Never thought that the 10 yrs will go such fast, when I received my first passport 10 yrs ago, the Expiry date didn't bothered much. But when the time came to renew the passport, it was just additional paper work stress and early morning trip to Indian Consulate. In addition to that, now I need to carry two passport old and new every time I travel and every time I make those never ending copies.
Back from vacation, had a perfect flight timing -departure from Mumbai at 01:10 am and arrival at JFK at morning 07:30 am, just to attend Monday’s full day office. The total 15 hrs non-stop flight was all empty, making room for us to sleep and this time the flight entrainment system was indeed working.
Immigration, Custom and Airport shuttle was quick one, only complain is about this long chilly December.
This was the worst experience I had, while booking the Air India tick
et thru careless, stupid travel agent. First this fellow didn’t have any clue about the ticket after charging my credit card, which he didn’t bother to inform me for 2 weeks. When I followed up, he gave some ridiculous excuses, which just wasted my days. After speaking to agency owner he transferred the matter to another lady, who cancelled the previous ticket and recharged credit card for new e-tickets. All this was happening with in the last week of travel date, making you more anxious.
Due to the double charging of tickets, credit card was almost reached to credit limit. Finally when they’re unable to issue e-tickets, they issued old paper tickets, which were collected by friend on my behalf.
The big surprise was waiting for me on monday morning, when I saw only two paper tickets. After waiting for an hour for the opening of their shop, they said they issued one e-ticket for me and paper tickets for my family.
It was rather a simple task, booking a ticket ! but took plenty of phone calls then follow up calls and the painful one, i.e. checking your mailbox everyday for the delivery of tickets. It just adds up unnecessary stress during those vacation days.
Its just reminds me of the MakeMyTrip.com’s commercial ad.
On a same note, soon the paper ticket will become a collector's item. The global airlines body IATA has placed its last order for paper tickets, clearing the way for air travel to be based entirely on electronic ticketing from 1st June 2008.
I hope after this win, We don't have to wait for next 24 yrs for the another world cup. Certainly, This win is precious for the India and will be treasured for the years to come. For me, I am just making a note here.
I don't when was the last (old) 7 wonders were declared, but I know now when the New 7 wonders were announced. Glad to hear that The Taj Mahal is one of them and it tops the list.
Just to make a note for myself these are the other six monuments that made it to the list:
The Great Wall of China,
Petra in Jordan,
The Statue of Christ Redeemer in Brazil,
Machu Picchu in Peru,
The Pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico
The Colosseum in Rome
Did you know that "R2I" keyword stands for "Return to India" ?
May be you don’t until now; unless you are really planning to return to India from living abroad.
In Last few months, I’ve given serious thinking on this topic of returning to India due to many factors and hence stumbled upon this keyword "R2I" after searching on web.
One of the very useful forum that encountered is "r2iclubforums"; where you can find detailed information about various topics from 'sharing a container' to 'school education' for your kids.
Its been sometime now I’ve been reading these posts randomly, whenever I get a chance. Also, Few experienced R2i’er have started blogging about their experiences, which are very interesting to read about and thus the introduction of this new tab on my iGoogle page.
Here is one Great News !
"Taking a leap over Bangalore and Hyderabad, Pune will become the first Indian city to have a high-speed wireless Internet network. The PMC and Chennai-based Microsense, the service provider, have ensured that Pune is the first city in the country to have wireless connectivity. The project is also jointly implemented by Intel technology private ltd."
The technology used will be Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, commonly known as WiMAX, and wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi.
The first phase of 25 sq km radius encompassing PMC headquarters, Deccan Gymkhana, Model Colony, Sambhaji Park, Baner and Aundh will be made wireless by July. In the next 16 months, the entire city is expected to go wireless.
I am just hoping that in my next visit, I will be able to experience the Wi-Fi effect.
Here we go again, Home loan rates set to rise further.
In the last two years or so, banks have increased home loan rates from 6.5% to 11%, resulting in equated monthly installments (EMI) rising by 43%.
As These measures are likely to hit economic growth, For RBI the growth had now become a secondary concern; Controlling inflation is the central bank’s top priority.
Just few years ago, I would have never cared about the Interest Rate, but things are different now specially with the sinking of Dollar value against Rupees.
There were years when hardly few could make in the list of Forbes Billionaire Club from India. This has been changed drastically in the last 2/3 years. Now, India has the largest number of billionaires among the top 20 after the United States. Also, India became home to the most billionaires in Asia, pushing Japan back to the No. 2 spot.
What a contrast having most billionaires and poorer in the same country !
Its been sometime that I've started using Google's Personalized Home in a real proper way.
There are many useful Gadgets to customize it, But for me 'ICICI Exchange Rate' Gadget turns out to be very handy one to find out Exchange Rate between USD to INR. In fact it shows the actual ICICI exchange rate not the market one.
From last few days I've been noticing lot of India related artical on BBC News Front Page; It turns out that BBC World Service dedicating a week of special programmes from Saturday 3 February to Sunday 11 February 2007 looking at how India is changing.
This Special Report includes many interesting articals on Rising India.
It would be interesting to see how this graphs turns out in next 5 yrs or so. Will it look like a Skyscraper as it looks now or it will be different picture all together ?
This is graph of top 3 Indian IT companies recently know as Bangalore Tigers. I believe after certain point, It makes sense to split the company due to No of employees and area of expertise.
Sanjay Patel, an animator and storyboard artist at Pixar animation has designed this wonder book on Hindu Deities. He has given a total new approach towards looking at Hindu gods and goddesses. The book brings new life into old mythology, by telling the stories of various deities at same time drawing us in-literally-with joyous and unexpected full-color illustrations.
I am sure this book can certainly help educating your child on Hinduism without taking many efforts.
The book is also available on Amazon. Also, check out some Sample pages and Sketches from same book.
This shows that, Given a better presentation & style Hindu mythology can be cool and interesting.
I am not sure when I will get a chance to attend one, But certainly I've added this thing in my "things to do list". This is second barcamp happening in Pune within period of one year time...not a bad start.
The BarCampPune2 is happening on 16th December at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Pune. You can find it more about it here.
Scorpio has been my favourite SUV in the Indian Automobile market ever since the day I rented it for my wedding. It was love at first sight due to its comfort factor and smoothness on Indian Road. It got the same ruggedness style with performance which had in good ole Yamaha Rx-100.
Soon M&M's Scorpio will be seen on the North America road, The exact date of the US launch will be announced in April ’07. M&M will be the first Indian automaker to enter the highly-competitive American passenger vehicle market , an uphill battle for M&M. I wish them all the best and I hope to be proud owner of Scorpio one day in future.
Its been happening quite sometime now, That whenever I transfer money to India, I see the rise in India's forex reserves. So coincidental ! Here is The News.
India's forex reserves went up by $1.168 billion to stand at $168.284 billion during the week ended November 10 as against $167.116 billion during the week ended November 3.
I've been waiting for this news, and here comes the news "Fly non-stop from Mumbai to NY". Delta Air Lines has launched a non-stop flight connecting New York and Mumbai. Its been quite sometime that Continental is flying non-stop to Delhi, but it wasn’t much helpful.
Certainly non-stop makes a big difference by cutting down travel time at least 4 hrs, Less take-offs and landings, No security check and No need of transit visa, uninterrupted sleep. I just hope that Lavatories will be sanitized and cleaned properly.
This just makes the World and Home a little bit closer.
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.
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.
