelaed the following:

> Horlicks

* ginger powder
* red chilli powder (hell, yeah!)
* onion powder and asoefatida
* tomato and wheat flour ingridients
* vegetable protein (processed or whatever)
* nature identical (but unnatural) coloring and flavoring substances and acidity regulators

And our king of king substance – sugar! This has about 2.38 grams of sugar per 100g of pouch, but the pouch I used was 28g net weight, so we can say negligible amount of sugar.

> Saffola

* 72% oats (yea, what about the remaining 28%? 🙂 )
* [maltodextrin](http://http://voices.yahoo.com/what-maltodextrin-bad-you-9054329.html)
* 5% cashew nuts (obvious this is the pongal variety)
* Salt and Sugar
* Hydrolized vegetable protein
* Wheat flour and the rest same as horlicks.

And for the sugar each 100g had 3.2 grams of sugar. I used the 40g pouch so roughly less than half of that amount of sugar.

> Preparation

Simple – put the oats in bowl, add water enough to hold in the pouch (packaging) – heat for 3 mins in oven while stirring. Do not let the oats to spill out. That’s all.

> The verdict

Alright, technical jargon aside, shall we come to what matters to us after the diet stuff? – The taste of course!

> If you want it in one single statement – The Horlicks was sent to the dustbin, and the Saffola was sent to my stomach.

A litte more in depth – horlicks lacks any kind of proper taste in spite of adding so many substances and it still remains very bland and almost inedible beyond a point. It tends to get pasty and linger on in the mouth presenting a sticky layer which causes discomfort in terms of taste.

Saffola have managed to pull off an impossible taste for their Oat meal. The curry and pepper that I tried was almost close to Tamilnadu style pongal made a bit spicy with black pepper. So much so that it leaves an absolute tingling sensation that black pepper does until the end of the meal. Eating it really piping hot makes the experience only so much more dramatic.

Horlicks would be liked by many people as well, but for me any oat meal makers challenge is to provide taste without compromising on the materials being added to null and void the oat benefits.

In our next series we pitch Quaker oats with Brittania to see how they perform.

My first trip to Tiruvannamalai

I had to check out, analyze and provide my opinion to my dad on the project called Viviza Grande by [Shrisha Infra](http://shrishainfra.com). It was a clear Sunday morning and due to my inability to wake up too early, I could only get out of Bangalore by 8:30am. Still due to almost negligible traffic, I was able to quickly hit the elevated tollway, and exit Karnataka peacefully.

For those to whom this route is home ground, you can only sympathize with me the feeling when you enter Hosur – this town kind of drags you down in terms of speed so you lose some time getting out towards Shoolagiri so much so that we had to make that customary stopover by Shri Krishna Inn, which is famous for its piping hot idlis and dosas which are quickly served. Not to forget to mention the filter kaapi 🙂

After that customary stopover we headed and reached Krishnagiri in no time due to great roads. The trauma started after we took that right turn to Tiruvannamalai road. Before I go forward, let’s look at google’s map suggestions. There were totally four routes which we’ll take a look now.

**Bangalore-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Mathur-Uthangarai-Chengam-Tiruvannamalai : 196km, about 3 hours and 35 min**

This is the route we chose as default since my dad had visited before and suggested the same. But after krishnagiri, I was appalled at seeing the condition of the road as we moved on.

At many places due to infrastructural works going on, only 50% of the road was motorable and in that as well there was two way traffic. Besides, whatever was left of that 50% was only 25% of tar road and the rest was broken gravel not fit for motoring really. Its unfortunate that these road works only allow us to only travel at 40-60kmph thereby consuming an additional 2 hours of time to reach destination. It took a total of almost 6 hours for us to reach there. Lack of sanitation facilities, or tender coconuts along the way or any eateries made our life only that much more difficult.

There is a particular stretch between krishnagiri to uthangarai, where even the mobile data signal is not present which makes it difficult for us to gather the maps using smartphones. Offline maps are highly recommended. The GPS alone is not enough to latch onto where you are as the phone also expects cell towers to be present nearby.

