Times Global Village

Past week for me could be termed "work hard ,party harder" because thats how it has been. Two office parties, a movie, Global village trip (snaps) and today its gonna be a pizza party at office :D Had been hearing about this Global Village since long and really wanted to go there. Its located between Delhi and Noida. Infact it is on one side of DND flyway which connects Delhi to Noida. And that is what makes going there from Noida a little pain taking and awkward too. Ever imagined going to Punjab from Delhi via Madhya Pradesh having to take a U-turn and then traveling almost the same distance back ? Off course its an exaggeration but this is how you get to the Times Global Village from Noida. You start from Noida, cross the DND toll bridge (5 kms), drive all the way till aashram in Delhi(another 2-3 kms) until you find the first cut on the divider, then take a U-turn and drive back to reach the destination.

But it was worth the effort. The place has been built over a huge area. Its basically an exhibition of crafts and consumer goods from various countries like South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Pakistan, UK, China, Arab, Thailand and many more. There are models of Taj Mahal, Twin towers, Egyptian Pyramid and the Sphynx, Roman Colosseum, Eiffel Tower which are an attraction of the place. And there are too many food stalls with cuisines from various parts of India. Things are a little expensive there but not everyday do we get a chance to experience so much.

We made sure we had seen each and every section of the world and it was fun to roam around. We had Neembu paani, Aam panna and Matar kulche for the starters. Then roamed around and I bought a nice gift for my brother from one of the shops. We also had kesar kulfi and I tried Tom Yon Gong soup which is a special Thai preparation. It was awesome !! We had dinner at the "Murthal ke paraanthe" and then "Bihari tikka with paraantha" at the pakistani food stall. Finally we had "baraf ka gola" (chuski) which was a delight in itself.

A kewl evening !!

Monkey Trouble

I got ready for the office pretty early today. As soon as I opened the house door to the stairway, two monkeys (well built) were lying just 4 steps down. Seeing me one of them pretended to attack me. I closed the door immediately. Then started what I'll call "Bandar bhagao abhiyaan" which lasted for about 20-25 minutes. Many of you would have heard the "saam-daam-dand-bhed" technique. I first tried the "saam" method where I tried to talk to them. lolsss. Yes I actually talked to them and told them to go to the terrace. Pointed to the terrace with my hand and strangely one of them even went up. But the other one was not willing to move and was charging towards me time and again so had to resort to the "dand" technique. Finally brought the tennis bat and seeing that in my hand the monkey immediately ran upwards. I was'nt sure how many steps away they were from the door still so asked Saurabh to give me cover while I move downstairs. Saurabh stood at the door with the tennis bat till I left the house :) It was more of fun than any trouble actually.

A new day ..

Not everyday feels like a new day. Its only when the previous day had a lot many things and you just wanted the day to pass, the next morning is a welcome relief. Yesterday was one such day. Slogged at the office till 9:30 pm, had a task to be finished which is almost done but then, "almost" is never "complete". On my walk back called three of my friends. None of them was near their cell. Its dinner time but even after knowing everything it irritated me more. Anyway, reached home, had dinner and went for a long walk. Must have walked 3-4 kms and when I came back I was feeling good. Then fixed the mosquito net over my bed finally and for the first time I had an uninterrupted sound sleep. Woke up early and feeling all charged up to get on with today.

New albums added

Check out the new albums !!

Broadband to go free in 2 yrs

Broadband to go free in 2 yrs
JOJI THOMAS PHILIP
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007 02:00:26 AM]

NEW DELHI: The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.

You have heard of free municipal broadband — many cities in the US have drenched themselves in wireless broadband connectivity which is freely accessible to residents. The idea is to boost economic activity in general. The government of India plans to achieve free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second across the country, with a similar goal. Senior government officials expect to be able to achieve this goal spending only a portion of the corpus of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

All telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues every year to USOF. It is estimated that the unutilized sum from the USOF has touched Rs 9,194.12 crore by March, 2007-end.

The current technological trend is for voice calls also to shift to the internet, using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The quality of VOIP calls, patchy to start off with, has been improving steadily over the years and by 2009, is likely to be as good as current analogue calls that establish a circuit between the calling and called parties. When that happens, revenue streams from calls would dry up and telecom companies would need to develop value-added applications to make money from the connectivity they provide for free or virtually free.

