Visit to Yankee Candle Store

Claims to be world's largest candle store, with nearly 200 fragrances, from florals to foods. But What we loved most was the display of "Bavarian Christmas Village".

Diwali of 2006

Thats my take of Diwali Lights.

• Taken in Candle Mode

• Taken in Auto Mode

Nothing New about IE7

After completely deleting/uninstalling Internet explorer from my machine due to Ad-ware & Spyware attack, I noticed that I did not miss IE at all. The Mozilla Firefox with IE Tab Add-on was more than enough to meet all web sites requirements.

But today I gave thought to installing newly released IE7, just to get familiar with all the new features. Surprisingly, I did not find any significant new features; everything newly added was already available in Firefox. So this IE7 release was mostly to catch up with Firefox features.

I was at least anticipating the feature where I could right click, highlight the word and search the web for that selected word, which can be easily done in Firefox.

The only unique feature is you can set a different home page for each tab, but I am not sure how much this feature will be useful.

Playskool Busy Ball Popper

This is the new addition to our Little one's Toy Collection. My intention behind buying this Toy was to keep him busy. In addition, It was eligible for *FREE Super Saver Shipping on Amazon.

But in reality, I found that the balls are always flying around, and I am the one who is collecting them constantly, which keeps me busy. When the Air blower fan starts to pop the ball, It sounds like Vaccum Cleaner. It works only well with 3-4 Balls at time, but soon it stops automatically when it gets interesting.

The real bad thing about this toy is, Even thou it has been priced below $20, It requires 4 D batteries which costs almost $5. So overall not Recommended one.

Speaking of batteries, these days I am really spending big chunk of money on all kinds batteries. Recently purchesed AA/AAA battery charger is not much useful as every toy has different kind of battery for ex. D, C, AA, AAA, 9 Volt.

Delicious Chocolate Movie

The Random selection of the movies from local library is working very well; We get to see another great movie called "Chocolat".

This fictional European movie is all about chocolate and the effect of these divine chocolates on the French villagers. In fact Chocó powder and fresh hot chocolate have been shown so many times that you can’t resist not having one.

Now I wonder what is the bollywood movie "Chocolate" is all about ?

Those Little Baby Steps

Today is the day; we can mark on the calendar as the day when our little one started taking those little steps.

He's been attempting this stunt from last few days but today is the one, we can count as the successful attempt; which was whole 20 steps completing one small circle. Until then we didn’t know that few M&M'S Candies could inspire him to achieve this target.

Truly, It was the moment to treasure for, a joy to watch his efforts and excitement to achieve that tiny distance.

A Long Journey from this moment.

Fall of 2006

Thats was the Fall Drive up towards North.

Guruji.com

Is the Guruji.com next big thing for India ?

Today, It has been officially launched as Indian Local Search engine, which is Google for the world. Mainly focused on providing better search results to Indian consumers, by leveraging proprietary algorithms and data in the Indian context.

But Isn't there already http://www.google.co.in/ for that, which searches pages exclusively from India. Also, There is Khoj.com ,The Great Indian Search Engine.
My guess is, It will used mainly for Local Searches for ex "Pune Sweets Shop" and Google Local is not there for India.

Guruji.com is being backed by Sequoia Capital India, a venture capital firm and so far the trend is whatever Sequoia Capital has funded turns out to be big one including Google, Yahoo, Paypal and the recent Youtube.

My advise is, Change the color of Search Result Text.

Dinner at Chola,CT

It was the dinner for two at Chola (CT), turns out to be a quiet evening being only two people sitting in the whole restaurant. No wonder, they have different price tag for Dinner than Lunch.

The dinner started with complimentary papad and chutney. As a Starter, we ordered Chola Veggie Basket which contains all types of pakodas including onions, potato, flowers and samosa served with Mango Chutney. A heavy one, if you are ordering just for two.

On side dish it was Mulltigawny Soup (Puree of lentil soup, lemon) for our little one, which looked like he enjoyed.

The main course was Malai Kofta & Punjabi Kadhi (A must try written on menu) with garlic & plain Naan served with plain rice sprinkled with green chickpeas.

Overall Food was great considering the expensive price tag exclusively applied on Dinners.

