Blame it on the stock market disaster, or blame it on the global economic crisis which inturn has affected India too – Diwali 2009 just got off to a rather lukewarm start. After two to three days of constant rains thanks to a cyclonic effect on the shores of Chennai city, Bangalore finally saw a rather hot winter morning today on the occassion of Diwali.

This time inflation, coupled with increase in cracker prices has surely dampened the spirits a bit, but still towards today evening, the crackers sounded louder and clearer. Smoke filled the air and families got together to brave the chill to celebrate the festive season. In the more recent post on Diwali 2009 above, I bring to you some snaps captured by my Canon DSLR Rebel XTi. Enjoy!

Technorati : 10.2MP, 10k, 2009, 8k, 9k, DSLR, Diwali, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, bubble, canon, chennai, city, crackers, cyclone, deepavali, diyas, environment, go down, impact, india, inflation, karnataka, lamps, market, megapixel, noise, plummet, pollution, rain, rebel XTi, sales, sensex, smoke, sound, stock, went down

Garbage collection programmes are not new in Bengaluru. In fact quite long ago this was initiated by the BBMP as it saw few potential problems getting solved with this venture.

• The garbage problem in the city would get better if all garbage was collected and processed properly.
• The collected garbage could be segregated and then used as landfills outside the city
• BBMP would get revenues if it imposed garbage tax on each household and they have been pretty successful at this by educating the households in prime areas about the issues involved with garbage collection and the need for it in the first place.
• People throwing garbage into drains would stop and hence this could avoid to clogging of waterways throughout the city

Today I noticed many of these billboards being generously put up by the BBMP for those households who were not segregating dry and wet waste. The quality of the advertisements educating households itself was adorable and it also had phone numbers of zonal offices, ward contact mobile numbers amongst other information.

I really appreciate BBMP for such education and request all residents living in areas where garbage collection is present to spend atleast 5 minutes segregating wet and dry waste so that the BBMP can use that time you spend for something more useful. Its your waste, I am sure BBMP must not be segregating it for you! Do you bit, maintain a clean environment!

Technorati : BBMP, advertisements, association, bangalore, bengaluru, billboards, blog, bruhat, city, contractor, drains, dry, east, education, environment, flooding, garbage collection, household, koramangala, landfill, local corporator, mahanagara, management, north, offices, palike, rains, residents, segregation, south, waste, west, wet, zonal, zone office

I had always wanted to create some memorabilia for my website. The only service I knew to be trustworthy enough was Cafepress, the online destination for t-shirts, mugs, caps, and other stuff including bumper stickers, and mouse pads. While I did like their collection, being a standard foreign company, their pricing was the crux of the matter for me not to use them. Well, paying around 16 to 20$ is ok for a t-shirt, but it was the shipping of an equal amount that really disturbed me.

This was when I decided to find some Indian companies who were capable enough to provide me the same services online. My favourites for t-shirts online were Rediff and a few other companies which I had tried out years back without much satisfaction. After some googling around I did get many results for these kinds of services in the present day. But I also chanced upon an article that mentioned atleast four such companies and what their offerings were. You can read that article here.

The companies mentioned in the article included DilSeBol, Myntra, WebVastra, Gnome and Pringoo.

Atleast three of these sites were in beta, which means “God only knows how our website will work for you!”, and a few of these sites were unintuitive for me. Either the menus were scattered an ununderstandable, or image uploading formats were unsupported or the interface for t-shirt design itself was not so easy. So after checking out all these sites, I finally decided on Pringoo to order my t-shirt. I must mention here that I am a member of ZoomIn.com, another website where I can upload my photos or designs and get a tee shirt done up. They charge only Rs.350 as compared to Pringoo and also provide me with multiple payment options. But still the appeal of Pringoo.com and the fact that ZoomIn’s tee shirt quality as shown on their image, made me feel like using their site for this purchase.

I did up a basic design with text, on a white background, using photo editing tools. One thing people must remember is that all new image compositions are done in 72dpi (dots per inch) which IS NOT sufficient to print on paper or on a tee shirt. The minimum value for this quantity must be atleast 300dpi, and if possible 600dpi for a good print on bigger dimensions. So the next time you want to create a new design, use 600dpi as the resolution for that image. The rest will turn out fine.

