Fiesta is here

I finally took delivery of my new Ford Fiesta 1.6SXI last Saturday. It has been a long journey that started way back in 2004 when having come back from Australia, Vidya and I were decided on a car. In those days, we were staying in Mangalore and our options were a little limited due to the limited number of dealerships. Having owned the original Santro, I was set on buying a C segment car and had almost finalized on the Baleno which had just been relaunched. Somehow, I allowed myself to be talked out of it by one of my “friends” who convinced me that the cost of ownership and service would be too high. We finally ended up buying a Santro Xing. I have no complaints with the Santro, but whenever we go on a highway trip, I think wistfully about how much better it would have been in a Baleno.

Anyway, cut forward a few years. In that time, a lot has changed. With Mukund's arrival, we feel the need for a larger car, especially for outstation trips. I wasn’t too particular about it being a sedan or large hatch. So, I set about looking for various options in the 6-8l bracket. The cars I shortlisted were

1.Hyundai i20

2.Fiat Grande Punto

3.Honda City

4.Maruti SX4

The first one to be eliminated was the City. It was way outside my budget. I didn’t even want to take a test drive, because I know that none of the other cars would match up in terms of performance or refinement and I would always be thinking of what I was missing by not buying the City. Maybe at some other time, but right now the big H was out of reach.

I test drove the i20 twice. I loved its looks and the general interior quality. But the power and performance of the 1.2 l engine was disappointing. With 3 of us on board, it struggled with the acceleration. This was addressed to some extent with the diesel, but I wanted a petrol engine, as the premium for a diesel engine is not funny. They do have a 1.4l petrol version, but it only comes with the automatic transmission. So, the i20 was out as well.

Next up was the Grande Punto. I had a lot of expectations from this car. When I saw it in person, it was a disappointment. The interior space was limited and I felt that the quality of the interiors was not up to the mark. I test drove it right after launch, so the time in it was limited, but even in a brief drive, it made a very good impression. But, the quality and lack of space was a definite deal-killer. While at the Fiat-Tata showroom, I briefly looked at the Linea, but having read enough reports on how the 1.4 petrol was underpowered, I decided to hold on for the 1.6 launch.

The final car that I test drove was the SX4. I was extremely happy with the car, it looked good, handled well, had adequate power, good ground clearance etc. Then I learnt that a facelift was imminent and decided to wait it out.

I’d left out a few cars from my list for a number of reasons

Indica Vista: space inside was massive, but boot was too small, plus there was no version with airbags. I wasn't very happy with the interior quality as well

Swift Zxi: never liked the looks of the car

Aveo: one of my favourite cars lookswise, but again airbags were not available.

Fiesta: felt that it was a little too small, not much of an upgrade space wise from Santro.

So, there I was in September, without a car and in waiting mode. Waiting for the new SX4 to be launched. Then I met a friend of my wife, who’d come over with his family. I knew that he had bought a petrol Fiesta a couple of months back and was curious to find out the thinking behind his decision. I went down to have a dekko at his car. The cabin did look small, but seemed big enough for my needs. I then took the car for a small drive and was bowled over by its power (though I couldn’t really test it out as it was in the running in period) as well as its poise on the road (or what remains of it in HSR Layout). Then came the clincher, he said that as employees of a Ford supplier, he and my wife were eligible for special supplier pricing, which was almost 70K less than the regular price.

That piqued my interest and I decided to explore more. I started out naturally at my favourite timewaster automobile site team-bhp and found a world of really passionate enthusiasts who were totally in love with the Fiesta. Satisfied, I called Lathangi Motors for a test drive. I took a 15 km drive through the ORR and some of the service roads and came back totally impressed. This was followed by another round of test drive, this time with Vidya and Nisha. Ultimately, everyone was onboard that it was a good buy.

But there was still the decision on whether to go with this or wait for the SX4 to be launched and then decide. I thought about it a little bit and felt that it was just a case of putting off the decision. They were not comparable pricewise (SX4 is 8.6L OTR, I was getting Fiesta SXI for 7.5L OTR), plus SX4 would likely be even more expensive when it is relaunched. So, the Fiesta it was, a decision made not just with the heart but with the head as well.

