Trip to Devbagh Island

We had been promising Nisha a trip to the beach for a long time. So, when her Christmas vacation started, it was time to start planning. Unfortunately, we left it too late and most of the places I checked were pretty much booked solid. I had almost given up hope and started planning for a trip to Chennai when the agent called to say that a cottage at Devbagh beach resort was available for 2 nights. It also helped us check one more thing on our to-do list, which was to make a trip to Karwar, where Vidya had grown up.

We had got the booking for Sunday and Monday nights. We decided to start driving on Saturday itself to make full use of the weekend. Our cook packed us a great lunch of puliyogere and thayirsadam, just like the old days when we would pack food and eat on the wayside. Our target destination on the first day was Hubli, where we hoped to find a decent hotel to stay at. Rather than risk the regular jams on Tumkur Road, we decided to take a slightly longer route via Dodbal

lapur and Dabbaspete. It was a good decision, as the traffic was very light and we reached Tumkur around 2 hours after we left. The main downside was the many speedbreakers along the way, it was almost as if each house in evey village had constructed one to slow the cars down.

We had a quick bite at the Kamat Upachar and set out towards Chitradurga. The highway between Tumkur and Chitradurga was awesome, as most completed section

s of the GQ are. On the way to Chitradurga, we saw an amazing vista of over a hundred windmills. Apparently, this is a windfarm run by Suzlon and has

 generated a lot of controversy for environment damage.

Once past Chitradurga, the road deteriorates rapidly, with lots of unfinished sections. Unfortunately, our present buffoons in the UPA government view the highway project as a low priority and all work on the uncompleted portions seems to have come to a standstill. 

It was now almost 2:00pm and we were looking for a place to stop and have lunch. That's when we realized the other main casualty of the four-laning project, the tree cover. There is absolutely no shade anywhere to be found. After driving for almost 20 km, we found some shade and stopped for lunch.

We progressed slowly, past Harihar, Davangere, Rannebennur. Finally, after we crossed Haveri, the conditions improved and we were able to make faster progress, finally reaching Hubli at 6:30, a full 9 hours after we started. I'd managed to get the name of a decent hotel (Hotel Hans) from one of my friends, but there was no number. Luckily, we found that they had some rooms available and were abl

e to check in. The hotel was average, but the food (both dinner and breakfast the next morning) was really good.

The next morning, we had a short stop at Lake Unkal. This is a fairly large lake in Hubli and looked quite clean, unlike some of the lakes in Bangalore. There is a statue of Swami Vivekananda in the middle (a la Lord Buddha at the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad)

, but we couldn't really make out from the distance.

The highway from Hubli to Ankola was once described as the "worst road in the country" due to the hundreds 

of iron-ore laden trucks from Bellary that had destroyed the road. However, with the collapse of iron-ore exports, the road had significantly improved. The road still bears the scars, everything has a reddish hue, the leaves on the trees are coloured red and the overloaded trucks have sunk the ground by a few inches, making it an unpleasant ride for a car that has a narrower track.

We reached Karwar at lunchtime and checked into the hotel office in the city. The resort we had booked in, Devbagh Beach Resort, is run by Jungle Lodges. As the only access to the resort is via boat, it is relatively uncrowded and clean. The beach is clean and shallow enough that you can venture a few hundred feet and still have the water only reach up to waist level. The waves are also relatively small, so it is a great beach for children to play in. There are varied levels of accommodation ranging from tents to log huts. We had booked a fisherman’s log hut, but due to overbooking, we were upgraded to a higher category of loghut with air-conditioning. Being a enterprise that promotes eco-tourism, there are not that many frills in the resort, no TV, telephone or restaurant. Instead, there is a common dining area with set times for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

Nisha was eager to hit the beach right away, but we convinced her to wait until 4 o’clock when the heat subsides a little bit. She had a great time playing in the water till around 6:00 pm, when we decided to head back to the room and get ready for the campfire. It turned out to be a disappointment, as there was no activity planned as such, it was just people getting into their groups around the fire. But, it was a great night for stargazing, the lack of city lights  meant that we saw a lot more stars that we ever could in Bangalore.

We were woken up at 5:30 am the next morning for the nature walk. Vidya and Nisha were in no mood to get up, so I went alone. It was quite windy and chilly, but the people who braved it were treated to a fantastic sunrise over the mountains. 

The nature walk was quite entertaining, with the guide Anil rattling off quite a few jokes in hindi and Kannada. The highlight was when he dug up some river

 crabs and put them on people’s hands for a special photo-op. These were fairly docile and the non-biting variety. 

Later on, he dug up a proper ocean crab (chamadi nikalne wala) from the beach. This was a real mean one, when he held up a small stick, it immediately grabbed it and held on with a surprisingly firm grip. He took it back with him, probably a lunch feast.

 

Soon after breakfast, we went back to Karwar to visit the colony where Vidya grew up. On the way, we stopped at one of her father’s colleague, Mr Saxena’s house. Though they were Biharis, they had grown so much in love with the place, that they had settled down in Karwar itself. It was a beautiful place, with a large garden and lots of trees. The fact that it would cost less money to buy than an average 2 bedroom apartment in Bangalore, left me wondering whether we have our priorities right.  The factory and colony were around 5 km away in a place called Biniga. We were taken on a tour of the place by one of the older employees. It was a nice place, clean and well maintained, but as the person explained, it was no longer like the olden days. The plant was being operated with a lot fewer employees and there was a lot of movement of people, so the community had been built around the factory in the 70s and 80s was no longer present. In addition, the beach near the colony had been acquired by the Navy, who had built a 10 foot wall along the road. As a result, Vidya was quite disappointed and was wishing that she had not come to see the place in its current state.

From there, it was back to the resort for lunch and more beach activity. This time, we walked further along the beach and found a small pool of water where Nisha enjoyed herself tremendously. We had to check out the next morning. Before we left, we took the boat ride into the sea that was included as part of the package. If we were fortunate, we would be able to see some dolphins. But, it was not our lucky day. Not only did we see no dolphins, on the way back, the boat broke down. The boatman dropped the anchor and we waited there for almost half an hour for the other boat to come and pick us up. As a result, we could only leave Karwar only by 12:00 pm. Our plan was to visit the famous Mahabaleshwar temple, but due to the late departure, we decided to leave Gokarna for another time and instead visit Yana.

