Product packing

The packings of general mid-range items like crockery, electrical/electronic items are usually pretty bad. Even in highly maintained shops in prestigious malls, same treatment is noticed (there are few exceptions). Below is an example (not a good picture though).



In one of the shop (in namma Bengaluru) I visited, Goggles were placed in a glass with holes where goggle's ear support arms (temples) would go. The holes were sharp edged and no cushioning was made, most of the goggles were scratched at those temples because of wear and tear. Those are expensive ones like police, lecostie, CK etc. Mentioned this to shopkeeper, but did not look convincing that he would take any actions on that.

Toilet usage, generic improvements

These days, in most places, they are installing the western style commodes. Lack of usage knowledge usually result in a shitty condition. Some gents, don't lift the toilet seat while peeing, leaving urine strays on the toilet seat. People prefer water than toilet paper, which is fine. But often they don't wipe out the extra water on the seat or on the floor, leaving next person to have second thoughts on using the toilet. Some even forget to flush. Some toilet flush knobs have water control mechanism. That is, if you rotate the flush knob instead of pressing it, it controls the water flow quantity. If some body unknowingly rotates and keeps it in low quantity position, that is it. Next guy might not know this mechanism, just presses the knob, notices that flush is not complete, leaves it like that thinking there is a shortage of water! Horrible, isn't it!

In most of the places, it would be good to have Indian commodes as well. Especially when low labors are also using it, who are unaware of western toilets usage. Of course not saying anybody should be discouraged to use them but they should be educated. Those who missed this part, might very well miss the etiquette. In general I feel, in schools, homes usage/guidelines needs to be mentioned and also tv/movies deliberately introduce scenes on usage for public awareness.

Please do comment if something above is wrong or missed.

Bangalore v/s rest of the other indian cities!

Check this out (blogged in decmber 05) Bangalore v/s rest of other Indian cities from mindofanil.blogspot.com.

Bangalore map on internet enabled phone

If you happen to have GPRS connection on your phone, or if you have home wlan connectivity to your home broadband connection with your phone having WLAN capability, you can try out namma Bengaluru maps from Google. Use your phone web browser to point to http://mobile.google.com, and then install useful utilities like mail, maps, etc. Maps is an interesting application, type location as Bangalore and you get good quality namma Bengaluru map at your hand. GPS enabled phones give more assistance than just map. Nokia has its own maps application for its GPS enabled phones. GPS on these devices is not that powerful, it takes a while to show the co-ordinates, but future phones could solve that issue. As of now, for outdoor (And slow moving), it is pretty useful.

Lack of underpass for ring roads.

Absence of city planning has resulted in mushrooming of apartment complexes/ shops/ hotels etc besides ring roads. Better plan would have been to build townships besides the ring road and an exit from the main road to such townships. Inside the township maintain residential area as well commercial places. Also, make sure to have sufficient space left between the ring road and the first building of the township. Unfortunately people want to have their house closer to the main road. Closeness to the ring road means loud noise from the speeding vehicles (mainly trucks). Even terrible is some drivers make continuous honk and get some kind of satisfaction by doing so. Somehow people staying in the apartments close to the ring road get used to the noise to a certain extent. But for the guests it is difficult to adjust. Guests left earlier than their schedule just because of noise level (and also decided to avoid the visits as much as possible).

Shops on either side of the ring road meant, people started to cross this road (total of six lanes high speed and another 2+2 service road lanes) with heavy traffic. Few weeks ago, on one unfortunate day, an old lady from our apartment complex crossed the road to visit a dentist on the other side of the road. While coming back she could not gaze the taxi's speed and ended up taxi hitting her with a screeching break. She passed away 2 hours later in a hospital. This is one of the deaths that happen daily in namma Bengaluru. Human life has no meaning. Neither people care nor government cares! An underpass could have saved her life.

Just underpass won't help, because given an option, people usually take the shortcut. So enforcement (fencing at the road divider, blocking any road crossing) is a must for some generation until use of better options becomes a norm. An underpass exists on airport road near Domlur (nobody who drives on that road would ever notice its existence). Nobody used it and it turned out to be a shitty place.

There are other issues for having underpass as well. Mainly all the cables (telephone, tv) and the drainage pipes etc run just below the ground surface.

Say no to piracy

I always oppose piracy. I Bought a legitimate gaming CD for PC in some furniture fair, and while trying to install in my PC, found that the CD had data corrupted either due to scratches or manufacturing defects. I had not kept the bill as the value was not much and could not track the dealer as the purchase was in shop put up a fair. Of course, CD had manufacture address, couriered them for a replacement. Neither did a replacement nor did they write a courtesy reply. I knew this would be the fate, still to give it a chance and spent on the courier.

