I saw Watchmen today.
Did not like it at all :-(.
What a boring movie!! Well, I think the problem was expectation.
I like to see superhero movies. In this movie there is more of boring dialogues, violence and nudity than action. Out of two and a half hours, only the last one hour has some story and action. Most of the time we only get to see the dark side of superheros.
imdb rates it at 8. I wouldn't even give it a 1.
Afterall, it is set in an alternate world...
01 April 2009
19 August 2008
One Time Sale
What is One Time Sale?
In simple words: Sell it. Forget it.
Well, thats for the seller. Not for the consumers.
In a city like Bangalore, there are so many customers for any establishment, small or big, that some unhappy customers does not matter to them at all. So, they happily go about cheating the customers and stand by their behaviour.
I had been to a departmental store and bought an item which had a Rs.75/- discount. A week later while cleaning my drawer I found the bill and noticed that they had not given the discount. I went to the store again and they apologized and asked me to pick
up anything for Rs.75/-. This is a very large store and they sell thousands of items every day, mostly consumables.
I had also been to an electronic showroom looking for a LCD or Plasma TV. There was a good discount on one of the LCD TV. I asked for more discount and the kind salesperson was very happy to give me and additional 5% discount! Thats when my instincts told me something was wrong. I postponed the idea and walked out.
I asked one of my friend who knows a lot about these and he told me that particular model of LCD TVs is not being manufactured at all! The salesman told me it was a brand new model and this was an inaugural offer.
What the departmental store sells is consumables. I visit this store once a week or maybe once in two weeks. But thats not the case with the electronic showroom. I will not go there again. I am not going to buy another TV for another few years at least. If that person cheats me, it'll be too late by the time I find out. Or worse, I may not find out at all.
How do I prevent such people from fooling others? I can tell about such people to my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances on social networking sites, my colony people.
What percent of Bangalore did I cover? Negligible. I can ask all of them to forward the mail to their friends and so on. But once such info passes the circle-of-confidence, people will just ignore such mails. Or they might get cautious but still visit that particular store. If I do get cheated, I can file a case against them in Consumer Courts. But that is still not going to prevent them from cheating others.
Well, with this many number of consumers and the fact that they are not well connected, such salesmen and stores will continue to be in business forever....
In simple words: Sell it. Forget it.
Well, thats for the seller. Not for the consumers.
In a city like Bangalore, there are so many customers for any establishment, small or big, that some unhappy customers does not matter to them at all. So, they happily go about cheating the customers and stand by their behaviour.
I had been to a departmental store and bought an item which had a Rs.75/- discount. A week later while cleaning my drawer I found the bill and noticed that they had not given the discount. I went to the store again and they apologized and asked me to pick
up anything for Rs.75/-. This is a very large store and they sell thousands of items every day, mostly consumables.
I had also been to an electronic showroom looking for a LCD or Plasma TV. There was a good discount on one of the LCD TV. I asked for more discount and the kind salesperson was very happy to give me and additional 5% discount! Thats when my instincts told me something was wrong. I postponed the idea and walked out.
I asked one of my friend who knows a lot about these and he told me that particular model of LCD TVs is not being manufactured at all! The salesman told me it was a brand new model and this was an inaugural offer.
What the departmental store sells is consumables. I visit this store once a week or maybe once in two weeks. But thats not the case with the electronic showroom. I will not go there again. I am not going to buy another TV for another few years at least. If that person cheats me, it'll be too late by the time I find out. Or worse, I may not find out at all.
How do I prevent such people from fooling others? I can tell about such people to my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances on social networking sites, my colony people.
What percent of Bangalore did I cover? Negligible. I can ask all of them to forward the mail to their friends and so on. But once such info passes the circle-of-confidence, people will just ignore such mails. Or they might get cautious but still visit that particular store. If I do get cheated, I can file a case against them in Consumer Courts. But that is still not going to prevent them from cheating others.
Well, with this many number of consumers and the fact that they are not well connected, such salesmen and stores will continue to be in business forever....