Known to be Martha Stewart's favorite local Indian restaurant, so don’t be surprise to see many dishes have been tagged as Martha Stewart's favorite on their Menu Card.

Eating Walnuts

Its time that I should start eating those Walnuts, which are currently lying around in the pantry. Few Walnet Receipes to help you consume walnut in various forms.


Specially I enjoy cracking the walnut shells and eating the inside part rather than eating ready made one.

Research suggests that eating walnuts at the end of a meal may help cut the damage that fatty food can do to the arteries, Tests showed the walnuts helped to reduce the sudden onset of harmful inflammation and oxidation in arteries that follows a meal high in saturated fat.

Walnuts also helped preserve the elasticity and flexibility of the arteries, regardless of cholesterol level.

Weekend in Hudson River Valley

India, here comes Starbucks !

Personally, I didn’t like the Starbucks coffee. The French toast flavor available at office pantry is enough stronger for me. Today’s news is that Starbucks is planning to open its store in India by end of 2007. It’s their long term international expansion plan. I am doubtful about their success in Indian market as compare to the phenomenal success they achieved here in the US.

India is traditionally a tea drinking nation; thou Coffee culture has been getting bigger due to the students and working professionals. For that market we have already local brands like Café Coffee Day & Barista, which have their own aggressive expansion plan. Surely Starbucks will face competition from Café Coffee Day & Barista in India. They will have to customize its drinks for the Indian market, the way McD’ has Aloo tiki in their Menu. Most importantly, they will not be able to enjoy expensive pricing strategy with huge margin, which has been a factor in their success story.

On personal note I do remember my first date with my wife, which happened in Café Coffee Day, where we ordered one cup of International Coffee and spend most of the time without drinking even one sip. So these coffee shops are most of the time used as hangout place or as meeting place rather than for their drinks. I would certainly like to see Starbucks store in Himalayas.

On positive side, Being a global brand Starbucks has advantage of attracting elite customers. Here in the corporate world, we have fashion to hold Starbucks cup in our hand during those weekly meetings. It doesn’t matter even if it’s empty.

Oh did you notice that SRK was holding Starbucks cup in his hand quite a few times in KANK.

Team Lunch at Darbar Indian Restaurant

This time it was the Darbar Indian Restaurant for our team lunch, an occasion to visit New York. A point to note that I do not miss visiting New York, specially for The Work.

What I noticed about these Team Lunches is, if there are more than 12 people in the team then you can hardly listen to the conversation of person sitting on other side of the table. As result of this, mostly what happen is two Groups get formed and each having different conversation on different topic. But having a round dinning table you can avoid this situation, which are rare to find in the restaurants.

Speaking of Darbar, Food was according to standard, atmosphere was decent and price was modest. Only problem with the Lunch Buffet is when you want to get something its not there and you hate making frequent rounds and changing the plate each time on that congested table. I would also appreciate, if I could get a Naan on time, at least not after I about to finish my food.

Literacy, Bollywood Style

Now I know why there are subtitles (Same Language Subtitling-SLS), when the Hindi Song plays on Rangoli and Chitrahaar. The idea behind it is to help people in India to improve their reading by putting subtitles in their own language.

This initiative was started by PlanetRead, which employs Same Language Subtitling (SLS) to give subconscious reading practice for 30 minutes a week to more than 200 million early-literates in India, operating via 10 TV programmes in 10 languages. PlanetRead is also contributing to recently announced Google's The Literacy Project.

A small IDEA to improve the world.

Cold & Flu Season

Yesterday night I woke up looking for Nyquil in the cabinet but I was disappointed not finding it there. No wonder, Smart people stock up these must have primary medicines for the 11th hour. This is the cold flu season and I am suffering from it.

The first indication that I will fall sick starts with the soar throat which takes place by having cold and hot things one after another and seems like this time it was hot soup and cold water. The previous experience was espresso coffee shot and thums up.

So today morning before coming to office, first I went to CVS pharmacy to get the Vicks Nyquil Multi-Symptom Cold & Flu Relief. Yes, Multi-Symptom that is Sniffing, Sneezing, Coughing, Arching, Stuffy-head and Fever. It all comes together in a bundle !