What I liked about the car

- Looks (some may say that Fiesta looks dated, but it has a classic feel to it, especially side on, it looks very proportionate unlike other cars in its segment

- Engine power

- Ride, felt really composed over the bumpy HSR roads

- Handling

- Interiors on the SXI, those leather seats are awesome

- Loaded with airbags, ABS, chrome everything

Things that could be better

- ICE, having got used to USB/Bluetooth on my current setup, it is like going 2 years into the past. Still the sound quality is good

- Glove box space felt a little small, but I’ll know only after sustained use

- No dead pedal

Totally dissatisfied with

- Indicators, why they are on the left in a made-for-India car is beyond me

- Chrome side view mirrors (ugh)

I booked the car on Oct 12, expecting to get delivery in 2 weeks time. It was a tough choice on the colour, the white (taxi), silver (already had a silver Santro), platinum (the most common colour), morello (purplish tinge)today, red (too bright) and black (tough to maintain) were eliminated and I went for the sea grey having never seen a car in the colour. The delivery took a little longer than expected and when it finally arrived, I wasn't all that thrilled with the colour, somehow it seemed a little lighter than I expected. But I wasn't prepared to wait for another month and gave the go-ahead to register it.

We picked it up on Saturday evening, did a small pooja at the Anjaneyar kovil near our house and brought it back. Unfortunately, it was raining throughout and the car got a little messy, so I couldn't take the photos that I had planned on Sunday. That will have to wait for the cleanup this week.

Missing App Store on iphone

I recently encountered a problem on my ipod touch where the App Store was completely missing from the device. In addition, when I plugged in the touch to my computer, the Application tab was rendered read-only. This meant that I was not able to add any new applications or rearrange the icons through iTunes. A google search did not offer much advice except to restore the device to factory settings. But that would mean that all data would be lost and have to be retransferred, which could take a long time on my 32 Gig touch.

I set out to explore a little more and I found a suggestion on the Apple support forums that it could be related to Restrictions. So, I set out to explore that under Settings->General->Restrictions and voila, I found that the setting for Installing Applications was Off. A quick change to On and the App Store icon came right back on.

Back to Bangalore...at last

I made my first trip to Chennai for the Satyam transition project on 1-Sep. Between then and today, I have travelled back and forth 6 times spending almost 60% of the time there. In hindsight, a lot of our preparation was overkill as the cutover went through extremely well. But as I am discovering, that is how my new boss operates, he wants to sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed well in advance and goes over it twice to make sure!!!

I was expecting to work out of our Mount Road office, but it was not to be. To ensure proximity to the Satyam office, we had taken an office on Old Mahabalipuram Road (aka Rajiv Gandhi Salai : why do we insist on naming everything after that blasted family) near Thoraipakkam. Despite the development that has taken place over the last 5 years, there is a big difference between that and the rest of the city especially when it comes to decent hotels and restaurants. Since we were in office till 10pm almost every day, it wasn't so bad. But once the cutover was complete, we were done at 6pm and that's when I felt isolated on OMR road.

At home, Mukund has been growing a lot and progressing enormously in his development. He now smiles all the time, especially when he is around his Nisha-akka. He has outgrown the batchtub we had bought for him, so we had to go and buy a replacement one today. Nisha is doing well in school, she and the 1-5 standard kids are putting up a grand show next week. She has not revealed much as it is meant to be a "surprise" for the parents.

My new Ford Fiesta is coming tomorrow. I went for a grey colour one, as none of the other colours appealed much to me. I wasn't very impressed with the grey, but since I had booked it, and a change would have taken another month, I had to go ahead. I've still not decided what to do with the Santro. I could sell it or employ a driver and use it for Vidya to go to the office. I'll decide in a month or so.

The other thing that I am really looking forward to is cycling and jogging, which have suffered greatly over the past 2 months. A lack of exercise and unhealthy diet have sent my weight soaring over the big eighty, have to work hard to bring it down to 77-78 before the month end!!!