Before the trip, I had researched and found that it was advisable to get to Sirsi and then go to Yana rather than take the direct route from Kumta. So, we went on NH17 towards Kumta and took the smaller state highway towards Sirsi. A few km before Sirsi, we found a turnoff towards Yana. We enquired with a local shop on the condition of the road and got the reply “Channagidde sir, hoga baudu”. As we discovered later, the perception of a good road is very different in Sirsi. The road was average to begin with and progressively got worse. To make things even more exciting, we saw a huge black snake cross the road just before our car. That made me even more cautious, as we didn’t want a puncture or breakdown in that place. Along the way, we considered turning back many times, but the thing that kept us going was the chance that maybe we had taken the bad road and there was a better road to Sirsi.  Finally, we reached Yana taking almost 1.5 hours to travel the 30 km. There we were told that the actual rock was a 1.5 hour trek. More disappointing was the news that the only way back to Sirsi was along the same road that we had come. We were so dis-spirited that we decided to skip the trek and head back to Sirsi. The first 15 km were hell, when we came up to a fork in the road. We decided to skip the path we had come on and take the other one to Sirsi. It was a couple of km of the same bad roads and then miraculously, the road improved and we had a fantastic 20 km till we reached Sirsi. We had a quick bite and moved towards Haveri to join the national highway.

The road from Sirsi to Haveri was only marginally better, hardly more than single lane in many places, a broken surface and almost no traffic. We made slow progress and covered the 90 km distance in around 2 hours. A quick stop in Haveri for some fuel and tea followed. By now, it was almost 8 pm and reaching Bangalore was out of question. We decided to stop for the night at Davengere. Luckily, I remembered my friend Shashi, who is from Davangere, and got the names of a few hotels from him. A quick call to Just Dial got us their contact details and we had a confirmed room booking. We finally reached Davangere at 10:30 pm, just in time to get a quick bite before the hotel kitchen closed.

After the adventures of the previous day, the drive back to Bangalore was boring. We reached Neelamangala at 2:00 pm and took over 2 hours to get to HSR Layout. For the third year in a row, I arrived home just in time for new years eve. This time, we were just too tired to stay up, so we did the traditional new year cake cutting at 9 pm before going to sleep!!!

Discovering Uttara Kannada

We are going on a road trip after a long time. The last trip that we took by road was to Coorg in April. This time, we are planning to visit Yana, Gokarna before landing at Devbagh island at Karwar for a couple of days of relaxation. We will come back via Hubli, partly fulfilling my long standing dream of driving from Bangalore to Pune.

More bailouts

So, now the Indian government is going into baliout mode. I wonder what it is, China envy, if you can come up with a 500 million dollar bailout, so can we.

There are a couple of problems here
- The Chinese government is rolling in cash with huge surpluses. The Indian government is broke and the true magnitude of how broke is hidden because they keep items like fertilizer/oil subsidy out of the budget statement
- They are targetting the wrong segments. I completely agree with help for the auto and textile segments. But realty? Come on.
- They're trying to make it cheaper to get loans for homes/cars etc. But what they don't realize is that we Indians are among the most risk averse people in the world. When the future is so hazy, why would people go out and take a loan even if it 2-3% cheaper than a couple of months ago?

Talking about realty again, no amount of stimulus is going to turn the situation around till prices come down to reasonable levels. Charging 80 lakhs for an apartment that falls apart in a couple of years is just not sustainable. Even if you give it a fancy name and come up with great looking brochures and websites. Has anyone considered the average income level of people in this country before taking prices to such absurd levels?

It's the same with automobiles. We're seeing a war of words between the auto companies and banks. The auto companies are saying that banks are not bringing down the interest rates fast enough while the banks are saying that no one is actually approaching them for auto loans. The auto companies were blinded by the boom years and thought that the cycle of people upgrading their cars every 2, 3 or 4 years will continue forever. They didn't realize that when people are uncertain about their jobs, cars are one of the easiest purchases to defer.

Overall, I am extemely uncomfortable with the whole bailout idea. My reasoning is simple, we had many excesses during the last few years primarily caused by a huge oversupply of money. At some point the bubble has to burst before things get back to normal. But, by throwing more money at the problem, aren't governments just postponing the inevitable and setting us up for an even greater bust?

Satyam's downfall

In the past decade where we have seen scandals like Enron, sub-prime crisis etc, really surprises anymore. In India, we have had our fair share of crooks. Even then, I was astonished with the brazenness and audacity of what the promoters of Satyam tried to do yesterday. They announced the acquisition of Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties, which are promoted by the same family and friends of the family. All this for a royal sum of 8000 crores. I immediately sensed this as the biggest diversion (robbery?) of public money since the Reliance Power IPO earlier this year.

The response was immediate with analysts and institutions blasting the move. Ramalinga Raju came on CNBC and bumbled his way through a tough Q&A session. The ADR tumbled by over 55%. All this reaction led to a withdrawal of the acquisition.

I’ve always thought of Satyam (and by association, Raju) as a follower rather than a leader, someone who had no original idea or vision and was always aping the big three of Indian IT (TCS, Infosys, Wipro). His commitment to IT was always suspect. Even if you take away the moral and ethical concerns, the fact that he wanted to diversify into real estate essentially shows where his true interests lie.

I think this is the beginning of the end for Satyam. With its reputation effectively in the toilet with respect to corporate governance, any sane investor or institution is going to dump the stock. This coupled with the tough economic situation is going to lead to very tough future for Satyam. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that it is a shadow of its former self in 2 years time.

Mumbai terror attacks

I don’t know how or why, but this morning I got up at 4:30 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. So, I made myself some coffee and proceeded to check my email and Google news reader. One of the feeds that I read mentioned about the usage of Twitter, blogs, flickr etc in reporting the Mumbai blasts. I clearly remember thinking why it is a story today when the blasts happened quite a while ago. I attributed it to a reposting and went on. Around 6:00 am, I went to Rediff to check on the cricket score when the enormity of the terrorist attack hit. I switched on the TV and watched for a while, but after a while I just couldn’t take the tamasha that these people were turning it into.

I was angry, really angry. The anger prompted me to write an open letter to our country’s leadership.

To

Dr Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister

Republic of India

Dear Dr Singh,

By now, you would be well aware of the attacks in Mumbai. Though I live in Bangalore, I feel that these were an attack on me. It was just a chance that it took place in a different location to where I was, each of the persons killed could well have been me. They were just individuals who were going out for dinner or returning home from work or brave officers who jumped in knowing very well that they may not return alive. We have seen many attacks in the past and the response from you and your members of Cabinet have never been more than empty words. I am afraid for the future of our country, because I feel that the people of India have reached a tipping point and unless you act decisively, the outcome will be an end of the India that we know and love.

Here are a few things that I would like you to do

- You keep saying that terrorism has no religion. Yet, we have seen an amazing game of double standards being played out in the media. An elaborate case has been concocted against Pragya and Lt Col Purohit and the media has gone to town heralding the rise of “Hindu terrorism”. Can we have the same sense of purpose in all terrorism cases? Do not let vote bank politics play a role in the investigation

- Do not negotiate with the terrorists. They may kill a few hostages, yes that is damaging for the people and their families, but the damage to the country that is caused by your capitulation is far worse.