09 March 2008
My garden
I have a small garden. We maintain it ourselves. Thats why its always in poor condition :). We have around 25-30 hibiscus plants. The number varies as some of them dye and we get new ones.
We have a couple of hibiscus plants which flower two different coloured flowers! Here is one of them:
There is a bonsai hibiscus. In the last 4 years, it has grown around 6-7 inches. It flowers only during rainy season and since the plant is very small (around 1 feet) with only two branches, it has only 1-3 flowers every year. Here is a picture:
I had never seen hibiscus seeds. Last weekend I was surprised to see a pod and it had seeds in it. I went to google to search about this. It appears, I was the only one who did not know hibiscus plants can have seeds.. he he he... :D.
Some time back I saw a photo in a local newspaper of a 'rare occurrence' where there were 5 pomegranates in one bunch. Just a week before that I had 5 pomegranates in one bunch on my plant as well. I was not aware this was a 'rare'. Here is a picture:
One problem with having a garden is lot of spiders and ants in them. Its not only in the garden, these insects wander into the house as well. But thats ok. The spiders don't mind me destroying their nets while moving around the garden. We also have lots of butterflies and tiny birds that visit us regularly.
Our neighbours have hired experts to maintain their garden. And its turned up beautiful. We get time to maintain our garden only on the weekends. Thats why its not in good shape. Well, its not in bad shape either. I feel so happy to see every flower that blossoms, every fruit that ripens. I don't think I can get that satisfaction if I had paid for the effort and had a well maintained garden...
We have a couple of hibiscus plants which flower two different coloured flowers! Here is one of them:
There is a bonsai hibiscus. In the last 4 years, it has grown around 6-7 inches. It flowers only during rainy season and since the plant is very small (around 1 feet) with only two branches, it has only 1-3 flowers every year. Here is a picture:
I had never seen hibiscus seeds. Last weekend I was surprised to see a pod and it had seeds in it. I went to google to search about this. It appears, I was the only one who did not know hibiscus plants can have seeds.. he he he... :D.
Some time back I saw a photo in a local newspaper of a 'rare occurrence' where there were 5 pomegranates in one bunch. Just a week before that I had 5 pomegranates in one bunch on my plant as well. I was not aware this was a 'rare'. Here is a picture:
One problem with having a garden is lot of spiders and ants in them. Its not only in the garden, these insects wander into the house as well. But thats ok. The spiders don't mind me destroying their nets while moving around the garden. We also have lots of butterflies and tiny birds that visit us regularly.
Our neighbours have hired experts to maintain their garden. And its turned up beautiful. We get time to maintain our garden only on the weekends. Thats why its not in good shape. Well, its not in bad shape either. I feel so happy to see every flower that blossoms, every fruit that ripens. I don't think I can get that satisfaction if I had paid for the effort and had a well maintained garden...
Centralizing address and phone.
I shifted my residence. There is a change in my residential address now and also my fixed line telephone number. I then had to update my new address and telephone number with:
1. My company
2. My mobile phone service provider
3. Insurance company
4. Another insurance company
5. My friends
6. My relatives
7. My passport
8. I had to cancel my voter's ID card and get a new one in my area
9. My bank
10. My another bank
11. My credit card provider
12. My home loan finance provider
13. etc,
14. etc....
My colleagues, who are bachelors, keep shifting their house every few years or so. I wonder how they manage all this. I asked them and they say the address is changed as and when the need arises.
What is necessary is maintaining a central database for addresses and telephone numbers. I control which service provider, friend, relative can see it. Of course, address for passport and other government related orgs can get it by default.
It should take care of permanent residence address, temporary address and office address. For telephone numbers I should be able to provide my fixed line number, my mobile number and mobile numbers of other members of my family. I should be able to link to my neighbour's, my friends, my colleagues and my relatives address and telephone number as well.
All the service providers can pull the address and telephone number from the database to contact me. In case of emergency, they can reach me through my neighbours, friends, colleagues or family members.