The department of telecom (DoT) will be taking a series of steps to make its plans for free broadband a reality. These include, using the USOF to set an extensive optic cable network across the country, opening up the long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

With international bandwidth rates in India being between two-to-five times higher than the global standards, the DoT will also go all out to break the monopoly of existing national and international distance players in a bid to induce cut throat competition in this sector. “India has only a handful of NLD/ILD operators while small countries such as Singapore and Taiwan have over 30 and 60 long distance operators respectively.

Accupressure points on the foot

Dunno how effective it is but from what I have heard from others, IT DOES HELP. The picture below shows which point to press on your foot to get relief from pain in different parts of the body.

My albums

Created a Picasaweb account to post those innumerable snaps I keep clicking from my cellphone and camera. You could find links to some albums here at the right hand side of the blog :)

happy surfing !!

A night out(side)

Yesterday night was an experience of its kind. I had hardly caught sleep past midnight when there was a power cut at about 1 am. The temperatures soaring to new heights everyday and the never decreasing mosquitoes in Noida make sure that you cant sleep unless the fan runs just over your head. Infact I feel these mosquitoes have become immune to these repellants now because nothing seems to make any difference to their numbers. Anyway, so we (Atul, Saurabh and myself) came out to the balcony and started chatting and roaming (you cannot stand at one place coz the mosquitoes will eat you up in a frenzy). The power was back by 1:30 am only to be cut again at around 2:15 am. Only that this time it was different. When I came out to the balcony I realised that other houses had their coolers/ACs running in full swing and it seemed that only our house was the "blessed" one this time. I informed Atul and Saurabh about it. They went down to check if the fuse had not blown up. It was fine !!

It was really hard to make out what could be the exact problem so we soon gave up on the hope of seeing the fan move again at least for the whole night. We were far from being sleepy now, rather in a very jovial mood spoilt only by the fits of irritation due to the mosquitoes and the heat. The whole of sector 15 echoed either with our laughter or "Kallu's" voice. Kallu is the street dog in our colony whom we have named on his appearance. Soon Atul and I started weaving a story on Kallu and his life. It was fun to act stupid for a change :) Suddenly Atul had this nice idea of setting up the mosquito nets at the balcony and make some arrangement to sleep there itself. It was indeed a good idea. Soon we had our personal "tents" lined at the balcony. Due to space constraints, Saurabh had to fix his "mahal" inside the living room while Atul and I made ourselves comfortable inside our respective nets outside.

Once finding ourselves relieved from the mosquitoe trouble and sleep having vanished completely, we started joking more freely, mimicking actors, remembering episodes from laughter challenge and playing music on the cellphone. There were still one or two mosquitoes who did not have to try hard to gain entrance into the net since they were already inside. We did try unsuccessfully to get rid of them in whatever feeble light our cellphones could help us with.

I don't know the exact time when we slept again but I could hear the birds and there were traces of violet in the sky so I guess it was past 4 am. There was a light breeze which was enough for us to beat the heat. Woke up on the bell rung by the maid at 8 am. It also meant that the electricity was restored. Opened the door and went to my room to sleep again. Abandoned my "mahal" where it was and instructed the maid to clean it up. Woke up pretty late (10 am) but still the "hangover" of the last night was enough for me to not feel panicky. Rather got ready for office lazily and was on my desk at about 11.

All said, an inverter is the need of the hour at my house :)

GSM gizmo helps cops find stolen car

NEW DELHI: A chartered accountant's Mahindra Scorpio SUV stolen from outside his Munirka home in southwest Delhi late on Friday night, was recovered by a police team from Haryana just a day later — thanks to a state-of-the-art gizmo.
original article

The state-of-the-art gizmo mentioned above has been built by one of the KritiKal teams. Its Amsaki 9110, a unique wireless home/car security messaging device that gives instant alerts on your mobile phone the moment a security breach is detected. Designed to alert you wirelessly through SMS as soon as your burglar alarm system intercepts an intrusion.

It feels great to see something which was developed in our labs, now hitting the market. Though I am a little bit disappointed that our name, KritiKal, is nowhere mentioned in the entire newspaper article or even on the product website. Its only encouraging to be appreciated and known for the great work done by a company which is just 5 years old and soon growing and working hard to make a name for itself.

Why do Post Graduation ?

Just two months back the weekends were mine to spend the way I wanted to until I joined CAT coaching since I "thought" I wanted to appear for CAT. I don't deny that I want to be a manager someday but what is not clear to me is if MBA is really a requirement for it ? I have studied enough I guess. I am always ready to learn something, but studying something irrelevant is difficult now. Because I have no idea why a would-be-manager should solve Speed and Distance problems, Fluid mechanic problems, mugging up English words just to improve his vocabulary temporarily till he is done with the exams. And since the time Saturdays have been made working days in my company, I somehow avoid coming across Sundays since it is the one day I used to get for myself and that too I loose now in a 4hr session on something I consider useless. Having already paid the coaching fee, I feel bound to attend the lectures and that is simply killing me.