- If reports are true and Pakistan is behind these attacks, we need to take decisive action against them, even if it means large causalities on our side. Otherwise we will forever be known as a weak state that will keep facing attacks like this one.

Going by the past record of your government, I have 0% confidence that any of my wishes will come through. But I live in hope, because the alternative is to live in fear. That would mean giving in to the terrorists.

Sincerely

An Indian Citizen

Futures trading

I had been looking at futures trading for a while, but always maintained a healthy distance from it. My friend Shashi was constantly pushing me to give it a try, my relationship manager at ICICI kept calling me every day with updates on the market and trading strategies, but I had resisted.

The thing that changed my mind was the falls that we saw in October. I could only watch as every single investment that I had made (stocks, mutual funds, PMS schemes) went down in value by 25, 35 and even 50% in some cases. It seemed that the least risky way to make money was going short. Given that we follow a same day settlement, short selling in the cash market meant day trading. In my view, that is just gambling and it has never worked for me in the past.

So, I have made my first tentative steps trading in futures, a month ago. I set a few ground rules for myself before I started
- Set aside a small amount of money and do not take positions beyond this. Ensure there is adequate margins available so that the broker does not close out the position
- No day trading, I don't have access to a trading screen or my broker's website most of the time. So, most orders would be placed at the start of the day
- Very conservative stop losses. This was the most difficult decision for me. My reasoning is that most people put very conservative stop loss, which in a volatile environment gets triggered very easily. While this may limit thier losses, it would also rule out opportunities for gain in the longer term
- Restrict the trading to the NIFTY and a few stocks that I had been following for a long time. At this time, I've picked 5 of them (Bharti, SAIL, Reliance, TCS and Infosys). All of these are fairly volatile and extremely liquid

I did have a few stomach churning sessions towards the end of last month when I had a buy on NIFTY at 3300. Over the next few days, it dipped to 2300, and I was down by almost a lakh of rupees. I wasn't prepared for such a big loss right at the start, so I broke my rule #1 and paid up the additional margin. Thankfully, the market retraced to 3200 and I was able to exit with a much smaller loss.

Other than that single transaction, it has been a really good month. I've been lucky in making the right calls both on the short and long sides. I know this won't last forever, there will be the inevitable bad call, but as long as I keep my head and not get carried away, I'm hopeful that it will give me some good profits.

Of course, this will never make up for the losses elsewhere, but in a general gloomy outlook, every bit of good news helps.

A new champion is crowned

So, finally one of the most exciting F1 championships ended with Lewis Hamilton being crowned at the very last corner. It was a completely disheartening time for Massa, who initially believed he had won only to lose it at the very last corner as Timo Glock's decision to stay on dry tires backfired.

Though Lewis is a great driver, I feel that Massa deserved it more. He had two sure wins in Hungary and Singapore taken away by other people's mistakes. Lewis by comparision did not have a single retirement. If things had worked out, Massa would have won quite comfortably.

On the whole, bar the occasional race, I found that the F1 races were becoming extremely boring and for the first time in many years, I did not watch a couple of races. The farce of the safety car lottery also made it worse, I'd rather that the cars start overtaking each other on track. Hopefully with the massive change in rules for 2009, we will have a better spectacle.

My picks for the best drivers and races
Races: Canada, Britain, Belgium, Singapore, Brazil. Three of these were rain affected and two were influenced by the safety car. Anyone see a problem here?
Best drivers: Kubica, Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Hamilton
Most underperforming drivers: Kovy, Raikonnen, Bourdais, Button, Fisichella

Nandi Hills ride

I had cycled twice before to Nandi hills, but never done the complete ride from Bangalore and back. The first time, ,I'd started from the Nandi cross on NH-7. The second time, we had started from Bangalore, but could not complete the ride back due to severe headwinds and a puncture. I was determined to complete it fully and finally did it yesterday.

Eight of us started off from Hebbal at 6:30. People kept dropping off and finally when we reached the base of Nandi, there were only 4 of us left. I had two goals on the climb, one to do it nonstop and secondly to avoid using the lowest gear. I achieved the first one, but the second one was too hard especially on the later stages. On the way back, we took the route via Doddballapur to avoid the hot sun and headwinds that are always present on NH-7. We reached Hebbal at 3:30, it was a ride to cherish.

Stats
Total distance: 106 km
Time from Hebbal to Nandi base : 1 hr 50 min
Time to climb to top: 50 min
Time to descend : 12 min 42 sec
Ave speed on descent: 37.5 kmph
Max speed on descent : 67.5 kmph
Time from Nandi base to Hebbal : 2 hr 5 min
Overall ave speed: 21.2 kmph
Ave speed excluding Nandi: 23 kmph

Layoffs, Airlines etc

Having seen the drama created by the massive layoffs at Jet Airways and the subsequent reinstatement of the staff, I now understand why the IT companies in India behave the way they do when it comes to retrenchment. They never admit to layoffs, it is always described as “performance related separation”. Initially, I had thought that it is related to their stock price, but now I realize it is to avoid getting the politicians involved.

As for Jet, I fear that it may not be around in its present form for much longer. Though the immediate crisis has been averted, the conditions continue to be as difficult as before and they will continue to hemorrhage money. They have also cut down their schedule drastically for the coming months, so I wonder what all these people are going to do?

Speaking of airline schedules, I had to fly to Chennai earlier this week at very short notice. To my surprise, the agent just came up with a couple of options for flights in the morning. It did seem like the airlines have drastically cut down on the short haul flights. The rates were astronomical as well, Kingfisher was quoting over 10K, they finally got me on a Jet flight at 5K. The days when all 3 of us flew round trip from Bangalore to Goa for 10K, seem like a very distant memory.

The other observation I had was the security check at Bangalore airport. The queue was atleast 50 people and according to a Jet employee, this was an everyday occurrence due to the huge number of flights that take off in a very short time period. If that was the case, I wonder why they do not double the number of security personnel for that time period to make life easier for the passengers?

Mumbai Pune photos

We had gone away for a week to Mumbai and Pune for Nisha's vacations. Here are some photos from the trip

Google Android

I watched the live stream of the T-mobile G1 launch, the first Android phone yesterday. The event was almost amateurish, a simple stage, photographers bunching around like they were at an Indian politician rally and there appeared to have been no preparation for possible questions, quite often the various gentlemen were looking around clueless while they figured out a response. You'd definitely never see this happening at an Apple event.

