Pizza hut's Anti Kannada Policy

Recently I had been to Pizza Hut in Ring road near Kamakya theater in Bangalore. As we were placing our orders, I noticed that the waiter replied to everything that I asked in English. When I asked him if he was not familiar with the language, he told me that he was a Kannadiga, but he was not allowed to talk in Kannada. When I inquired more he told me that, it was the Pizza Hut policy that the staff was strictly instructed not to speak in Kannada. I was furious at their racial policy. How can Pizza Hut not respect the the local language. They want to do business in Karnataka and make money, but don't want to encourage the local language. Forget encouragement, they were discouraging it. This is a highly racial attitude. I condemn their policy.
I even left a feed back about this at their drop box.

As I was in the middle of voicing my opinion with the staff, I noticed two elderly ladies in their sixties, enter the outlet. I could hear them speak as they were quite loud. They called the waiter and told them that they were coming to their 'Hotel' for the first time and wanted some help in ordering the food. It was very evident, that both the ladies were not able to talk in English. The waiter helped them smilingly with their questions - All in Kannada. If the waiter had strictly followed their anti Kannada policy, then Pizza Hut would have lost the business and would have left 2 more unhappy customers (apart from me).
Later, my wife told me that she and her cousin too have voiced their opinion at a different outlet about the policy.
I would request every reader to go the pizza hut website http://www.crm.pizzahut.co.in/index.php and give a feedback about their policy

avarekai mela

I had been to the 'Avarekai Mela' last Sunday. I heard about it from my sister and went there with my family to feast on various snacks made out of Avarekai (lilva beans).
Out of the many dishes available, I tasted the Avarekai Dosa, Avarekai Obbattu, Avarekai Masala Vade and Avarekai Churumuri and Avarekai Uppit. I was tempted to taste the Avarekai Paayasa and Avarekai Chitranna, but didn't have any space left in my tummy.



Avarekai mela happens every winter at 'Vasavi condiments' at Sajjan Rao circle in Bangalore. This is at the beginning of the eat street (a.k.a Shettara Paalya or Tindi Beedi) opposite VB Bakery. Go there to try some mouthwatering authentic Karnataka food.

Movie time

I spent a lot of time watching movies in December. I watched around 40 movies in one month.
I crazy saturday, I watched 7 movies back to back

The list of movies that I watched were pending for several years. I was watching a few movies for the second time. I also finished watching 8 seasons of 'Thats 70s show' and 2 seasons of 'Mind your language'. Here goes the list.

Movie list
wide awake
Hotel Rwanda
Pretty woman
Training day
Bone collector
The peace maker
Untouchables
Schindler's List
The departed
[2006] Apocalypto
Good will hunting
rush hour 1,2 and 3
spy game
The wedding crashers
The green mile
The usual suspects
L.A. Confidential
Amelie
madagascar
The Motorcycle Diaries
Flavours
Tokyo drift
Runaway Jury
Love Guru
Munich
The Silence of the Lambs
Great Expectations
Gangs Of New York
men of honour
Traffic
Fight club
click
You've got mail
Wednesday

Standup comedy
Russel peters
Comedy - Pablo Francisco -

TV series
All 8 seasons of That 70's show
2 seasons of Mind your language
Few episodes of Dilbert

Except for a couple of movies, most of them were good.

Macbook Wheel

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard









http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

smiley moon

Yesterday (1st Dec 2008), we could witness a smiling moon. I wish I had a good camera to capture it. I was crippled with my 3X optical zoom camera. I had to switch on the additional 4X digital zoom to get a hazy image of moon. I just wished that I had a better camera and a tripod.

Venus and Jupiter have appeared side by side in the evening sky over the past week or so, but yesterday was the best night to see the "face" appear. I was told that this happens very occationally (once in 4 years). I called up a few friends so that they could watch it too. The kids were delighted to see this.





Because my hand shook, the moon laughed instead of a smile

Rajarajeshwarinagar - a pilgrimage

Rajarajeshwarinagar in Bangalore is more like a temple town. If anyone visits Rajareshwarinagar, they can check out a few temples


1. Rajarajeshwari temple - Something I myself didn't know until I read the wikipedia, is that the temple was built in the late 1960s. This temple has Jnanakshi Shri Rajarajeshwari as its deity, and is maintained by the Kailasa Ashrama Trust.
















2. Nimishamba temple - The Temple contains the shrines of Devi Nimishamba, Moukthikeswara (Isvara), Siddhi Vinayaka, Saraswathi and Lakshmi Narayana. Chandika Homa is performed everyday in a specially designed Yajna Shala.






3. Shanmuga temple A beautiful temple of shanmuga on top of a small hill. It is started by the sringeri mutt. The temple has a magnificent Gopuram with the six faces of lord subramanya.