I did schooling because I couldn't have graduated without it lest I was a prodigy like Tathagat Avtar. Graduation was necessary to get a decent job. The question is why should I do a post graduation ? Is it because just being a graduate doesn't sound good ? Or will just being a graduate be a problem for me in terms of career growth ? I hope someone can help me out.

The following statistics might sound kiddish but I hope I have at least some people who think on the same lines. Spent almost 14 years in school. Dropped one year for engineering preparation. Then another 4 years to get a degree. That makes it 19 years. For that past 19 years I have been studying continuously and just when I got time to paint, sketch, travel, socialise and do so many other things, a stupid thought flashed that probably I should do a post graduation too. Another 3 years ? I just dont feel like wasting my time preparing for it... at least not today or tomorrow or even for the next couple of months :) People argue that you could still do everything you want even while preparing for CAT, you just have to plan you schedule accordingly. But thats not my point. Why CAT when I am happy (read satisfied) without it.

Need a break, seriously. Phew !!

Bheja Fry

A total entertainer. There is nothing special about the story but the acting and the dialogues make the movie a full dose of laughter. A must watch if you are stressed out. Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shourie (V tv VJ's who are a well known comic pair of the recent times) are the two people to watch out for in this movie. Not many directors are able to impress with a remake (of a French comedy Le Diner De Cons) at their debut. I have'nt watched the original movie but would like to. But for now, I am happy to see this flick for the second time tonight :D Offcourse, for free :P (Office party)

Rendezvous with nature

There is something about the sunset/sunrise that has always made me felt great. And if the sun happens to set behind a river or a sea, a more perfect scene would be hard for me to imagine. Such was the experience during the boat journey to Belurmath from Dakshineswar temple a few days back when I was in Kolkata on a short trip. Away from the usual city, away from the numerous thoughts that constantly rock my brain, away from everything else and close to just nature for a change. It was evening time and the Hoogly river was all silver with the retiring sun throwing shades of gold at the water just in front of it. The buildings at the horizon looked nothing more than different sized black boxes marking the boundary between the land and the river. It was a steamer boat though I would have preferred a normal boat which could let me witness the scenery from the river for longer time :) and also because I find the sound of the oars soothing.

Belurmath is a very peaceful place while the famous Kaali temple at the Dakshineswar is crowded by the "bhakt jana". There was a huge line just to get a glimpse of the statue. At another hall in the temple some followers were singing prayers in a unified voice while others were just sitting there with closed eyes. Strangely, even after being in the middle of a crowd, i felt at peace there. Had it not been for time, I would have loved to join them in the "keertan". I am definitely going there the next time I visit Kolkata. And this time I hope I get to see the sunrise :)

Mission lauki ke kofte

My new room mate, Atul, had been saying since morning yesterday that tonight we will make kofte for dinner. I thought he wasn't serious till he actually invited another friend from office for dinner. I enjoy cooking but thats something like once in a month types when I actually feel like working in the kitchen. Atul's enthiusiasm made sure that one day was today :) We (Atul, Gaurav and me) left office at 7:30pm and bought "ghia", curd, etc whatever was necessary for the dish of the night - Lauki ke Kofte. Grated the "ghia", prepared besan mix, and in no time we were frying pakodis (read kofte). Later the maid had also arrived and she gave the finishing touches to the curry and cooked rotis and rice for all of us. Preparing the dough for rotis is the hardest task for me in the kitchen. While Atul and I were working in the kitchen on our "koftas", Saurabh and Gaurav had brought Ice Cream for the dessert. Had a sumptuous dinner while watching the celebrity episode of KBC. Then went for a stroll together to smell some fresh air before we finally retire to bed. Later we played dumbcharades and finally some touching piano instrumentals played by Atul on his synth. Let me mention here that Atul is the best keyboard player I have ever met in my life. He could make any song sound beautiful just by the various chords he plays along with the tune. I hope I can learn something from him and who knows we might have our own music band someday. :) All in all, a great evening and I became more qualified in cooking :D

test post

This is a test post that i am writing to see how things are working on my newly created blog. I actually want to post photographs and drawings and along with them, a description for the same. Dont expect me to be regular on this because I am very bad at being regular in anything :)