Also some parts of this road was a breeze to drive on, and it gave a picture of what this road would be like by another year or two. But these stretches were short lived and the euphoria was abruptly put to halt each time dumping the vehicle into sudden trenches in the road which is not at all good. The absence of warning signs and direction boards only made it worst to traverse not knowing where roads would lead.

Add to it the government buses of Tamilnadu who just wanted to speed up along the dusty stretches to prove a point on how much dust they could rake up forcing other vehicles to keep their windows closed at all times. God forbid you keep your window open by mistake and you are going to have lots of road debris inside the vehicle and potentially all over your face as well 🙂

Some of these stretches were only full of stones and driving on that was utter rubbish with japanese sedans such as my sunny. Perhaps vehicles like Bolero would do better !

After nearly two hours the car had been transferring all the road abnormalities to the steering and the pedals and inturn to the hands and feet and left me completely shaky by the time we reached the destination.

We quickly took a look at Shrisha’s Viviza Grande project. Priced reasonably at this time and being equidistant from the central areas of Tiruvannamalai the project is one that shows a good amount of professionalism in the thoughts that have gone into its design. In this post I will not concentrate on the real estate specifics such as whether the papers are proper or other such info, but the project does have many parks designed as per scientific rules, drip irrigation, lots of tree lined avenues which would be a fantastic place if maintained properly for next 10-20 years.

Every plot has a water and electricity supply to the plot neatly, and the entrance lighting is managed with solar panels. Tiruvannamalai being hot, this bodes well for harnessing solar energy. The project also provides a great view of the mountain from almost every plot which is a divine experience for many.

After having a rather late lunch at the Chola restaurant, I bumped into the drivers of the volvo bus from Bangalore who also echoed to me that the route that I had taken was rubbish and there were better ways to get back to Bangalore. One of the suggestions was to go to Vellore and then hit the tollway back to Bangalore. But that meant a good road with another hour more of driving.

**Tiruvannamalai-Vellore-Krishnagiri-Hosur-Bangalore : 283km, about 4 hours and 15 min**

It was almost 100km more and total drive time was 4 hours and 15 mins which was tempting. The guy also spoke about Harur but was skeptical whether the route would be any different from what I had come through earlier.

The harur road was about 4 hours, and about 50 km more.

**Tiruvannamalai-Harur-Kannamangalam-Krishnagiri-Hosur-Bangalore : 248km, about 4 hours**

I tried following the road through and to Harur, but the first right turn my google phone told me to take was less than 20 feet by width where a sedan could never make it. I was terrified and decided that a known devil is better than unknown angel. Knowing Vellore was more by distance that was out of the list immediately. The only way back was through the same hell. So after driving upto Chengam, Google showed me a right turn even though going straight I would have taken the road back to Dharmapuri.

**Tiruvannamalai-Chengam-Singarapettai-Bargur-Krishnagiri-Hosur-Bangalore : 215km, about 3 hours and 36 min**

Somehow unknowingly I decided to take that right turn and was plesantly suprised that the road condition had improved by leaps and bounds. This is when the route map of going via Tirupattur turned out to be one more option for me. Adding about another 50km, but having a difference between hell and heaven, this perhaps was the most useful decision I had taken. The next 50km was close to a drive on an airport tarmac more or less with little to no traffic on the road on both directions, and beautifully winding roads which made driving a bit thrilling as well. Finally catching a sunset at Krishnagiri, we headed back to Bangalore for what would be a body-pain filled tired night.

> Familiar to Thine ears are the sweet songs of votaries who melt to the very bones with love for Thee, yet let my poor strains also be acceptable, O Arunachala!

Premium Kulfi review

So guys, I had a chance to visit Tiruvannamalai for the first time in my life in 35 years (wonder why I never had the opportunity to go there so far). We ate at the Chola restaurant, which is where the Karnataka Volvo buses to that place stop over for lunch.

It’s here that the menu had ice creams and/or kulfi. Since I noticed that it was not a brand that I knew, the restaurant staff suggested that I eat one since it was supposedly good in taste. The product itself was shipped to different places from Chennai.