4. Omkar hills - Omkar Hills is the tallest glorious and devotional spots in Bangalore with the avowed objective of propagating. The Ashrama has a Goshala, a Sanskrit Pathashala and arrangements for training in Vedagamas. A magnificient Tower Clock, bigger than the reputed Big Ben of London, with provision to bring out Shankanada and Omkaranada along with the striking of each hourly gong, has been installed on the Hill.
5. Shridhara Gudda

The Universal brothers

One of my good friends Rohini wrote a poem for me and my friend

The great poem--:-)
THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERS
Criminal looks, diehard Image
Sporting biceps thinner than matchsticks
Oh!Here they come to display their antics
One is surely Maharishi Narad
The other no better than him
Can you guess what they are competing for
Forcing their entry amidst girls
The first competition is blading
Second is a pretty disastrous one
To obtain the title of "Krishna paramatma"
Little do they know
They are two precious ge(r) ms
Presenting Junnu bhai and Nag bhai
The universal brothers of the world

The original post can be read at
http://rohini-scribble.blogspot.com/2007/12/universal-brothers.html

Don't throw your Plastic bag

Necessity is the mother of all innovation

15,000 hits

Today I had 15,000th hit on my blog. It took 6 months to reach from 10,000 (in april) to 15,000

Saakappa september

September 2008 was a terrible month for me. A series of things happened, which were not asked for

- I left the car keys inside and had to wait for 4 hours to get duplicate key from home.
- The car front wind shield broke as a monkey threw a coconut on it. To get it fixed, I had to spend Rs 3000 from my pocket inspite of claiming insurance.
- My cousin's son dropped my Iphone and the front glass pane got cracked. Apple does not support the broken glass for a 2G Iphone.
- The cell Iphone got locked and I am still unable to unlock it.
- The side mirror from my car fell of somewhere on the road and I have to cough up Rs 4500 to get it replaced.
- Some jerk carved his name on my car. I hate the name 'Manju'
- Traffic Police caught me at the traffic signal for a wrong reason.
- Had a severe sprain in my knee and it hurts even after 2 weeks
- The external 500 GB hard disk I bought just 2 months ago is not powering up

Experience at Indi Joe Restaurant

It was my colleagues Bharadwaj's birthday and we decided to go out for lunch to celebrate. After some discussion, we decided to go to Indi Joe Restaurant (from BJN group) in Airport road. We entered the place and were comfortably seated for a while before proceeding for the Buffet. Firstly, I saw a dead mosquito on the plates kept and a while later a moth flying around. When I pointed this to the person in charge, he quickly removed the plate. Then, after picking up the soup, we proceeded further to pick up the starters. I, being a vegetarian was looking for vegetarian stuff. At that point, I saw a dish which looked delicious but looked like a non-veg dish. I mentioned that to my friend, who pointed me to the menu card placed next to it which said 'veg kabab'. So, picked it up. As I was heading back to my seat, I heard a friend of mine who said that there board which said veg-shrimps. How could shrimp be classified as veg? Without giving much thought to it, I proceeded back to my seat and started eating. I tasted the 'veg kabab' and didn't like it and kept it aside. At that point, a friend noticed that the 'veg kabab' we were eating had some meat in that. Then quickly a couple of others noticed it too. That was too much for my veggie friends. This being the dussera season, many of my colleages had given up non-veg food. The host himself was a staunch vegetarian. He doesn't even taste egg. He was very upset as he too had tasted a portion of the same dish. We called the people in charge and told them about what had happened. By now, they had even removed the board next to the dish which said 'veg kabab'. They had realized their blunder.
We decided to walk out of the place. When the manager of the place came to us and apologized for their mistake. But by now all of has had decided not to stay back. But the manager insisted that he stay back and accept their hospitality. He said that he would serve us 'A la carte'. He pleaded us to give him a chance to make up for their mistake. I think that was the least he could do for us. Our lunch which was taken care by the hotel.
What was different about this restaurant and others was that these people were polite enough to accept their mistake and make up for it. Many other restaurants would have probably just apologized and would have probably let us walk out. I have been to many restaurants where they hardly care for your feelings and their negative publicity. I really liked the manager's attitude who assigned a person to take care of our table to see that nothing else went wrong. They even gave a complementary birthday cake.
These small gestures from the hotel staff seemed to calm down the birthday boy a little, who could not eat anything after the incident. He was good enough not to spoil the occasion for others even thought he felt really bad about the whole incident.
But still this was a big act of negligence from such a big group like BJN.