For security reasons, I should be able to control who can link to me (my address and/or phone numbers) and who all can see this data. I should be able to alter this info at any time. The telecom company should have the facility to verify this updates. For addresses, maybe the policy should be involved to verify.
There should also be a mechanism to prevent telemarketing callers from making those pestering calls.
Implementing this may not be very difficult compared to making entries for all existing people and educating everyone from using it....
1. My company
2. My mobile phone service provider
3. Insurance company
4. Another insurance company
5. My friends
6. My relatives
7. My passport
8. I had to cancel my voter's ID card and get a new one in my area
9. My bank
10. My another bank
11. My credit card provider
12. My home loan finance provider
13. etc,
14. etc....
My colleagues, who are bachelors, keep shifting their house every few years or so. I wonder how they manage all this. I asked them and they say the address is changed as and when the need arises.
What is necessary is maintaining a central database for addresses and telephone numbers. I control which service provider, friend, relative can see it. Of course, address for passport and other government related orgs can get it by default.
It should take care of permanent residence address, temporary address and office address. For telephone numbers I should be able to provide my fixed line number, my mobile number and mobile numbers of other members of my family. I should be able to link to my neighbour's, my friends, my colleagues and my relatives address and telephone number as well.
All the service providers can pull the address and telephone number from the database to contact me. In case of emergency, they can reach me through my neighbours, friends, colleagues or family members.
For security reasons, I should be able to control who can link to me (my address and/or phone numbers) and who all can see this data. I should be able to alter this info at any time. The telecom company should have the facility to verify this updates. For addresses, maybe the policy should be involved to verify.
There should also be a mechanism to prevent telemarketing callers from making those pestering calls.
Implementing this may not be very difficult compared to making entries for all existing people and educating everyone from using it....
11 February 2008
Missing from voter's list
Every voter's id card has a unique number on it. You can verify this number and the entry into the voter's list at Election Commission of India's website. For Karnataka, see the website of The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka.
I had got my voter's id card and had verified its presence on the voter's list. Recently, some people from the local govt school visited us and asked us to fill the application form again as our name is not there in the voter's list. Now that was surprising. I had read in the newspaper the same day that so many lakhs of duplicate entries have been removed from the voters list. How come they removed my name? They had no answer. Only thing he said is that my name does not appear in the voters list and if I want to vote, I have to apply again.
To verify, I went to the above link and searched. Indeed my name was missing! Obviously, I applied again. Wasn't any verification done before removing the names from the list? I just hope this does not become a repetitive task....
I had got my voter's id card and had verified its presence on the voter's list. Recently, some people from the local govt school visited us and asked us to fill the application form again as our name is not there in the voter's list. Now that was surprising. I had read in the newspaper the same day that so many lakhs of duplicate entries have been removed from the voters list. How come they removed my name? They had no answer. Only thing he said is that my name does not appear in the voters list and if I want to vote, I have to apply again.
To verify, I went to the above link and searched. Indeed my name was missing! Obviously, I applied again. Wasn't any verification done before removing the names from the list? I just hope this does not become a repetitive task....
22 December 2007
The Last Mile of travelling
There was a time when Bangalore did not have any one-ways. But still the traffic was not mentioned in any news. Now with so many one-ways its still in the news.
When the number of commuters increased, the public transport (BMTC) did not wake up. People started buying and using their own vehicles. Now it has woken up and introduced very nice services. But people are not going to change because:
But there is a major problem. The nearest volvo bus stop from my home is 2kms away and the nearest volvo bus stop from my office is 1km away. I tried going by the normal BMTC buses to cover for that distance. But the timing is always not right. I've to wait for a normal bus near my house and then wait for the volvo bus. Too much time wasted in waiting. I even tried walking the 3kms.
They had introduced the YI services for some time. It would show the current location of the bus you are interested in by SMS. That way you can plan your travel to the volvo bus stop. This service has been discontinued now :(.
