Crazy parking at Metro station

Zoom photo and see how people park vehicles at Nayandhalli Metro Station
I have had to leave my car 4 times metro station as I wasn't able to take out my car. I had to return back after 8 pm to take my car out
Who should take car of this. 

Kid's imagination

My 3 year old : 'Appa, moon yaake hardhogide' (Dad, why is the moon torn). He was looking at half moon
Me: huh ??? - speechless
Son: Moon light off maaDidre hoTogatta (Will the moon go off when the light is swithed off)
Me: huuuuuu (thinking) ...... Howdu (yes)
Son: Aamele light on maaDidre vaapas baratta (will it come back after the light is switched on) 
Me: hhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm(thinking really hard). Howdu (yes)

He was talking about how moon rise during night and disappering in the morning

Imaginations ki height

Saw on an Auto

I read this on an auto-rickshaw in Bangalore

Hudugi Sikkidre Kaamana Billu
Hodugi doora hodre phone Billu
Hudugi Kai kotre Bar Billu

Buying or renting camping equipment

People often ask me where they can buy or rent camping/trekking equipment in Bangalore. I am trying to compile a few of them

1. After the opening of Decathlon in Bangalore, I suggest people to blindly go there and pick up there equipment from there. The items are slightly expensive, but worth it because of the quality. The items last long.There are two outlets in Bangalore
a. Bannerghatta Road
b. Sarjapur road.

Google should help you get there

2. Slightly cheaper pairs of shoe can be purchased from Woodlands
3. For people who want hike only once or may be go on pilgrimage in himalayas, I suggest buying hunter shoe. Earlier, Bata shoe rooms used to sell them. One can check them there or try some stores in Shivaji nagar, Bangalore. Hunter shoe give good grip and are very very cheap. If you are going for treks in the Himalayas, then, these can be purchased near the base camps of the trek routes
4. Some good rucksacks can be bought from Wildcraft stores in Bangalore. They are of really good quality

I will get info on the places to rent and update this post as and when I get them

Mavericks freezing

Apple announced that Mavericks is free. I regret upgrading to it. My Mac hangs quite often these days. Sometime twice or thrice a week. I was a happy using Snow leopard for last 2.5 years.
I moved out of using windows as it used to hang very often and used be very slow. I enjoyed my mac for a while and now having serious troubles.
I am desperately waiting for some updates from Apple with fix

True friend

A man brings his best buddy home for dinner unannounced at 5:30 after work.

His wife begins screaming at him and his friend just sits and listens in.  "My hair & makeup are not done, the house is mess, the dishes are not done, I'm still in my pajamas and I can't be bothered with cooking tonight! What the hell did you bring him home for?"

"Because he's thinking of getting married."

Irony of life

• while watching TV as kids, we were always looking around to see if our parents are around when the scene on the TV turns to PG18.
• while watching TV as parents, we were always looking around to see if our kids are around when the scene on the TV turns to PG18.

Adukale products

Extract from Adukale site
“Sankethi” is a small smartha-brahmin community mainly settled in the south of India in the state of Karnataka. They are believed to have migrated from Shenkottai a millennium ago and settled predominantly in Kaushika and Bettadapura in Hassan and Mysore districts of Karnataka respectively. The community has two "factions", the Bettadapura and the Kowshika Sankethis. The community is traditionally famed for intelligence, hard work and its expertise in music, vedas and in growing the areca palm The language of Sankethis’ has no written script but is more of a sweet spoken language comprising of a healthy sprinkle of Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam languages. Two main unique traits of every Sankethi family are music and of course mouth watering food preparations. The sankethis are known to be great cooks and even better.....awesomely generous servers! While tasting delicious, the sankethi cuisine eschews the extent of spices and heat traditionally found in south Indian cuisine. Sankethi style of cooking is completely different and incorporates a blend of tastes from Kerala, Karnataka and Tamilnadu. Their signature dishes are Chomai (Steamed Rice vermicelli) made from scratch, Gojjavalakki (peppered broken rice) and Kolakattaes (Steamed rice dumplings). In Sankethi, “Adukale” means kitchen- traditional Sankethi cuisine. Most of the original recipes have been passed across generations more by choice than by design for the love for food is more in the genes. “Adukale” is an attempt at reviving and reliving the original Sankethi epitome of good food. Each of the products has a healthy sprinkle of spices which appeal to the culinary senses of the old and young. Each of the mixes combines knowledge, experience, dedication, perfection and passion to give you the gastronomic experience you have always been waiting for. Go ahead and let your taste buds tingle….with our wide range of products to choose from.