I never had any great expectations from the phone itself. In any case, it is not going to be launched in India anytime soon, but what I am excited about is the platform and the promise it holds. It is only a matter of time before the other partners start bringing their products into the market, and this is going to bring smartphones prices way down. 

The real potential of the platform is the software and the apps. Apple seemed to have that momentum and mindshare but given the restrictions on their SDK and the god-like power they hold over which apps get sold, that could be waning pretty fast. Though WinMo and Symbian have a huge developer community and lots of apps, I predict that Android will eclipse them quite easily.

Capgemini offsite meet

We went away to Kumarakom for 3 days of serious fun (er work). Here are some photos from the trip

Scariest flight yet

We had our group's annual strategy meeting at Kumarakom earlier this week (I will write about that and the Poovar visit soon). We returned last night and it was one of the scariest flights I had ever been on. When we took off, it wasn't too bad. But once they served dinner, it started moving around a bit, enough that they had to suspend the service. Then we hit a giant air pocket and the plane fell what seemed like a few hundred feet. Everyone was thrown up, only the seatbelts kept them on their seats. The dinner wasn't as lucky and plates and spoons and food was all over the cabin. The rest of the flight was bad, but luckily we didn't hit any more air pockets. Everyone was counting the minutes till we landed. As the pilot announced the landing, we began to relax and from the window, i could see the airport surroundings as we descended. But, there was no sound of the landing gear deploying and sure enough, we started to gain height again and were in full take off mode. There was no word on why this happened for around 10 minutes and this only heightened our fear that there was something wrong with the plane. After some time, the pilot came on and said that the conditions were too bad for landing and put on some music to calm the passengers. We stayed in the air for around 30 minutes more. All this time, it was raining heavily and the plane was getting thrown all over the place. People were very tense, many of them closing their eyes and praying for a safe landing. Finally, at 10:50, almost 90 minutes after we took off, the plane came in for the final landing. This time, the landing gear deployed properly and we made it safely to the ground.

Trip to Poovar

We signed up for a Club Mahindra membership last year, this gives us a week’s stay at any of the Club Mahindra resorts every year for the next 25 years. As part of the joining incentive, we got a 5 day free stay at a Club Mahindra resort and a 2 week free stay at any international resort. We used the Club Mahindra offer for a week’s stay at their resort at Poovar Kerala, which is near Trivandrum. The plan was to leave Bangalore on the 14th and return on the 21st of August and in the process celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary there. It didn’t exactly go to plan…

We’d decided to travel by train for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Nisha has never really experienced train travel and we wanted her to go on a longer train trip. Also, the train ticket cost me around 6K, whereas the cheapest flight tickets were almost 30K. As the train timings were extremely convenient, we decided that we can put the extra money to better use, like buying a new smartphoneJ

We set out on 14th evening, armed with umbrellas and raincoats, as we expected heavy rain in Kerala. As it turned out, the only rain that we saw was in Bangalore as we were waiting to board the train. For dinner, we finished off the delicious aloo paranthas that I’d ordered from our neighbourhood Punjabi dhaba. We reached Trivandrum right on time, around 12:00 pm and took a taxi to the resort, which was around 30 km away.

The resort is located on a river island right at the place where the river meets the Arabian sea, which meant that we had to take a boat to get to the resort. As we reached the resort, we passed the estuary where the river meets the sea. We also saw a few local boys swimming in the river, though none were doing so around the estuary, which we learnt was quite dangerous.

We had reservations for a floating cottage, which are built on a hollow concrete base and tethered to the shoreline. However, as these cottages were shutdown in the weeks prior to our arrival due to high tides and wind, they were not ready for occupation when we arrived. They put us up in a regular room, with a hammock in the balcony for a couple of days before we shifted to the floating cottage. In hindsight, that was a good break, as I was not very impressed with the cottage, which had quite a shabby feel to it. In contrast, the rooms were extremely impressive, spacious and neat.

We visited Kovalam beach on Sunday. It was a big letdown, the erosion was so bad that there was barely 20 feet of beach left and in many places, it was even less. The water was also quite rough and the lifeguards prevented anyone from venturing more than 10-15 feet into the water. We were hoping to have some bhelpuri or chaat items, but all the establishments at Kovalam seem to cater to the foreign tourist, all we could get was sandwiches. I am sure it is a much better place to visit during the season, but based on what I saw, I don’t see why it should deserve the fame that it has as one of the best beaches in India.

Other than the trip to Kovalam, we did not move out of the resort during our entire stay. Our usual routine was

- get up and have coffee
- have a heavy buffet breakfast
- relax for a couple of hours on the hammock
- Nisha an I would then hit the swimming pool for a couple of hours, while Vidya spent time reading
- Eat a heavy lunch
- Sleep for 2-3 hours
- Laze around till dinner
- Dinner was a light affair, we would typically order some phulkas and dal in the room
- Watch TV

With food and rest being the mainstay, it was no wonder that I found all my trousers getting much tighter when I returned back to Bangalore. The food was the typical resort food, a huge spread with many salads, curries and desserts. It would have been a dream 20 years back when I had an unlimited appetite, but times have changed and we tired of it in a couple of days. On the last day, it was a relief when we found that there was no buffet due to low occupancy.

The one major disappointment was the activity centre. On our previous stay at Coorg, the activity centre was bussing through the day with lot of things for children to do. Here, it was the exact opposite; it was a small dingy place where you were left to yourself. Luckily, the weather was glorious throughout and we could use the pool, or else Nisha would have been bored to death. In total, we spent almost 10 hours in the pool. She became great friends with a 8 year old girl Trisha from Mumbai, who took it upon herself to teach her to swim. Some progress was made, but there is still a long way to go.

By Monday, we had completely unwound and were really beginning to enjoy ourselves. However, it was not destined to last. There was a strike called by the left parties on the 20th, which was the day when we had to leave for Bangalore. The resort informed us that there would be no taxi service after 6 am on that day. So, we had a choice of waking up at 3:00 am and getting dropped to the station by 5:00 am or moving to Trivandrum the previous day and checking into a hotel near the station. The thought of waiting 7 hours in a station during a bandh was not very appealing, so we went for the latter option. We checked into the Comfort Inn Grand, which was around 2 km from the railway station, right on MG Road on the 19th. We left most of the luggage in the cloak room, the plan was that even if we don’t get transport to the station, we could always walk if we don’t have much stuff to carry.

