Moments so Far ...

The buy was long pending. It was triggered by a theft . I bought the Samsung Galaxy 5 paying Rs 650 more at Sangeetham mobiles than at flipcart.com just to have their theft/accident/water insurance coverage. My daughter picked up the features faster than I and she demonstrated some cool tricks within few hours like you could go to clock-then camera and then run slideshow. My Spouse was a late entrant but was hooked to " Angry Birds ", Bistro Cook. My one year kid always changed the swype keyboard language to one of European languages and the keyboard layout changed each time and I had struggle understanding why the letters are changing places each time I go to swype. The initial rush of downloads saturated onboard memory and I had to uninstall few apps including angrybirds. I learnt about kies and how to do firmware upgrades through it. I was hoping to get Froyo 2.2 in a whiz so that I could install the apps on SD card. But kies cried foul and provided no upgrade, p...

The battery bay of Dell Inspiron N5010 has a latch that has two positions. Lock and Unlock. The battery shakes a little when you lift the laptop. I thought I should seek Dell Support . Big Mistake number 1. The DVD drives makes a grhoom and a hoom sound, sometimes. I thought I should seek Dell Support. Big Mistake number 2. I called up support after contemplating for a while as to amount of time I will be put on hold. But I had been postponing the above two issues for a while and thought why not try today. I though of chat but the link said all our customers representative are busy, please email. When I went to email it said you should email only for the following 10 things else you should call. So I called. I was quickly connected and shared info. I explained the problem. The Dell customer representative cut me in middle and said she will connect to technical representative . It was about 10 mins before he came online. I spoke the above 2 problems. He could not understand...

We have made 300 crores and we need 50 crores more. Both use the same sentence. One is six months out of MBA from Ramya College and is management trainee with ICICI Securities. Other is an engineering graduate, converted and dons orange color clothes and works for ISKON temple/trust. One is selling Pinnacle II, an ULIP which has 5 years outflow of 50k per annum and assured returns after 10 years at the highest NAV. Other is selling a mammoth temple construction which will be one the largest of its kinds with amusement parks and thematic studios. One promised 5 times the value of investment as life insurance. Other promises car park passes, books, and special pujas on your birthdays and anniversaries. One promises financial prosperity. Other promises spiritual progress and सुकृति . The instrument of investment is Unit linked Insurance policy. The instrument of investment is a step that will lead on to the temple. Your name could be somewhere on side of the steps in gold...

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14th November. We celebrate children's day in his honor. The daily routine may force you to forget about him but for the sincere and dedicated mothers who like their kids to showcase their talents at stage. Not really, I really appreciate the hard work and effort put by the ladies in composing a event that is memorial for their kids as well as their parents. Their is dance,skit, keyboards,songs and fashion shows. Ah! I forgot another active class in enclaves who needs the events. The teachers of various arts and crafts like dance/song/keyboards who want to market their availability for your kids so that he can attend one more class. There are dance and more dance and too much dance. Indian bollywood music and its steps copied by students, cheered by parents. Where is talent? Traditional music being rendered by half screeching loud speakers. Will you close your eyes to get lost in music? Distribution of fast foods like chips packets means more ...

This Diwali Big Bazaar gave a sheet to all its customers with coupons for getting 2 kg of sugar on every Wednesday for the next few months based on the kind of spend they did during the offer period. Generally we postpone our Big Bazaar trips to end of week and gather the dump and bring back home. Now they want to come on the day that they want and spend atleast 500 rupees so that you get the 2 kg of sugar that you have been consuming so fastidiously. What this entails? Your consumption of sugar goes up. There are 4 Wednesdays in a month and now you consume 8 kgs of sugar. Apparently sugar is responsible for most of middle and old age diseases according to a 100 year old Rishi who never had roti in his life. Your outflow to Big bazaar goes up. You spend atleast 500*4 = 2000 rupees to get that 8 kgs of sugar. And you know better  than me that bill is not always exactly 500 depending on who accompanies you. Chances are high if you are alone but if your daughter,son or spouse ar...