Thoughts on Diwali

Ah, Diwali, the time when the PC class gangs up to complain about child labour, pollution etc. I am getting tired to hearing the same bull repeated year after year. Consider the arguments against the festival

Child labour in Sivakasi: I am no expert and don't know the current situation. This has been highlighted a lot over the years and I have seen reports of action being taken against the culprits. Child labour, if it still exists, is a symptom, not the cause. The children work because their parents are too poor to continue to send them to school. The solution is to lift the families out of poverty AND educate them about the importance of keeping their kids in school. Accomplish that and watch the problem go away, if not the people will just send their children to work elsewhere.

Noise/atmospheric pollution: This argument has more merit as the increase in the SPM count and other gases cause problems to those having respiratory issues. The other constituent that suffers the most are the animals that are mortally scared of the loud noise. Some steps have been taken in this direction by banning really loud crackers. I've also seen a gradual shift towards the visual aspect of fireworks over the years.

There are quite a few positive aspects of Diwali

Awareness of tradition: Diwali is one of the fun ways to get children to understand about Indian culture and tradition

Boost to the economy: The spending that happens during Diwali may seem vulgar to the PC masses. But, it is this kind of spending that stimulates the economy and creates jobs for the poorer classes.

Let's put this bullcrap aside and celebrate Diwali in the traditional way. Happy Diwali everyone.

Goodbye Kimi?

After months of speculation, the news is finally out. Fernando Alonso is moving to Ferrari for on a 3 year contract. I am excited as I see Alonso cast in the same mould as Schumacher. Maybe, he is not as complete or as fast as Schumi, but he will get the maximum out of the car every single weekend. Kimi, on the other hand, has never been as consistent, there are days where it seems like he is on a different planet and days where he never shows up on the track.

There is a lot of speculation that he is going to Mclaren. I hope that is true, for losing him would be a big loss to F1.

I don't know what makes me support a particular driver. There are examples like Prost, Schumacher, Kimi, Heidfeld who I liked from day 1 and have looked to support them through their career. I think it is a combination of their performance with reports in the media that make me form an opinion about an individual. There have been only two cases where I changed my opinion, the first was Senna, who I hated initially but became a big fan of later on. The other is Alonso, who has really won over me over the past two years.

Evolution of PC

I was reading yet another article on the relative merits of Mac vs PC. There were many comments that made the point that Macs lost a lot longer than PCs. That got me thinking of whether that was really the case. How long had my PC’s lasted? I realized that I didn’t really know and set out on a trip down memory lane to catalogue the various computers that me and my family have owned.

Siva PC: This was bought by my father in the 80s as an office computer. It cost almost 60,000 rupees (in 80’s money). I think it had a 8086 processor, 640KB of RAM, a 20 MB hard disk and a green screen monitor. Needless to say, it only ran DOS and software like Lotus 1-2-3, Wordstar etc. I don’t think we got too much of usage out of it while my father’s factory was operational, except for some financial accounting. After we closed the factory, we brought the computer home and I remember playing around with it for a few years before it died a natural death.

- Assembled PC #1: The next computer I bought was an assembled PC in 1996. I boasted a 100 Mhz Pentium processor, a massive 4 MB of RAM, a 1 GB hard disk, CD-ROM and a colour monitor. It cost me almost 40,000 rupees back then. I used it till around 2000 when I upgraded to Assembled PC #2. I don’t remember what I did with it, most likely we just gave it away.

- Computer in US : When I went onsite for the second time in late 1996, I bought a computer at Fry’s electronics. It was a slightly more powerful version of the one I had at home with a 133 Mhz processor. I sold it to my roommate when I returned for good. That was also the trip where I bought a 16 MB RAM stick for my PC in India for an unworldly price of 350 dollars.