The placement enabled me to choose the tee shirt size, and position of the image more or less centered on the tee shirt, along with the type and colour of the tee shirt. One thing that I did not like was the size chart provided by Pringoo, which indicated sizes in inches. When converted to centimetres it did not give a proper indication of the chest size as we know it while we shop on our own. For eg., for large size, it came to 49 centimeters, whereas in India large means 42 cms and extra large means 44-46 cms. This nowhere correalates to what Pringoo advertises. They must understand that people who are making their purchase for the first time are the customers who they can retain forever, if they show the size in a more convenient way. Size is the most important parameter which will either make or break a purchase and going wrong in this means waste of money, like for me.

Well as for the order itself, they send it by registered post, though it reached me via DTDC strangely! And they dont charge me shipping fee for the same. Well done Pringoo. Good to know you are not earning on silly things. The package came to me in about two or three days and contained the teeshirt, a proper printed version of the online bill with bar code and all, and a letter from pringoo explaining the product features. Also they gave a free sticker promoting their website.

They also claim their’s is the first company who deliver tee shirts that are of international quality, and prints on which we can use the iron box without ruining the print, and tee shirts that retain print colour without bleeding the dye. They also as a disclaimer claim that upto 10% shrinkage must be allowed for after wash. As usual they also gave me their customer service email id, for any feedback. But I chose to blog them instead! They prophesize eco-solvent digital printing – a technology they claim is 24 times more expensive than any other available in India today.

So finally to end this blog post, let me show you the actual product in flesh and blood. Decide for yourself if you like it !

CLICK ON THESE FOR BIGGER IMAGES!

So what are you waiting for? Head to Pringoo.com and make your own style statement! 🙂

Technorati : DTDC, Pringoo, Pringoo.com, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, cafepress, chest size, design, digital, dilsebol, dots per inch, dpi, eco-solvent, fabric, free, gnome, gnome.in, india, india registered post, iron box, memorabilia, myntra, online, printing, promotion, rediff, resolution, size chart, sizes, sticker, t-shirt, t-shirts, tee shirts, tshirts, website, webvastra, your own, zoomin, zoomin.com

It was my wife’s birthday and I decided to take her out to Total Mall @ Madiwala for some shopping. Also since there was a karaoke competition, I decided to enroll her and ask her to sing a song accompanied by lyrics to the public. I myself wanted to sing a song, but decided that I did not want to screw up other people’s pleasant evening shopping, so kept quiet.

Pic courtesy: www.bangalorebeats.com

The total mall as you would know in Madiwala is refurbished over the old madiwala shopping complex that was supposed to actually house all the grocery stalls out on that road. For whatever reasons such as maybe high rentals or otherwise, these grocery vendors did not occupy the complex, leaving it in tatters. Slowly but steadily the commerical value of this piece of real estate was well underestimated and the government had a high priced property which was not getting properly utilized. With the advent of low cost retailing such as Total (I say low cost as compared to malls such as Forum, which was of a high standard), they took up this space and transformed it into what you see above. Note the older building in the last four floors and you know how bad it was!

I was expecting a TOTAL surprise, and ended up with a TOTAL disaster. Before I bash up TOTAL on this blog, some good points about the shopping. My wife participated in the Karaoke contest with the song Tere Mere Pyaar Ke Charche har zaban par …. a beauty!

The lyrics were on the screen and all one had to do was get used to this and sing along! My wife did sing well enough, more better that what I thought she sung at home! And I did enjoy those moments with my son too. After that when the crowds started piling up, I decided to go shopping within the mall which gave away some of the ridiculous arrangements of this mall. Here I list a few of them:

• Right in the middle of the mall where people must have been walking is a CD store occupying all the space
• The only eateries include MacD, Serengeti and yet another restaurant (no food court or nothing of that sort)
• Rides for very young kids like the horse, car, etc (swing along) costs 20 bucks which I thought was meaningless!
• The mall is designed in such a way that once you enter the shopping area in a floor the only way out is to take a full round of all stalls, and go up another floor, hold your breath, take a full round all over again and then reach the billing counter. Damn, I wonder what these people were thinking when they built the mall this way. Absolutely ridiculous waste of time and energy.
• The AC was terrible or non existent making me sweat like hell all the time, its a pity such a big mall felt like a furnace (so much for pleasant shopping)
• The travelator (Total’s modified meaning of eslacator) is pure hell served to you. Twice the length of the normal elevator, and double the distance to reach the other end meant only longer walks and even more outrageous waste of time
• Just when you thought you could get things billed and get out, you had to remember your personal things kept at one floor below! Waste time again and over again.
• The staircase leading to the car park wont even accomodate one thin person around the corners (landing area) – guess only animals like cats and dogs can go through these. Absolute horror.
• My wife being in the architecture field puked at such a design that the government had come up with years ago.
• And just when you thought everything was over, the absolutely horribly designed car park strikes you in the face. Even a car such as my swift diesel brushed against something on its roof, one can only imagine what cars such as scorpios which are SUVs will undergo in this car park. Look for yourself

We did shop a few things in this mall, but vowed never to return again. If you were to heed my advice, take your family to the FORUM mall. Its like comparing well bred labradors or golden retreivers with rabid street mongrels. My two cents, have a good family outing, not a TOTAL DISASTER.

Technorati : AC, aaj kal tere mere pyaar ke sapne har zaban par, air conditioner, aircon, architect, architecture, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, car park, car rides, cd, dvd, escalator, golden retrievers, government, grocery, horse, karaoke, karnataka, koramangala, labradors, lyrics, mac donalds, macd, madivala, madiwala, mongrels, reviews, santhey, scorpio, security, serengeti, shopping, singalong, steps, suv, swift diesel vdi, total mall, travelator, vendor

The political parties are at their favorite game again. Dirtying Bengaluru. The other day I was driving near the Hebbal Flyover and I was thinking “well its been sometime now and there are no posters in Bengaluru dirtying the place all around”. And as though to grant my wish, I came across a rather unbelieveable sight.

This

and these

Suddenly there were pictures of all kinds of people from the Congress party crowding around DKS, who is now taking over as president of the regional congress party along with Deshpande. While the famous Times Of India editor HS Balram did point out that DKS did a good thing by organizing a rally at Doddaballapur,

PARTING SHOT Thanks Congress, for small mercies
Wisdom has at last dawned on the Congress. The swearing-in ceremony of R V Deshpande as president and D K Shiva Kumar as working president will not take place in Bangalore, but 50 km away in Doddaballapur. It’s Shiva Kumar’s idea, we are told. “We have earned the ire of Bangaloreans with rallies that cause traffic gridlock. So we decided to organize it outside the city,” he says. Good beginning, DKS. Now we know why you have been named ‘working’ president. Please ensure that the roads in Doddaballapur are not jammed.

little did he realize what mess that would create all the way to the BIAL. The mess is what you see above for many kilometers of drive.

On another side, while I was appreciating our BSY or Yeddy for maintaining a rather low profile, he started publishing posters all over south Bengaluru proclaiming that he was laying yet another foundation stone for yet another flyover – this time two of them at Agara and Iblur ensuring that a mess for another one year or more is created for the residents living in HSR layout making life hell for them.

Alright you people are doing the job, mustering support of citizens whatever. But please be responsible enough to atleast take off the posters once you’re done guys!

On a rather side note, Janata Dal Secular president unfortunately could not do any such thing in Bengaluru, since he died. He was perhaps the only person I appreciated for some reason. (I thought he looked cool :D) But at a young age of 51, he passed away breaking the JDS further into tatters.

Whats amusing about the poster above Yeddy has advertised is that the minorities minister is always invited for all his functions! and So is Sobha Karandlaje. Sangliana who spoke so much against the CM and Home minister is also seen!

This is politics!

Technorati : BJP, BSY, D K shivakumar, DKS, Doddaballapur, H T Sangliana, Shobha Karandlaje, bangalore, bengaluru, bharathiya janata party, bial, blog, christian, congress, deve gowda, dirty, editor, h s balram, hdk, hebbal flyover, jds, merajuddin patel, minority, muzrai, north, parting shot, politics, poster, road works, times of india, wakf, yeddyurappa, yelahanka