Big 10 Circle – going in a loop!

There was one thing missing in our local transport system, and that was a connectivity throughout the entire outer ring road or PRR or whatever they call it by now. There were buses from Banashankari to Hebbal, or from Hebbal to Mysore road, etc. But there was no Big 10 linking the points where other BIG 10’s deviated outside the city.  This is when I noticed the Big 10 Circle.

While I was wondering how different it is from the usual 500 series of buses (volvo and non volvo) that loiter around the ORR, I could only imagine that this Big 10 Circle might actually link all those roads where the other Big 10’s would intersect at. So now, I can always take a Big 10 to enter the city, and exit the city with yet another one, and just in case I decide I need a circular detour, can pick up where I left on Big 10 Circle. More information on Big 10 circle is available here.

So the link says 500 series is to go and about 200 odd Big 10 circle buses to operate. Now thats quite a lot, and one can expect a Big 10 circle bus every something like 10 minutes at this case. 200 buses on a 77km road mean something like 1 bus every kilometer at any point? Wow those figures will surely do a great deal of good.

But one last thing. I can get down from a Big 10 at Mayo Hall, but to catch an outgoing Big 10 towards north Bangalore, I would have to catch another at Shivajinagar. And hey people at BMTC dont be dumb to assume everyone can walk that distance. I request BMTC to please please move the buses coming in to shivajinagar further to Mayo Hall to just give that desperately needed connection which would make Big 10 a success Story.

Ok then, looking forward to a Big 10 Circle in front of my office every 10 minutes! 🙂

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Why I love my webhost . . .

 

Hosting is a tricky business. Especially for people like you and me. Not because we dont know how to host, but because we dont know when the host will run away overnight making you host all over again. Then again this is why there are websites that help you compare a plethora of webhosts who offer webhosting

I read as many reviews as I could and I saw that there were a set of famous five who turned up in every result of webhosting reviews. While all these were more or less of the same cost, it then all boiled down to just the features and reliability of a webhost especially with respect to them sticking around for a long time as well as their techsupport timeline. I found two webhosts who were worth mentioning.

Fat Cow – www.fatcow.com and JustHost – www.justhost.com .

FatCow was a bit more expensive but at that price did not offer the feature set that JustHost was able to manage at 20% lesser price than the former. Unlimited webspace, unlimited FTP, traffic (bandwidth), unlimited emails, subdomains, databases – and if you decided to withdraw from them, they entice you with a 50% off for another year, meaning you pay only for six months to be with them for another year.

Page loading times were fast, their control panel was added with more features than the usual.Tech support was an area where they were lacking. But then so did others. I found FatCow the best in technical support, they went that extra mile in what they offered to the customers. But Justhost was a near second and I have never really had any problems with them either. Offering one year of hosting at about $40 with all these features mentioned above, its then only natural to be with them.

I am loving JustHost and I believe they care for their customers a lot. Keep up the good work JH!

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Blackberry Curve 8520 smartphone detailed in depth software and hardware video review

As promised, I am here again with an extensive, exclusive half hour Blackberry Curve 8520 smartphone video review. This phone has been recently launched through Airtel in India at a price tag of 15,990. So does this phone deliver on what it promises, are the features worth buying the phone for ? Most of your questions must be answered by this review, which will help you decide whether you would own this smartphone.

The battery life of this phone is about 2 days, which is similar to other smartphones. Extensive Wifi and screen usage, will bring that down to about 1.5 days, but for any normal scenario (you know what I mean, its a 2-day phone!)

So here it is, the full detailed review. Its about 25+ minutes, so don’t tell me I did not warn you 🙂

Untitled from Srik Eswa on Vimeo.

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the 8520 is finally mine!

I finally own a blackberry 8520 Curve. Its a nice mix of technology and looks. And there is no reason why BB will not make inroads into the low cost high feature mobile market sooner than later.

There is already lot of information on the internet on this new phone and I will cover more details about this in a seperate video review later on. However what is important is the fact that there is finally an affordable blackberry at our reach.

Before I end this small post I will leave you with some pros and cons of this device so that you can make your decisions!

The good points of bb 8520 :

– great screen with very good resolution
– new menu system which is very slick and quick
– all expected business features are nicely packaged in the phone
– sweet pricing this will attract lots of hitherto missed out customers
– very nice trackpad does what it says on the tin
– nicely packaged keys all around the phone
– very loud audio, clear and nice

And now the cons:

– typing not the best experience
– slightly hard keypad nowhere near N97 from nokia
– some options are hidden and only professional users can locate such features.
– wifi and bluetooth connectivity configuration not so straightforward
– camera is nothing to talk much and while its not pathetic its not great either

I hope you liked this small review on the blackberry 8520. If you did, watch out for the more detailed review on video soon.

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!

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

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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!

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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.