The pirated music and movies are available at very cheap price at many places in Bengaluru. Police usually take action to stop it. May be for poor people, who would like to have entertainment, this is a way for them (even if piracy were not there, they would not have spent money on the originals). But what surprises is, the guys with enough income go for this. Worst is such pirated content is used by rental shops. The pirated content is usually bad in quality, as, usually they are camera copy or some kind of compressed version. Still people want them as they want to see the latest movies. Of course seeing latest movies, in their original form in theatres in another big headache in city like namma Bengaluru. Low number of good quality theatres, lack of online reservation, traffic conditions, etc make it to avoid to facing at them.

In Helsinki, Finland, the content (music) they use in shops/restuarents, will pay the originators (manufacturers) due amount for using it for public purposes. I gues it goes same with video rental libraries as well.

Another thing noticed, is for Kannada movies, the producers are not making any DVDs (at least for the hit movies), even after 2-3 years of release. Amruthadaare, is one exception, enjoyed it watching on my high performance panasonic home theatre + panasonic wide screen, high resolution projector.

Lifts and patience

As soon as people get into a lift, one of them becomes lift boy. If he/she gets out at his intended floor, another will replace that person. This lift boy's main job is to keep a finger on the close button. Whenever lift halts at any floor, if nobody is visible in his radar, just press the close button. Usually lifts are designed to close automatically after 15 seconds or so. But 15 seconds are so precious! If there are 6 lifts, a person who had pressed the button before he could realize which one has arrived, the lift would have moved on, courtesy close button!

Once, after my office hours, I came out of office space to catch a lift to reach parking area in basement. There was already a guy and he had pressed the down button. Out of six lifts none turned up. After 6-7 seconds, he lost his patience pressed the up button as well. Okay, now a lift arrives from below floors few guys get out of it and those are the only ones who were there. The indicator for that lift is up, our guy enters into it. I don't enter thinking that it is going up. Now the guy who entered this lift (which became empty just now) presses button 0. Now the lift's indicator changes direction and starts to move down! Unfortunately the door is closed, so I can't make it to that lift. I pressed the down button again and continued my wait. Here, the lifts indicator showed upwards, only because it thought somebody had a plan to go up! There is another architectural flaw in the lift area, with six lifts in place but no staircase!!

In our apartment, we have two lifts for each of the 11 story towers. The two lifts don't talk to each other and hence operate independently. Some people press both the lifts buttons. Plan is to take whichever comes first. At the end, both turn up and only one is used. Waste of energy! Concern here is not about two lifts being independent, but our attitude.

Advances in usage of tech in Marriage ceremonies

Yesterday I had a chance to attend my colleagues, marriage party in Bengaluru. I was amazed at the way they used the technology. Though technology is not new, what surprised me is it has become common usage. There were three professional cameras (ofcourse with -men), and a control center. There were lot of monitors in the hall connected to this control center. The guy operating the control center was taking care of online editing of the three inputs and occasionally adding animations/ stills of closeups. This was actually like broadcasting of cricket match.

And the digital photography was not behind. The photographer had a nikon SLR digital camera with wireless technology. After the snap, asked guests posed along with the newly wed couple, to wait for few seconds, the guy sitting at the far at a computer screen recieved the photo over wireless, and checked if the photo was okay and signalled back to the photographer.

Gokak falls

This year Karnatak state has seen very good amount of rain fall. Many waterfalls were seen overflowing. Here is a clip of Gokak falls during mid July. Two weeks earlier, we were told the falls was more wider as the Ghataprabha river region had recieved heavy rail fall. More details from the wikipedea. Some people try to compare this with Niagara falls (I visited Niagara some 4-5 years ago), not by size but by appearance/feeling. One thing this fall lacks is constant water source, which is heavily dependent on rain. Hence, not much effort is put on improving tourism here. Ofcourse there is a hanging bridge. Walking on that, is bit scary, with doubts coming into mind, if the wooden planks are strong enough, how old are they? Anyway, it is a thrillling experience. There have been bitter experience for some who were careless on the bridge or near the cliff where the water falls (some times wind is very strong).

Around 15-20 Kms from this place there is another mini falls, Godachinamallike, which is usually ignored. Below is a snap. Our jounrey from Gokak to Belgaum was memorable as we travelled through a newly upgraded road (funded by some international bank). The quality of the road and the landscape was so nice that I recalled my jounrey in Costa del Sol, Andalucia, Spain. Hope all the roads get this kind of treatement in quality. This road connects National highway 4 and 13, with one end at Belgaum (NH4).

Independence day -2007 celelbration at Sobha Aquamarine

New apartment culture brings its own small community life. At Sobha Aquamarine, Bengaluru, we celebrate major events. Today it is independence day and this is second year here. Below is a clip taken from our new Nokia E65.

Beginning

After staying in Finland-Europe for over 8 years, returned last year back to India and Namma Bengaluru in particular. I had stayed here earlier for two years (96-98). I want to shed some feelings, good things, bad things about Bengaluru or India, now, the way I look at it. This is the first post to this.