I bought one and had it to my heart’s content. It costs about Rs.85 which is quite highly priced for a kulfi product. There are other cheaper ones like the ones from Amul for example (the pista variety) or even our very own Adigas. It is best before 18 months from the date of manufacture for obvious reasons (assuming its stored at -18 deg C). Also since its a milk based products, there were no surprises in the ingridients found – Milk, sugar, and all the nuts you can think of – Cashew, almonds, pista and the cardamom spice for flavouring. The contents do not indicate any artificial flavouring so that’s a plus. For every 100g, it provides 200 KCal of energy and roughly amouting to about 10% of fat and 15% of sugar. Personally I feel that 15% of sugar is actually very high and can be lowered to about 5% even though end result of the product may not be that sweet.

From the packaging I could make out that the contents were about 60ml of packaging so you can work out the rest of the math on above figures accordingly.

Coming to the design of the product, one of the most interesting things I found is the stick on which the kulfi itself is wound around and frozen – it seems to be made of bamboo or something of that sort. One of the most annoying factors of kulfi is the stick which is either the ice cream stick or a more thinner longer stick which kind of disintegrates by the time you start finishing up eating the stuff. Full marks to premium for including a really premium base on which the kulfi is set.

The kulfi itself is very rich and nice to taste, and is pretty solid for quite a while and does not drip within minutes like the ones you find from Adigas or Amul. It takes a while to really show any melting signs which only means you get longer to savour the stuff in your mouth without worrying about the rest of it dripping away to glory.

All in all, Premium is really a product that sticks to its name – from the packaging, the foundations on which the milk product is frozen on top of, and the taste itself. Go get yourself one, and I promise you, you will come back to this blog and thank me!

Personally I always like kulfi to ice creams for some good reason 🙂 Premium kulfi – asli punjab di maharaj!

**Oh and did I miss to say that you can order this kulfi online at the company website if you’d so wish!? http://www.premiumkulfi.co/**

I bought mine from my friendly neighborhood Multiplex as usual. You must be able to find it anywhere pretty much.

Juspure coconut water review

So I happened to go shopping as usual to my favorite haunt “Multiplex” in HSR Layout, and this time felt like picking up some tender coconut juice. Now I know what you would tell me upfront

> if you want tender coconut go buy one directly on the street

Obviously it is no doubt the most healthiest, but then the idea here is to review products in the market. So let me go on.

This product is called **Juspure coconut water** and is made by *Zydus Wellness Inc*. I kind of feel these names are so funny – Wellness Inc! It says the coconut water is made from the freshest coconut available.

A glance at the ingridients reveal that there are allowed preservatives, and coconut water that is not processed in anyway. While I was happy that the ingridient list did not read **_sugar_**.

The question then remained only about the actual taste of this product. The opinions can be really subjective. But I must say here that the product tastes ridiculous! You may ask how do I judge so, but you need to understand that there is another brand called Cocojal which is the undisputed leader in tender coconut water packaging. In comparison Juspure is really really bad so to say.

The Verdict?

> I won’t venture out to buy one again

Lenovo K-900 in-depth review

With this blog post, I bring to you a detailed review of the Lenovo K-900 mobile phone which was launched sometime ago by Lenovo India. This is not exactly a new mobile phone that is setting the sales charts on fire of late as much as the new Moto-G, but however the review is primarily meant to focus on Lenovos intentions and capabilities in making a mobile phone.

So shall we begin?

The Design Excellence

When everyone were only bothered about design in terms of lesser weight or bezel or etching, etc, or even gold or silver brushed titanium finishes Lenovo has done the unthinkable. The K900 is an amazing piece of hardware. If you want me to keep it to the point of discussion I have never seen something as slim as this in my life yet. Perhaps the Gionees newest slimphone release comes close but the Lenovo K900s design speaks a great deal about their industrial design strengths. If you see my previous post about the Lenovo X1 Carbon, you know what I am talking about.

Verdict: Absolutely awesome and slim.

The front panel

Though the front panel is really a part of overall design the question most mobile phone manufacturers grapple with is how they can maximize the use of the panel and minimize the bezel (gaps beyond the screen where that space is not utilized anymore). With respect to the K900, unfortunately there is way too much of bezel and this makes it look really ridiculous considering its already advertized screen size of about 5.5 inches. So much so in fact that the phone pops out of the pocket and looks quite ugly on the front side.