BMTC had also introduced Gramantara bus services. They were minibuses which would go to remote and less populated areas. The advantage was that they could go through narrow and winding roads of villages. Now I see very few of those buses.
That did not work out and I'm back at using my two wheeler :(.
I read an article in the newspaper today (22nd Dec) that BMTC is introducing taxi services for those going to the new Bangalore Airport. The taxis will pick up the passenger from the house and drop at the nearest Vajra bus. Vajra (volvo) buses are being planned to pickup/drop commuters from and to the new airport to different locations in Bangalore. They are planning to use GPS to synchronize the taxis and the buses.
Now that is a brilliant idea. That covers the last mile of traveling to the airport!
If they could introduce something like that for local transport as well....
When the number of commuters increased, the public transport (BMTC) did not wake up. People started buying and using their own vehicles. Now it has woken up and introduced very nice services. But people are not going to change because:
- We have gotten used to the convenience of using own vehicles.
- We can now afford to buy/run/maintain own vehicles, despite increasing fuel and steel prices.
- We don't have time to walk the last mile of polluted streets after getting down from a bus.
- The buses are never on time. Thats because of the amount of traffic.
But there is a major problem. The nearest volvo bus stop from my home is 2kms away and the nearest volvo bus stop from my office is 1km away. I tried going by the normal BMTC buses to cover for that distance. But the timing is always not right. I've to wait for a normal bus near my house and then wait for the volvo bus. Too much time wasted in waiting. I even tried walking the 3kms.
They had introduced the YI services for some time. It would show the current location of the bus you are interested in by SMS. That way you can plan your travel to the volvo bus stop. This service has been discontinued now :(.
BMTC had also introduced Gramantara bus services. They were minibuses which would go to remote and less populated areas. The advantage was that they could go through narrow and winding roads of villages. Now I see very few of those buses.
That did not work out and I'm back at using my two wheeler :(.
I read an article in the newspaper today (22nd Dec) that BMTC is introducing taxi services for those going to the new Bangalore Airport. The taxis will pick up the passenger from the house and drop at the nearest Vajra bus. Vajra (volvo) buses are being planned to pickup/drop commuters from and to the new airport to different locations in Bangalore. They are planning to use GPS to synchronize the taxis and the buses.
Now that is a brilliant idea. That covers the last mile of traveling to the airport!
If they could introduce something like that for local transport as well....
24 November 2007
Sahasi Arjun - Kannada Comics
I was fascinated by Sahasi Arjun when it appeared on a Kannada Weekly Taranga. Artwork is ok-ok. But the story line is what impressed me.
This comic was created by T.G. Shetty and was printed from 1st Sept 1991 to 31 Jan 1993. Only two stories were printed by Taranga.
According to this comics, all the mythological stories (Ramayan, Mahabharat etc) are true and they were actually super humans. Earth had a huge earthquake+flood. They left earth and settled in a very distant solar system called Apoorva. Here their race grows to occupy multiple planets in their solar system.
There is a war going on in the Apoorva Solar System and the good guys are loosing. The princess of the good guys sends a robot, Wamba-2c, to earth to recover a Vajra. Wamba-2c is accompanied by Oshira's (a yogi) spirit. The Vajra (diamond) belonged to their leader Indra, which they had to leave behind when they left earth. This Vajra had enormous power which can help them to win against the bad guys. Wamba-2c lands on earth and meets Arjun. Wamba-2c, Oshira's sprit and Arjun hunt for the Vajra.
I had never heard of T.G. Shetty before or after. I don't know who this cartoonist is, how many comics of Sahasi Arjun did he create or if he created any other comics.
I was very dissapointed when the comics suddenly ended. I don't know why. Probably the idea that all the gods and mythological characters were highly advanced humans rather than gods itself was not acceptable. Or maybe T.G. Shetty ran out of ideas.
I had saved most of the comics pages out of Taranga. Here is the first clip out of it:
My mother bound all the pages into a book. I lost the book in my mother's collection of compiled books all these years. I recovered it a few months back and read it again.
I'm still impressed by it!