The next morning, we woke up to the news trains were being stopped all over the state. We were in a quandary, do we check out, go to the station and find that our train was stopped, thus having a lengthy wait. Or do we wait it out at the hotel, thus running the risk of missing the train in case they started running again? We decided that I would go alone to the station at 10:00 to get a real assessment and depending on the situation, we would take a call. In the worst case, we’d just stay put for another day and take a flight to Bangalore on the 21st. On the way, I found that MG Road, which was choc-a-block with traffic the previous evening was completely free. At the station, the person at the information desk informed me that our train was running on schedule and was slated to leave on time. I hurried back to the hotel, hoping that they would be able to organize a private vehicle for us to get to the station. Unfortunately, they had no vehicles available or did not want to take a chance. So, now our only option was to walk. If I had not gone earlier, I would have just not taken the chance, but having seen that the police were out in force throughout our route to the station gave us the confidence to go ahead. We reached the station without incident after a 20 minute walk. By this time, the trains were running normally and our train departed on schedule at 12:55. We reached Bangalore right on schedule on 21st morning and got ready for the regular grind.

Joke of the year : iphone India launch

As expected, greedy Apple and even greedier mobile operators Airtel and Vodafone have totally screwed up on the pricing of the iphone in India. At 31000 for the 8 GB version and 36100 for the 16 GB one, I doubt they will be selling more than a handful. Personally, I never intended to buy the iphone, but was hoping for competitive pricing that would force Nokia to cut prices on its other smartphones (like the N82). At this price, I doubt they would even bother.

Only in India

We have this automated bill payment machine from Vodafone in our office. It works fairly well, you enter your number, it connects over the GSM network to the server and retrieves your bill details. You then have the option of paying by cash/cheque or swiping your credit card. All of this works pretty well. The craziness, however, starts after you have paid the bill. Vodafone has employed a person to record the details of your payment on a sheet of paper. He even has columns for recording the number of notes that you insert (10, 20, 50, 100, 500, wonder what he would do if you paid with a 1000 rupee note).

I wonder what prompted such a system, a distrust of technology or the abundance of cheap labour?

Bangalore MTB Race : August 3rd

The Bangalore Bikers Club is a community of cycling enthusiasts in Bangalore. It hosts a wide range of discussions from choice of cycling equipment to weekend ride plans. A few weeks back, a group of cyclists upped the ante and decided to hold competitive events to test the speed and ability of the group members. The first of these events was a ride from Hebbal to Nandi Hills. Due to the extreme nature of the event, the participation was very poor with 5-6 people showing up and only 4 people finishing. The group therefore decided to make the next event more accessible to a larger audience and that is how the idea of the first Bangalore MTB race was born.

The event was held on Sunday, the 3^rd of August. An offroad trail of 13 km off Sarjapur Road was recced and marked for the race. The trail was fairly challenging, the terrain ranged from short stretches of smooth tarmac to typical unpaved roads and trails found everywhere in India. The recent rains had converted some sections to slush, some of it so deep that a truck got stuck during the race. It passed through fields, a garbage dumpyard as well as some manmade forests.

The response was extremely good, around 30 cyclists showed up and 25 participated in the race. Though the race was scheduled to start at 8:00 am, there was a delay as the organizing team took longer than expected to mark the trails. It finally started around 8:45.

A few of the riders just took off at the start, I decided to pace myself as I didn’t want to run out of steam in the latter part of the race. I followed a cyclist for almost the entire first lap, but then found that he was going quite slow and once I got past, I left him quite a way behind. I completed the first lap in around 45 minutes and was 11^th out of 25 riders. The second lap was almost solitary without much company and I was able to maintain my pace and recorded an almost similar time. On the third lap, I caught up with another rider, Dinakar midway and we rode together till the end of the lap. Though we did not overtake many people, we found ourselves in 4^th and 5^th places, as many of the riders who had ridden away had dropped out. The timekeeper encouraged us by mentioning that we were just a minute behind the 3^rd placed rider. Dinakar took off in pursuit, but I decided to rest for a few seconds before starting off. I used the time to eat a couple of bananas, this was to prove invaluable later. I caught up with Dinakar a couple of kilometers later and as we entered the offroad section, we could see the other rider upfront. I encouraged Dinakar to come with me and we caught up with him quite easily. By then we had come to the slushy part and we found that a truck had got stuck completely blocking the way. Since, we were still racing, all of us dismounted and carried our bikes over the slush. At this time, I was really pumped up and wanted to ride really hard for the next section to put some distance between me and the other two. However, those two guys were really spent and fell quite a bit back, so I relaxed a little bit and concentrated on getting a good rhythm going.

Towards the end of the lap, I spotted another rider (I thought he was the second placed rider, but he was a lap behind) and set about catching him. Though I was able to catch up with him, I decided to wait until the final straight to overtake, it was a long uphill slope and I figured that if I really pushed and got past, he would find it difficult to respond. It worked exactly as I planned, as he saw me coming, he started to pedal faster, but after I shifted to a higher gear and kicked hard, he was unable to respond and gave up. I finally finished almost 50 meters ahead of him. My lungs were literally bursting from the final effort but the feeling of achievement made up for it.

My total time for the 4 laps was 2:55, the lap timings were really consistent, between 43 and 45 minutes for each of the laps. I was quite a way behind the first and second riders, who finished in 2:22 and 2:26 respectively. There were 7 people who finished behind me, the last rider finished in 3:30. In all, 17 out of 25 people completed atleast half the race.

Podcasting : An Introduction

Over the last couple of years, I’ve listened to over 1000 hours of audio on my ipod, but fewer than 10% of it has been spent on listening to music. The bulk of it has gone into listening to various podcasts. Podcasts are essentially audio files that are delivered to the listener through RSS feeds. They can be on any topic, ranging from movies to technology to news. There is nothing very technical about podcasting, the actual audio file, it is a plain mp3 file that can be played almost anywhere. However, you need a “podcatcher” program that can parse the RSS feed, make sense of the content and download the audio file for your listening pleasure. The best podcatcher software by far is iTunes. In my view, there are three different elements of podcasting that Apple has really nailed

Subscribing to content: The itunes store is the most comprehensive repository for finding podcasts. It is neatly categorized and subscribing to a podcast is a single click process. In the rare event that you have a podcast that is not present in the itunes directory, Apple allows you to enter the URL of the RSS feed

Tracking episodes: Most podcatchers offer this, but none work as elegantly as iTunes. You can set it to automatically download all new episodes, it keeps track of episodes that have been played and can clean up older episodes automatically. If you are like me and want to control the entire process, you can set everything to manual mode and take care of it yourself.

Integration with portable devices: This is the area where itunes+ipod pulls ahead and leaves everything far behind. You can control how many episodes are downloaded to your ipod, once you hear something on the ipod, it automatically shows up as played content on itunes. If you have heard part of an episode on the ipod, once you sync back to itunes, it even resumes playback at the same place!!!