Nikhil_speech on Sri Sri Prakashnath Swamiji

Nikhil_speech on Sri Sri Prakashnath Swamiji, Managing Director, SJBIT

Nikhil's speech on his school annual day

Nikhil's speech on his school annual day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY2uuXGmhUQ&feature=youtu.be

Kids these days ...

2 boys aged 6 and 9 were talking to me in the park. 9 year, pointing at 6 year old told to me "Uncle, he talks bad words". I ignored the his comments. After a while, the 6 year old starts singing "Tsamina mina eh eh Waka Waka eh eh" The 9 year old quickly points to me and says, "see he is saying bad words - Tsamina mina eh eh F&*Ker F&*&ker eh eh". I was stunned - how does a 9 year old know the "F" word. The 6 year old quickly retorted and said " I didn't say F*&Ker, I said waka waka". I almost fainted

Insulting Attitude of goAir call center rep

I had called up the goAir call center today and the call center representative called my friends a 'bakra'
I was very upset and registered a complaint on the goAir website

Here is the extract of the complaint....
--
I had a complaint aginst the call center rep (Tajinder) whom I spoke to today (at 3.20 pm IST, 16th Feb, 2012).
I have booked tickets for my friends who are in Ahmendabad, who unfortunately don't have access to Internet to take print out of the ticket. I had called in to enquire if they can get the E-ticket at the airport.
After listening to my question, Tejinder (without muting his line), turns asked someone in hindi "Ek bande ne 6 logon ke liye ticket book karayi hai, and un 6 bakron ke pass internet access nahi hain. Kya unko airport me ticket mil jaayegi …..". Then the phone went to mute
Wow, is this how you talk about your customers? What right does he have to call my friends a 'bakra'. It is none of his business to pass comments on us.

After a while, Tejinder unmuted the phone and got back to me. When I inquired about why he called us a bakra, he denied it and said that he was not talking about us, but about someone else.

Then I asked him to connect me to the supervisor. He agreed and turned around (without muting the line) and told someone in hindi ' usne, mujhe bakra bolte huye sun liya.' . After some low back ground conversation, the phone went mute. Before the phone went mute, I think I heard him asking one of his colleages to talk to me like a supervisor.

I spoke to the supervisor Pradeep Pandey and complained. He too denied the incident and apologized.

I regret having booking a ticket on goair which doesn't respect the customers. Please take action

Regards
Nagendra HK
---


This is the response I gor from goAir

Dear Mr. Nagendra
Warm Greetings from GO Air!
Further to your email, we are sorry to hear about your unpleasant experience at Call Center.
We empathize with your concern and apologize for the same. We wish to inform you that we have terminated both the representatives after listening to the call recording. We at Go Air, always believe and are trained to put our Customers first. A seamless, comfortable travel experience is what we aim to go about every time. At times, as in this instance, we do fall short. Feedback such as yours helps us improve. We hope you shall view this as an exception and consider giving Go Air an opportunity to welcome your aboard once again.
Mr. Nagendra, we once again humbly request you to treat this case in isolation it deserves and do not let it deter you from patronizing Go Air. We would appreciate if you could grant us another opportunity to serve you better in near future.
For further information on Flight schedules / fares / booking, please revert to us at feedback@goair.in or contact us at 1800-222- 111 / 9223-222-111. We would be glad to assist you. We would request you to frequently visit our website www.GoAir.in for updated information.
Thanks and Regards,
Aparna Desai
Customer Care

Girl power

Heard from a bunch of folks at office while heading towards stairs to go down.

First Guy: Lets take stairs, we just have to go one floor down

Girl: Nooo, we have to go 2 floors (won't it be difficult, you moron)
Another guy: Ok then, lets take the elevator
.
.
And the whole gang followed .... :-)

Seat belt traffic fine

Just 7 days in to the rule being introduced, I paid my first fine for not wearing the seat belt.