Verdict: Could have done better with the bezel area.

Tap to ON feature

On the lenovo K900 this is a feature that seems like being given for the heck of it. There has been NO careful consideration or testing of how often it actually works accurately. If you compare the same feature with the LG G2, the latter is miles ahead in terms of accuracy. If I tapped 10 times in a row, chances were that only 3/10 times that the phone actually turned on. This clearly shows the weaknesses of a company like Lenovo in the mobile phone hardware space.

Verdict: No accuracy and annoying when phone does not turn on as expected.

Sound and microphone

While investigating some issue with respect to the audio and microphone, I understood that Lenovo has decided to partner with a company called Wolfson Audio for the audio related aspects of the K900. I must say that the songs on my bluetooth audio have never sounded so good as much as in the K900. It clearly shows how the quality of spatial arrangement and rendering of the audio is on this phone. The same cannot be said about the microphone though unfortunately. The primary reason you may NOT want to buy this phone is because others cannot hear you quite often. Think of it like a conversation which is loud and clear and suddenly you find that the caller hears you lesser and lesser with some dropouts, perhaps some static even and then it picks up as though it recovered back to where it was. There are some microphone settings for different environments – default, soft, etc – but even after I tried all of these possible combinations, unfortunately the result was the same: Caller could not hear me properly many a time.

Verdict: The fact that the microphone does not work as expected clearly shows how poor lenovo is while planning for the audio hardware and drivers. They must also remember that the entire phone ownership experience is a waste if the basic things do not work as intended in the first place. Like mobile calls! Sorry lenovo, this is where you let me down horribly and I had no option but to ditch you altogether!

Navigation using maps

You never really realize there is an issue unless you come across the issue. One of such issues is the navigation using Google Maps. Everyone understands that Google Maps is by now an established application which has gained lots of acceptance and has become indispensable to people wanting to travel from one place to another. I have used it in the most demanding of circumstances and found that the need to stop my vehicle a billion times to ask people directions has become a thing of the past. When I took my phone along with me to Mysore to attend a wedding and enabled the GPS and Maps to take me there without mistakes, what I came to see was something that I had never observed in any android phone or even my apple device earlier. When I was navigating on a main road which was clearly marked in dark blue by Google (the actual navigation path) the pointer was chugging along on a street that was parallel to the one I was actually on. This made me take a wrong turn and I lost my way. Even when I lost my way the phone took way too long to recompute and tell me what to do next. You dont expect such silly mistakes given to know how stable the application itself is, but again Lenovo seems to have screwed up something here – like the GPS hardware calibration or something that I am unable to point out for now. If this were to be a nexus or a HTC, I would not have written this para at all.

Verdict: GPS navigation is a dicey affair with K900 and I would prefer not to rely on it if I am going out some place with this phone where I need directions. For approximations yes, but for accuracy – NO!

Heating issues

There are lots of forums on the net which talk about the heating issues with the lenovo K900 but I did not find this to be so much of a bother. The Camera and GPS heat up the phone, so does Bluetooth music and casual gaming even. All said and done, the heat dissipates as much quickly as it was generated thanks to the metal body construction and the phone cools down really quick and pretends nothing ever happened 🙂

The camera, skype video calls, google hangout calls, soft games, GPS navigation, facebook chat – all of these are gonna heat up this mobile.

Verdict: Heating issues are present in the phone and sometimes it can be annoying.