Bel-Beligge Belegere

Fed up of the bak-bak by the RJ's, these days I have reduced listening to the private radio channels. Switch to the radio channels sponsored by VividBharati's akashvani and you will listen to the sweet-calm voice of the RJs. There are no SMS contests, no stupid quizzes, no idiotic jokes, but simple, to the subject compering. Many a times, the RJs give out good messages early in the morning which makes you think.
While listening to FM 101.3, I listened to the program called 'Bel-Beligge Belegere'. It is a program hosted by a noted writer and journalist Mr. Ravi Belagere.
This program is at 8.00 am every morning. He picks up day to day life examples and gives out food for thought. He talks about life, relationships, small happiness in life in a very simple way that everyone listening to him goes with the flow. If we follow many of the suggestion that he gives, which are very very simple and easy, we can avoid a lot of small fights in life.
Today he was talking about getting complements from the near and dear ones. These were things we knew but never gave much importance. He was mentioning that when we get compliments from the people close to us, it makes a lot more impact than the ones whom we don't know. If we start appreciating the small things in life (like appreciating the wife on her cooking or giving mom or dad a small compliment on the something they did at home), it motivates them to continue the good work.
If you read this article, then try to listen to this program sometime

Got Iphone

I had been trying to get an iPhone for the last 3 months. I tried buying at Apple stores and AT&T stores in the US, but none of them had any stock of the iPhone. Now finally, I procured one. I had been debating with my cousins who were biased by reading some blogs which said why iPhone was a bad buy. As per different blogs, iPhone features were far less when compared to other phones and they talked about the various drawbacks of iPhone. But for me iPhone is all about usability. No other phone can that I have seen so far can beat the user interface of an iPhone. Just use it to feel the difference. I can get scores of applications for iphone on the web too.
I am still enjoying playing with my new toy.

After the Bangalore bomb blast

On the day when Bangalore Blasts happened, I left office by 5.00 pm. I was expecting that the roads would be crowded and it would take me 2-3 hours to reach home. But to my surprise, the roads were all empty. There are lots of IT companies around Koramangala, Airport road, Bannerghatta road etc. I was thinking that people will panic and go rush home causing traffic jams. But people thought that staying in office was safer (just like me) and hence roads were very clear. As I entered the Madivala where the bomb blast had happened, I saw a huge crowd causing traffic jam. The reason was that there a few TV channels covering the news and people were interested in coming on the TV. People didn't care about the drizzle as well. I reached home very quickly.

On monday morning, bangalore is back to business. We started with Traffic jams. Bombs and other threats does not scare people. Life must go on and so does work. Leaving the bomb threats for police to solve, people are getting back to their busy normal schedule. No one has time. People once said the same about Bombay - that no one has time and the city is always on the move. Bombay was back in business the next day after the serial bomb blasts in train stations. Now it is the same about Bangalore. Time is money. And people don't have time. You can't give the little time you have to think about these scares.

Hope we can leave all the threats behind. Hope peace returns to Bangalore soon

who says cell phone is not harmful

Watch the video on how Pop corn is made usign cell phone signals

http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html

This dude can dance

watch the entire video - it is awesome
It is an unbelievable dance performance



I think he Can Dance - Watch more free videos

http://www.break.com/index/i-think-he-can-dance.html

piclens add on for firefox 3

Full-Screen, 3D -- PicLens transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for finding and viewing online photos and videos. Their "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images, videos, news feeds, sports feeds, and more. See the demo at http://piclens.com/demo

Download it from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

Honda Announces FCX Clarity - hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles

With crude oil crossing $130 a barrel, everyone is thinking of alternate fuel. Though hybrid cars are becoming popular, people need more fuel efficient vehicles. Honda Announced FCX Clarity which is a hydrogen-powered fuel cell car. Honda claims that it gives three times the mileage of a petrol car or twice as much as hybrid car.
Honda FCX Clarity emits only water as a by-product. So, they claim that there is no global warming not pollution. These cars will take a long time to become commercially viable as there are no petrol bunks which fill hydrogen. It will take atleast 3-4 years when we will see a few of them on road. Again the car has to be rightly priced, if not, people will never buy it.

There is a nice article about the FCX clarity launch on http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/16-06-08
As per this article, they want to introduce the vehicle in the US in the following way

-Step 1 -- Based on respondents' residential location, the list of potential customers has been narrowed to approximately 500 people living in very close proximity to publicly-accessible hydrogen fueling stations, including planned or existing stations in Santa Monica, Torrance and Irvine.

-Step 2 -- Customers meeting the geographical criteria will receive an e-mail prompting them to take a customer selection survey if they are serious about wanting to lease an FCX Clarity.

-Step 3 - The survey will qualify customers based on driving patterns, vehicle needs, vehicle storage and financial criteria.

-Step 4 - Customers qualify for the next steps, including an interview with American Honda.

I think till Clarity becomes commercially available, Toyota Prius will dominate the US market

Have you downloaded firefox3 yet

Firefox 3 is out there for download. You can download it from
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?p=downloadday

Firefox is trying to set a Guiness record by seting the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours.
I am waiting to find the result myself

It is an just amazing how Firefox broke the monopoly over Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In 2004 MSIE had 95% market share and in 4 years Firefox has eaten 18.5% of it.

How Subprime mortgages work

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1#0