The day began with keynote from Mr. Amitabh Srivastava from Microsoft with a rather long job title. He warned that nobody knew cloud well. Rest of the time was spent on how Microsoft was playing the azure game the way they had done for windows OS. Apparently a OS for the cloud which they called as PaaS which was obviously different from salesforce or Google. Amazon was claimed to be IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) where you have to manage your server and its security updates etc., This was followed by the story of On24 by Sharat Sharan, a rather serious note. They had to do away with their initial management team because they did not have the relevant IT credentials. The product which is on web casting was intensely technical. They survived the market crashes and now desire to move on to from being a 50 Million to 200 Million Dollars company. The kind of challenges at every size are different and they have managed to address them organically so far. Next we had discussion on UID...

Will you go to Hotel Ashok on Kumar krupa road? 10 rupees extra sir Can you go by meter? Okay, sit ---after the auto starts and in motion--- You will have to pay rupees 30 I will pay by meter, if you dont want it then please stop the auto and I will get down Sit sit ---reach a traffic signal, a beggar comes on the side I dont have a rupee, can you give him a rupee? Even I dont have a rupee See sir, a truck struck me from front and i have almost lost a eye, thanks to god that I have survived, since then I earn and eat well but also give needy when ever I can. ---i check for money but the least amount that comes out is 10, he takes the 10 and obtains a change of 5 from beggar and puts it back into my hand, the signal becomes green sirr, do you know kannada? No How long you have been here? 6-7 years ---then he starts teaching me kannada, the below in double quotes is in kannada next time when you meet a auto driver tell him "I am kannadiga, dont cheat me" -- i...

A beautiful evening of performance at MLR convention center. An evening where the children performed, teachers and support staff orchestrated the events and parents simply walked in and witness the performances. We could only clap at the series of performances. The skits made us laugh. The history took us into our past. The theme for this year was Goa and Maharashtra. We could see the costumes of Portugese,Hindu and Sultanate/Mughal rulers. We could hear the Portuguese music customized by local and called as Goan. The choir. The flowing dances, ballets and folk. Mumbai illustration had Songs and Dance from Bollywood, fashion from the commercial capital of India. The dance/fashion of every decade was portrayed, we could see twist/disco/... The children looked so happy in performance. The older kids looked so matured walking on the ramp. The kids helping with seating arrangements were so courteous , soft and beautiful. The inauguration speech was by Ms. Jaishankar. She touched ...

The first keynote had Yahoo CEO , Carol Bartz. The kalinga house of lalit ashok was full. There were media vans outside and nobody was wasting their time outside. The points India could have better Internet penetration if there is access to more bandwidth and access to more devices (need not be laptops or phones) at rates which are affordable to Indians. Yahoo is about content and how it can be relevant to its end users. Yahoo does not yet have plan for an app marketplace. Yahoo encourages women to come and contribute more in the engineering realm. The next keynote was by Dr Frank H Levinson. The points I will try to make the session fun but jokes across cultures can backfire at time. The hall is full and I should thank Carol for same. The biggest mistake was becoming CEO of my first start up and I got fired within 6 months. My wife said it was not my fault but I said it was mine. I took full responsibility and accepted my failure and learned from it. In the next venture I wa...

So much for the public transport. So much for the public apathy. I was screaming I have lost the mobile and no one moved in the entire bus. Everybody turned around twitched a little and ignored the cry. More than the loss the reaction of the public shocked me. The bus conductor of BMTC bus somewhere in front. He did not bother to intervene. One person offered to call the number but the phone was promptly switched off. Other said you can block the phone by using some code. The doors of the bus were closed. The thief was inside. I could do nothing but get out of the bus. Bus number is 201 and it mostly runs between Banasankari and Koramangala. I had heard stories of people losing mobile phones and purse in 201 but it was a first hand experience for the first time. I called up my spouse and she kept trying to reach BSNL toll free mobile help line number. She was always in queue after choosing the lost mobile option. She visited the nearest BSNL office and they said she had...