12 November 2007
Aesthetic Pollution
What is Aesthetic Pollution?
Spoiling the visual beauty. Its also called Visual Pollution.
Advertisements on buses, bill boards, overhead wires, buildings etc, cause Aesthetic Pollution. Its hard to define what causes Aesthetic Pollution as beauty is in the eyes of the.. err. spectator .. observer.. .. whatever. Ask the company which put up the bill board and they'll definitely tell you that the bill board is adding to the Aesthetic Beauty. Of course, its the money speaking. Isn't it always the money which is speaking? How many businessmen (or customers!) have ever heard of Ethical Business Conduct?
I remember there was a plan to build a larger building next to Taj Mahal. It came up in the news, became a controversy, some blame games and then all news channel fell silent. The point raised was that it'll spoil the beauty of Taj Mahal. Valid point. Apparently the project was dropped.
One of my friends recently visited Badami. He says, as you enter the town you can see the beautiful and ancient caves and buildings along with three mobile towers in the background! That totally spoils the beauty. No photos taken!
Why don't we think of beauty being spoilt in our city or in our neighborhood? I was just reading another news: São Paulo has banned outdoor advertising. Many other cities around are considering the same.
Can we do that in our cities as well?
Well, we don't even have decent roads or footpaths. For the last one week, Times of India has been showing pictures of bad roads all over Bangalore and nothing is being done. We have garbage dumped all around the bins. Nobody throws wrappers in the dust bins. I don't see a sense of cleanliness itself.
I saw an ad of a property developer which said something like "are your neighbours spoiling your happy moments?". The accompanying picture has a cute little girl in a fairy dress posing for a photograph and somebody is fixing a dish antenna in the balcony of the flat of the adjoining building in the background.
People take a lot of care of their house, their personal looks, their cars, their 'happy moments'. Its just a mater of extending the same concept a bit more....
We have to first understand the importance of Aesthetic Pollution. Its a new concept around here and it'll take some time before people accept that its not a nice thing. It'll take even longer to take any action.
We definitely have a long way to go....
Spoiling the visual beauty. Its also called Visual Pollution.
Advertisements on buses, bill boards, overhead wires, buildings etc, cause Aesthetic Pollution. Its hard to define what causes Aesthetic Pollution as beauty is in the eyes of the.. err. spectator .. observer.. .. whatever. Ask the company which put up the bill board and they'll definitely tell you that the bill board is adding to the Aesthetic Beauty. Of course, its the money speaking. Isn't it always the money which is speaking? How many businessmen (or customers!) have ever heard of Ethical Business Conduct?
I remember there was a plan to build a larger building next to Taj Mahal. It came up in the news, became a controversy, some blame games and then all news channel fell silent. The point raised was that it'll spoil the beauty of Taj Mahal. Valid point. Apparently the project was dropped.
One of my friends recently visited Badami. He says, as you enter the town you can see the beautiful and ancient caves and buildings along with three mobile towers in the background! That totally spoils the beauty. No photos taken!
Why don't we think of beauty being spoilt in our city or in our neighborhood? I was just reading another news: São Paulo has banned outdoor advertising. Many other cities around are considering the same.
Can we do that in our cities as well?
Well, we don't even have decent roads or footpaths. For the last one week, Times of India has been showing pictures of bad roads all over Bangalore and nothing is being done. We have garbage dumped all around the bins. Nobody throws wrappers in the dust bins. I don't see a sense of cleanliness itself.
I saw an ad of a property developer which said something like "are your neighbours spoiling your happy moments?". The accompanying picture has a cute little girl in a fairy dress posing for a photograph and somebody is fixing a dish antenna in the balcony of the flat of the adjoining building in the background.
People take a lot of care of their house, their personal looks, their cars, their 'happy moments'. Its just a mater of extending the same concept a bit more....
We have to first understand the importance of Aesthetic Pollution. Its a new concept around here and it'll take some time before people accept that its not a nice thing. It'll take even longer to take any action.
We definitely have a long way to go....
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