Another blunder happened. When the cop stopped me, he also told me that there was an older fine(ticket) of Rs 100/- for a violation at Ashwath Nagar. I didn't even know where this area was and don't remember travelling there. The cop also didn't know where this area was. I also told him that i had cleared all my traffic dues 3 months ago. The cop told me that this was a 2010 violation which probably was uploaded to their server recently (in last 3 months) and hence I have to pay up. Relentlessly, i paid and came home. While looking for Ashwath Nagar on google maps, i realized that it was somewhere near Marath Halli and i have never been to that area in my car. I cross checked the receipt again and realized that the cop had mistyped the car number :( . Instead of 2450, he had typed 2550 and I landed up paying some one else's fine. I checked with another traffic cop (my neighbour) and he told me that there is no way I am going to get this money back :(

I caught the traffic cop again the next day at the same spot and asked him why he did this blunder the previous day. He laughed about it and told me that he cannot do anything about it and cannot refund. He told me that next time I violate traffic, he will let me go without collecting fine. So I asked him if he expects(wants) me to violate traffic. He wasn't expecting me to say that and told me that I shouldn't violate traffic, but if I were to, then he will let me go. I pursued that for me to go to him, I have to violate traffic only in his jurisdiction. He was clueless on how to reply to my question and wanted me out. And I did .....

Currently playig

I am currently playing Block Puzzle on my Android. Pretty interesting

Some android apps for kids

Here are some of the android apps that my kid uses(plays)

Ant smasher
Barney the Dinosaur
Dora puzzle
Kids coloring
Kids Animals (there is a bunch of stuff in this series. I don't remember all the names, as I deleted them due to lack of space. There were a few for alphabets, numbers, animals etc)
Moron test (my son's fav)
snow white puzzle
Memory

Ferrari collection

If you fill full tank petrol (or a min of Rs 1500/- for car or Rs 350/- for bike) at shell petrol bunk in bangalore, you get a small ferrari car collection. I already have collected 2 cars

Things to cherish from school

My recent post Entering the next phase of life has made me remember what all I did when I was a kid in school, some of which even my friends remember.

1. Accidentally hit principal with a ball.
2. Collided with a classmate and had stitches. Because of this incident, playing cricket in the school ground was canceled.
3. Involved in wrestling resulting in breaking the glass of library show-case
4. Caused bulbs to burst in physics lab as I had incorrectly connected the wires for my physics experiment.
5. Losing my school fees in bus. After this my mom used to make me go to the school principal's house, which was very close to my house, to pay the fees.
6. Involved in petty fights with class mates in bus.
7. Forgetting my unit test and happily going to school without getting prepared for the exam. Got very less marks in that subject

Entering the next phase of life

I had not felt that I had entered the next phase of life even when I had got a school admission for my kid. But the feeling dawned upon me when I stood in the school line "with other parents" for collecting his uniform.

Wondering when the day will come when I have to stand in front of the principal's office because Nikhil broke other kid's nose

saving on monthly shopping

I was stuck behind a sardar family at star bazaar cash counter, this morning. They were there to do their monthly grocery and other consumables shopping. There final bill was was a whopping Rs 33000/-. They had filled up 8-10 shopping carts. The cashier was later saying that they come every month and make such a huge bill.
Why don't people with such huge consumption rate, go to wholesalers like Metro or such and get a min discount of 15-20%.They were 8-10 people from the family who had come to shop and paid the entire amount in cash. Couldn't believe, that they didn't think of converting it to credit card reward points.

In fact, I am a frequenter at 'Metro cash and carry'. I go there once in 4-6 months and buy all the non-edible items for 2 families. On a purchase of Rs 10,000, I save close to Rs 2000. I not only save a flat 15-20%, but also beat inflation for 6 months. Apart from this my friend made me realize that every time I have to have to buy something, I have to drive to the nearby store there by spending on fuel (and also spending time). By buying in bulk, I am saving on fuel too :)

The flip side, is by buying more, I am stocking up more at home. Since I have surplus quantity at home, I tend to consume more, there by buying more. So, it is a vicious circle.

I buy more to save more. But use more since I have bought more. I now have to buy more since I have used more :)

People who want to learn to how save money on monthly shopping should watch this mommy from Massachusetts whose family of 6 lives off $4/wk for food