As Built PC #1: In 2000, it was finally time to upgrade my PC and Vidya and I decided to build a PC together. I had bought a CPU and hard disk from the US and we went to SP Road to buy the remaining parts. We ended up with a Celeron 667, 128 MB of SDRAM (which I later upgraded to 384 MB), a 4.3 GB hard drive and a CDROM (later upgraded to a CD-writer). We retained the 15 inch monitor from the PC which we later upgraded to a second hand 17 inch in 2003. We used this PC till the end of 2004, but when we came back to Bangalore, we stopped using it. I used some of the parts (memory, hard drive) on PC#3, and to my surprise, managed to sell the remaining parts in 2006 for around 1000 rupees.

- Australia PC: When we went to Australia in 2002, we initially picked up a cheap second hand computer, a Pentium 2 model. A few months later, when it seemed like Vidya’s work from home plan would fructify, we invested in a proper model, a Pentium 3 – 700 Mhz monster with 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB hard disk, 17 inch monitor etc for 700 australian dollars. When we returned back to India in 2003, we sold it to my friend Venky.

- PC Build #2: After returning back to India in 2003, we moved to Mangalore. In Bangalore, my mother was left without a PC. In 2004, I built the third computer. Unlike the previous computer where I salvaged a lot of parts, this was a complete unit, with a Athlon XP 2000+, 512 MB of RAM, 40 GB hard disk, DVD drive and a 17 inch Samsung monitor. This computer survives till this day, though in a very different form. The guts of the machine (MB+CPU, RAM, HDD) are now in my father-in-law’s machine at Chennai.I’ve upgraded those to a 2.66 GHz Core2Duo E6700 with 2 GB of RAM and 570 GB of hard disk space. The monitor has been exchanged for a 19 inch Viewsonic LCD. The case, keyboard, mouse, speakers and UPS remain functional a full 5 years later. The OS has also evolved, I initially used a copy of Windows 2000, switched to a legal OEM copy of Windows XP in 2006 and when I upgraded the CPU in late 2007, bought a full version of Windows Vista Home Premium.

- Laptop #1: I’ve never been a fan of laptops, despite using a laptop as my primary work machine since 2002. In my view, they were slow and expensive. I finally bit the bullet in 2007 and bought a HP dv6516 tx as a birthday present for Vidya. It cost almost 60000 rupees and had a 1.5 GHz Core2Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 15.4 inch screen and a DVD drive. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Except for some reliability with wireless networking, it has performed flawlessly over the past 2 years. I upgraded the machine to the RC version of Windows 7 and intend to upgrade to the full version in October. At the same time, I'll probably upgrade the hard drive to a 500 GB one.

- The Future: Both of my computers are fast enough for anything that I throw at them, whether it is browsing or playing games or encoding movies (OK, the laptop is not, but I would not ever transcode a movie on a laptop when a desktop is available as an option). Another big change is the rise of portable computing through devices like the iphone and Nokia internet tablet. As they evolve, they make the case for a full sized desktop or laptop that much less compelling. So, I don’t see myself upgrading my current setup anytime soon, unless something breaks.

Looking back, I see that pretty much every computer has lasted me atleast 3-4 years, so much for PC’s being unreliable. I’ve also had a lot of good luck with components, very few of them have failed on me. Just listing them down has shown how much progress the PC industry has made in terms of speed and specifications. I remember encoding mp3 in 1997, it used to run at 1/3 speed (i.e. over 15 minutes for a 5 minute song). My current computer can transcode video at 5x speed (120 fps for H.264 compression).

YSR Chopper crash

There is such a big fuss being made about the reason behind the chopper crash that killed the Andhra CM, YS Rajashekar Reddy with calls to book all those who have not done their job properly. Is it really news that our government servants are incompetent and least interested in their jobs? Every single day, there are umpteen deaths of common people caused by some babu who decided to take it easy on the job. Like the RTO inspector who takes bribes and allows people without basic driving skills to become killing machines on the road. Or the PWD engineer who screws up our pipelines that mix sewage with our water supply. Why is there no outrage at that? Why are there no demands to chop their heads off?

It isn’t nice to speak ill of the dead, but the reality is that YSR has reaped the fruits of what he has sown. It is he and others of his ilk that have tolerated (and even encouraged) incompetence and substandard delivery of services to the public. Why should we be surprised that he has paid the ultimate price for that?