There is a veritable treasure trove of content out there and most of it is free. Some of the podcast feeds that I listen to are

CNN-IBN : This is the feed from CNN-IBN. They mainly feature programs like Devil’s Advocate with Karan Thapar (I hate his interview style, but I still listen to him) and some interviews with prominent personalities from the film and arts world. They like to throw in their news bulletins, which is one of the main reasons why I resort to manual control of downloads.

TWIT: twit.tv is a podcasting network started by Leo Laporte, a prominent tech journalist for many years. He produces over 20 shows a week and I listen to a few of them like This week in tech, Windows Weekly and Macbreak Weekly

Buzz out loud: My favourite source for tech news is cnet.com, this is their daily podcast that presents tech news in a light hearted manner. They are up to episode 780 now, I’ve been listening since episode 380, which means that I’ve devoted almost 300 hours of my life listening to BOL.

NPR Science Friday: I believe this is a very popular science program in the US, the podcast is just another distribution medium for them. I have learnt more things about more subjects in the two years that I have been listening to this podcast than in the previous 15 years since I left college.

The one caveat to keep in mind with podcasting is the bandwidth. Each episode is usually around 10 MB, so you could easily use up over 1 Gig a month just keeping up with your favourite shows. That’s one of the reasons why I always prefer an unlimited slower connection over a faster metered one.

Sadly, there is very little quality Indian content, I wish other networks like NDTV, Times now etc start putting some of their content on the Net soon.

Video podcasting is an offshoot of podcasting with video files (usually MPEG4) instead of mp3s. They haven’t taken off because they are extremely bandwidth intensive (a typical episode is > 100 MB) and unlike audio files which you can listen to while doing your other tasks, you need to be actively watching the video. I’ve usually given up on most video podcasts after a couple of episodes and switched to the audio version.

Bangalore bomb attack

9 bombs went off in Bangalore yesterday. They were of really low intensity, in fact looking at the TV pictures, you could mistake it for a firecracker that went off. Due to the limited damage, people have written it off a little too easily and it has almost become a joke. But, that's not the point, we should not forget that the terrorists could have easily used a more powerful explosive and the damage could have been a lot worse. We got off easy this time, but will we be as lucky the next time?

Vista hate - Part 1

Contrary to the major negative press that Vista gets, my experience with the OS has been generally positive. I have used Vista on two machines, a HP laptop and my custom built desktop. I have faced some issues with wireless networking on the HP laptop where it would lose the network settings and force me to manually connect every single time. However, that problem went away after some driver updates and it is working great. On the desktop, my experience has been fantastic, so far. The thing that people don’t realize is Vista is extremely resource intensive and needs a fast processor and lots of memory. Most people who face problems are trying to run it on older slower hardware.

Atleast that’s what I thought, because yesterday I had my first hair-tearing experience with Vista. I had got a couple of 8 GB SDHC cards and wanted to transfer some videos to them. I hooked them up through my card reader and began the transfer process. It was a simple file copy procedure, open the folder on my local hard drive in one window, select the files and drag it to the window where the memory card’s drive was mapped. That’s when Vista’s problems reared its ugly head. Initially, I got the file copy dialog, where it just got stuck at the message “Discovered 0 items”. I then tried doing it one file at a time, it worked for files smaller than 100 MB, but just wouldn’t start for larger files. I googled for “Vista slow file copy” and discovered a setting for “Remote Differential Compression”, which is meant to optimize bandwidth but ends up killing file copy speeds. My experience improved after turning it off, but it was still a hit and miss affair.

Disgusted, I gave up and tried to do the same with a 2 GB standard SD card. This time, the files copied without problem. Thinking that it may be a problem with the 8 GB card, I tried using it with my laptop and this time, the file copy went through without problem regardless of the size. So, now I have got two versions of Vista that behave in totally different ways with the same hardware. No wonder, so many people feel that Vista sucks.

N800 vs ipod touch

I’ve now had an ipod touch for a couple of weeks. Here is my comparision of the ipod touch with the N800. Rather than compare the two feature for feature, I have attempted to compare their capabilities for some common usage patterns.

Music Player: The ipod touch is so far ahead that there is no comparision here. The ability to organize music on a PC through itunes and sync automatically has no parallel on the N800, where you need to manually manage your music. Most of my listening involved podcasts and there is no better solution than the ipod for podcast management. Period. Verdict: ipod touch

Video Player: Viewing video on a portable player is a much more involved exercise due to the plethora of formats and limited horsepower of these devices. The first thing is to get videos onto the device. The ipod has more capable hardware and can handle higher resolution/bitrate/framerate videos than the N800. However, its support for video codecs is limited with only H.264 and mp4 support. This means that most videos need to be transcoded, just like on the N800. The N800 has an extremely slick free transcoding solution provided by Nokia (Internet tablet video converter), I’ve found that to be a better solution than the various third party solutions for the touch (I use a program called Videora). Once the files are on the device, I find the experience to be comparable with the N800 having a slight edge due to the larger screen and built in speaker. I also like the fact that it has a stand, this makes for a more pleasurable experience. Verdict: Nokia N800

Browsing: The ipod touch has a Safari browser while the N800 has a Firefox based browser. Both are full fledged browsers and can display web pages just like on a desktop rather than the modified mobile phone version. In terms of performance, the touch Safari browser feels snappier and more responsive than the Firefox browser on the N800. However, I’ve not found a huge difference in the overall time taken to render the pages. The N800 can play flash content which the touch lacks. On the other hand, a lot of websites have iphone/touch optimized versions which makes the overall experience better for those sites. On the whole, I think the experience is comparable and I’d rate both devices equal for browsing. Verdict: tie

Youtube: The ipod touch has a dedicated youtube player, while the N800 can play youtube videos through the web interface. Youtube videos on the N800 were jerky and took much longer to load. I found the performance of the touch youtube player to be far superior and the experience to be much better. It is without doubt, an ideal youtube player. Verdict: ipod touch

Email: The ipod touch client offers support for Gmail, Yahoo and a number of other email services. In addition, with the 2.0 firmware, it offers support for Exchange. The N800 on the other hand, has a plain IMAP/POP3 email client. I’ve never bothered to use this, but I’m hooked to email on the ipod touch. Verdict: ipod touch

Applications: The App Store is one of the most important developments for the iphone/ipod touch family of devices. The store opened just 3 days back and the number of apps already greatly outnumbers the N800. With the number of iphones sold approaching 10 million and probably an equally large number of ipod touches, the gap is only going to get wider. Nokia has a good platform and an extremely competent device, but it has never moved beyond niche status, hence the apps available for it will continue to be limited. On the other hand, due to the open nature of the device, there are applications available on the N800 that will never make it to the touch (e.g. VOIP, GPS apps like Maemo mapper). Still, this doesn't affect the healthy lead that the touch has Verdict: ipod touch.