Battery Life

The one single question many people have different answers for always is the battery life. Some say the phone will last a day long, will manage a day easily, or even some statements based on performance benchmarks will appear on different forums. Let me try and clarify this to you in a much simpler way. The battery itself is 2500 mAh which is sufficient for a 5.5 phone so to say for normal tasks. But the reality is evident only based on the application you use and the duration you use it for. In my case, I have atleast 3 different mail accounts configured, with one of them being my official email receiving upto 300 mails a day. I also have twitter, Facebook, etc which I access hourly once. Other than this occasional camera use, occasional bluetooth audio when I drive from and to the office. Bluetooth phone calls strictly only while driving – the good boy that I am on the road – and very occasional soft gaming (subway surfer or angry birds etc for say half hour). With this kind of usage and also some heavy internet browsing (40-50 tabs open) the results were mixed

On a day when I did this all on WIFI only and strictly no data connection enabled I got about 12 hours of battery. When I repeated the same schedule on data only and no wifi I managed about a little over 7-8 hours. When I used mixed mode, the phone gave me a little over 9 hours. There was an instance that the phone was sleeping most times few days and I did get about 14-16 hours of battery on those days. Well that is not impressive since the phone was not getting used itself. There is also a batter saver logic which fundamentally disables all your connections (radios) one by one and tries to conserve battery. The estimate of how long your battery is going to last is also provided by lenovo but I found that only marginally reliable. I cannot be always sure of what it says. If each and every function in the lenovo was on – sync, data, wifi, gps, 100% brightness, always screen on, auto rotation, vibration – basically everything – dont expect the batter to last beyond 6-7 hours. In fact the batter went down by 1% for every 2 miles I travelled with GPS on.

Verdict: The battery is not impressive and one can only understand why – a puny 2500 maH battery is not sufficient for hardcore tasks on the phone. If you are buying this phone for battery – stay away.

Camera

The camera fires up fast, the shots are taken fast as well. The very fact that Lenovo has given a 18MP at the back and 5MP at the front are commendable actions. I particularly liked the tilt shift effect which is a default on this camera! The camera heats up the phone but its otherwise amazing. With Sonys camera hardware Lenovo cannot be wrong!

Verdict: Shutter lag needs to be even faster, would have been much appreciated

Packaging

The packaging of the Lenovo is simply top class much as the likes of Blackberry. There is no room for complaint here and its simply perfect. The k900 is actually carved out of the cardboard and shows up in RED! Brilliant.

Verdict: Top class feel and finish.

Icon carousel

The icon carousel on the K900 has some nice rotary effects animated interface effects, but I kind of grew bored of those after a while and swithced to Nova Launcher to keep it simple. Some people might like what Lenovo has done, some may not.

Verdict: Could have done it in a more functional aspect like the LG G2 interface where the focus is on functionality value add rather than just effects.

Final words

The lenovo K900 is an astounding piece of hardware with few optimizations possible in future versions. The software is just marginally good and functionally nothing impressive. The battery leaves a lot to be asked for. While the audio is great using bluetooth the speaker output and microphone quality cast a serious doubt on how such a phone can be sold in the market with these flaws. The bezel around the screen is annoying and something that can be worked upon. Finally the camera is simply awesome for both the hardware and software used. A word on the processor – Intel Atom : The phone is a testimony to prove that this processor works best for netbooks or laptops and will not achieve wonders on a phone. The processor is not optimized for gaming and it shows when games stutter every now and then. Lenovos recent release of the Vibe-X addresses the processor concerns for good hopefully. The overheating on the phone is significant but not annoying.

So will I buy this phone? For the respect for the design, yes surely. For its flaws – no, sorry. Would I recommend this phone for others? – NO, unless the show concrete improvements on the flaws mentioned above. For a cost of 24,000 after some discounts, this is still helfy compared to phones such as Moto-G that rules the marketplace in India now. I have always been a fan of Lenovo laptops and sincerely hope they do well in the mobile hardware business now that they may be buying Motorola as well in the USA from Google. Their future products are something that would be worth owning some day.

Nafees Roasted Bread (Rusk biscuit) review

I had a chance to buy the Nafees Roasted Bread (or Rusk as we call it). Since decades Ive eaten a lot of rusk biscuits. Initially though they were to really enjoy eating them it slowly turned out to be a quest for the perfect roasted bread. Something that was not hard. Something that would not just melt in the mouth, but something that would crack and crumble with unmistakable crispness which was with just about the right best quality known to me.

The Nafees rusk biscuits is just that. At about a little over Rs.30 for about 24 pieces or 200 grams, and a great packaging to go with it, this makes for a good tea time snack. Get yourself one today !!