So, ipod touch wins the comparision 4.5 to 1.5. The margin is unfair to the N800, which is a very comptetent device in its own right. If I had to make a decision on which of the two to buy today, the choice would be clear, it is the ipod touch. But, since I already own both these devices, I will continue to be a happy user of both the platforms.

ipod touch 2.0 software

I was really looking forward to the iphone 3G launch last Friday, mainly for the added functionality it would bring to the ipod touch. Like the millions of Mac faithful, I started checking sites on Friday morning for pointers to when the software would be released. I soon discovered that Apple had launched the itunes store in India and was able to create an Itunes account by entering my credit card details. But, there was still no sign of the new ipod touch software. It finally became available on Friday evening, coinciding with the launch of the iphone 3G in the US. However, the update experience was anything but smooth. Over the next few hours, I encountered a variety of errors, ranging from “Itunes store is unavailable” to “Your version of ipod software (1.1.4) is the latest”. Disappointed, I gave up and decided to try again the next day.

The experience was completely different on Saturday morning when I tried again. This time, I got the notification about the update and quickly got through the payment formalities and started the download. The update was 223 MB in size and downloaded in just over 20 minutes at an average speed of almost 1.5 Mb/s. The entire process of updation was completely automated with no interaction required from my side. The longest part was the backup and restore, which seemed to take forever. I guess transferring over 20 gigs over a slow USB connection to a flash based device will always be slow.

The biggest change and the most expected feature of the 2.0 software was the App Store. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed with the app store, as most of the good apps were paid ones. I wanted to wait for a few days before purchasing any software as I am not sure how it will work for India (exchange rate etc). There are quite a few free apps but very few of them are any good. Though I installed quite a few, I don’t see myself using them on a sustained basis. So, for me atleast, the biggest feature of the update was a bit of a letdown.

The other feature that I was really looking forward to was the Exchange support. I had a few issues setting this up, mainly because I did not have the required information to set up the VPN to my company’s network. But once I got that, it was extremely straightforward. Checking my official email has now become a quick and simple exercise. The mail client is not very full featured and this is mainly useful for monitoring email and sending out quick replies rather than lengthy emails.

Other than these two features, I didn’t see anything else of note. There’s the Mobileme, but I’m not going to pay 4000 rupees a year for that functionality. There are still quite a few features that I didn’t find. Here is my top 3 wishlist

- Itunes store: I stopped buying CD’s a while ago because I found it to be a complete waste of resources, as I was just using them once, to rip them to my computer. I would love to have the ability to download legal mp3 at Rs 10 per song. I can do it today through Soundbuzz or mobile companies stores, but they are completely locked down with DRM. I understand our music companies reasoning that it will lead to widespread piracy. However, I don’t think they should worry about piracy, as pirated mp3’s of their songs are available everywhere on the Internet and on every street corner. If they only opened up their closed thinking, they will find this to be a very good revenue stream

- Ability to download podcasts over the air. As the touch has a wifi connection, I should be able to manage my podcasts from the device rather than from my computer

- Enhanced video file support (esp .avi files and the xvid codec): I was initially very thrilled about the video viewing experience on the touch, but I’ve cooled down a bit. The first problem is the restriction on the video format and codec support. This means that I have to transcode most of my videos before I can watch them. The second issue is my Nokia N800. Quite frankly, I find the video viewing experience to be better there as it has a bigger screen and a comfortable stand to seat the device. The one advantage that the touch had over the n800 was the higher capacity, but I’m getting a couple of 8 GB SD cards, which should make it a non issue. For now, I think the N800 is going to be my primary video device.

ipod touch

I lost my beloved ipod nano last Monday during my trip to Delhi. In some
ways, it was a fortuitous as I got to replace it with an ipod touch 32
GB. I purchased it from JJ Mehta, a Mumbai based camera store, for 21500
rupees on the Internet. I can't remember the last time I bought
something other than travel tickets on the Net. It was an imported gray
market item as the MSRP for the ipod touch in India is 24700+tax. I was
apprehensive initially, especially with respect to the warranty, but
this store has got a lot of good reviews, so I decided to go ahead with
the purchase.

One of the main reasons that I went for the Touch rather than a
replacement Nano was for the video capabilities. A couple of years ago
when I got my first video capable phone, I was wondering how anyone
could watch video on such a small screen. But, having experienced it
over the past few months, I am hooked and find it difficult to watch it
on a PC or laptop anymore. I think the combination of portability and
comfort is hard to beat and when you're watching from 8 inches away, the
screen size and resolution does not matter that much.

Once I started using the Touch, I was floored by the interface, not only
was it gorgeous to look at, the way you interact with it is something to
be experienced. It makes other touch screen devices look pre-historic in
comparison. I spent 3 hours downloading album art for all my CDs from
the internet just so that I could browse them through the Coverflow
interface.

I was expecting to be disappointed with the Safari browser given the low
screen resolution, but the zoom capabilities make it surprisingly
usable. Also, given the popularity of the iphone, a lot of websites have
tailored their design to the screen making for a very usable experience.

The one standout app for me is the Youtube viewer. Searching for youtube
videos has never been this easy and I have never seen their videos look
as good as they do on the touch. I can easily see this becoming the no 1
use case for me.

My #1 reason for buying this was for viewing videos. Frankly, I was a
bit under whelmed, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I already have a
N800, which is as good when it comes to picture quality and portability
and has the advantage of a slightly bigger screen/resolution. Secondly,
the range of codecs and file formats that are supported in the touch is
limited, so I need to transcode most of the videos before I can watch
them, like in the N800. Given these factors, the experience of watching
video on the touch is just a little ahead of the N800, but not the light
years that I was expecting. So, I think I'll end up using the N800 for
watching movies at home and take the ipod on the road, giving me the
best of both worlds.

I have to end by comparing the touch with the N800. Somewhere, I'd read
about the ipod and the N800 being competitors for the other pocket, i.e.
not your phone. I'm finding it difficult to really compare the two, as
they are two different devices. The N800 is really a miniature computer,
extremely open with a wide variety of apps, but a mediocre media player.
The touch is a fantastic media player with quite sophisticated general
computing capabilities. I wouldn't give any of them up for the other.

But, I hear Apple is launching the 2.0 firmware in a couple of weeks. If
that delivers on the promise and makes the touch a truly extensible
platform, I can see the N800 gathering a lot of dust...

Long day yesterday

I flew to Delhi for a day trip yesterday for a meeting with a prospective client. For that, I woke up at 4:00 am. I'd planned to take the bus from Hebbal but once I reached there, decided to ride all the way to the airport. Just as I reached the airport, the Activa started giving some problems. I hoped that it was just overheating and would sort itself out later and boarded the flight. Incidentally, I had no complaints about the flying experience from the airport.

The meeting in Delhi went really well. I was done by 2:00 pm and had 5 hours to kill. The meeting was at Pitampura right next to the Metro station. I had heard a lot about it and decided to check it out. I went to Palika Bazaar, which was very impressive in its day, but has now become a seedy place full of shops peddling pirated DVDs and smuggled electronics. Rather than take a taxi from CP, I took the Blue line to Dwarka and took an auto to the airport. Overall, I was very impressed by the Metro, it is clean, cheap, fast and comfortable. If our Namma Metro is anything like it, it will revolutionize Bangalore like nothing else.

Our plane was late and landed close to 11:00 pm. As I had feared the scooter's problems were bad. The clutch was slipping and the engine was cutting off as soon as I went past 50 kmph. As a result, the trip back home took a long time and I finally reached home at 12:30 am, making for a very long day.

Iphone 2.0 impressions

It was inevitable. Such was the hype that the reality was always going to be anti-climactic. I don’t see anything hugely different from the original iphone, the main talking point is the 3G radio which is useless in India. The GPS is nice, but it will be a battery killer and I find that the triangulation offered by Google Maps good enough for most purposes (it was able to locate my position in places like Dharmapuri and Kaveriatnam).

There are still quite a few big items that give me reason to pause, the lack of a keyboard, no video recording, no removable battery being the chief irritants. On the positive side, it is a wonderful media device, especially for video. Plus with the opening of the app store, it will become one of the pre-eminent app development platforms, with a number of fantastic applications. We've already seen a preview with the jailbreaked apps and the licensed apps will be even better.

I hear that Apple is going to offer it for the equivalent of 199 dollars around the world. At this price, it is obviously subsidized, I wonder what the price in India is going to be, I don't think the subsidy model is going to work here. I expect it to retail at around 16K for the 8GB and 20K for the 16 GB models. At that price, the likes of Nokia and Sony are going to be hit really hard.

The next few months are going to be really good, there are a lot of really interesting phones coming out, like the Nokia tube, Sony Xperia and the many variations of Google Android. With the iphone unlikely to come to India till later in the year, it will give me enough opportunity to evaluate these before making my choice.

Petrol price hike

With oil prices headed to 150 $ and beyond per barrel, the need of the hour is for our petrol and diesel prices to reflect that, so that people will adjust their consumption and when demand falls, prices will fall too. That's how the market works.

Instead of taking the decision, our politicians, including our so-called economist prime minister keep procrastinating, thus ensuring that we pay a much higher price for the indecision in the future.

Flew to Mumbai

I flew to Mumbai for a day yesterday for a training program. This gave me my first experience flying from the new Bangalore airport. It was not pleasant, got up at 3:30, called a cab at 4:30 and reached the airport at 5:45. All this for a 6:50 am flight.

The return flight was almost 45 minutes late and finally took off at 9:30 pm. We landed at Bangalore around 11:00 pm only to be greeted with a comical situation when the plane reached the aerobridge. Apparently the airport staff was unable to find the keys to attach the aerobridge. This caused a 10 minute delay and we finally set off at 11:15. By the time I reached home, after dropping my colleague off, it was 12:45 am.

The real shock will be the taxi fare. They charge 15 Rs/km and 50% more if it is between 9 pm and 6 am. The total bill for both journeys was around 2400 rupees!!! This is going to drive people flying on their own expense crazy.

Cycling to work

One of my (unstated) objectives when I started cycling was to cycle to work on a regular basis. Though it has been close to 3 months since I started cycling, I was still sticking to my motorcycle for going to work. It was a number of small issues that were preventing me from starting off

- My laptop and all accessories weigh a lot
- We don't have a proper cycle parking facility in the office
- No shower or cleaning facilities in the office

I finally decided that none of these were particularly big issues and began cycling to work last week. As for the issues, the solution wasn't too difficult

- I lock the laptop in my drawer and only take it home on the weekends
- I still don't have a solution for security, but I atleast substituted my heavy metal chain for a metal rope solution that I picked up from KR Market last weekend

I did it on 3 days last week and 2 days this week. I hope to continue on for atleast a couple of days each week, atleast till the rains start or I get proper fenders.

Bus travel, IPL etc

I don't enjoy bus travel and tend to go for it only as a last option. I took a ride after a gap of almost 3 years when I went to Chennai to drop Nisha at her grandparent's place. Even though we took the KPN Volvo service, which is supposed to be much better than the regular service (it is) and the roads were extremely smooth, I found it to be cramped and uncomfortable and just could not get a sound sleep. What made it doubly worse was that I returned back the same night and had two nights of bad sleep in a row. Nothing beats our Indian Railways for comfortable and affordable travel. Now, if only they could get rid of the smell...

If you're anywhere in India, you could not have missed the start of the IPL tournament. It's had the kind of opening that Lalit Modi and co could have only dreamt of. I won't deny that I had wanted the IPL experiment to fail badly, just to teach the idiots at BCCI a lesson. But, I have changed my view now. With a format that generates non-stop thrills and some of the best players in the world, it has all the makings of a blockbuster. We've had 5 matches and three of them have been thrillers and have produced unbelievable batting performances,
especially from McCullum and Hussey. Yesterday, one of my favourite players, Jayasuriya looked set to match them before he was cruelly run out. So far, it seems like the foreign players and the relatively unknown Indian players have done much better than the superstars, who really have to pull up their socks to show that their mind-boggling valuations are justified.

One thing that every expert under the sun seems to be talking about is the impact this is going to have on the traditional forms of the game. Contrary to what people think, I feel that one dayers are going to be more affected than the test matches. Let's face it, Test cricket is already dead commercially, no one actually watches it. But, it is a holy cow that will be protected by the establishment even if there are only five people watching it. However, one day cricket will not be as lucky. When you can pack the same amount of excitement in a 3 hour game, why waste an entire day on it? It's also going to be a lot easier on the players, as the wear and tear on their bodies is going to be a lot less
in 20 overs than in 50.

I'm betting on Kolkota and Chennai to be the top two teams, followed by Hyderabad, Delhi and Mohali. I have Bangalore, Mumbai and Jaipur as the bottom three, and despite Jaipur beating Mohali yesterday, I don't see reason to change that.

Diesel engines

I've never been a fan of diesel engines. Having traveled quite a bit in my friend's Tata Indica, I found the noise and vibration to be terrible, especially compared with the new generation of petrol engines, which are so silent that you have to really strain to hear them. Plus, it was slow as hell and used to take forever to accelerate.

Over the past few days, however, I've changed my view especially when it comes to performance. My friends and I have test driven three diesel cars over the past few days, the Ford Fiesta, Hyundai Verna and the Maruti Dzire. The Fiesta was refined, had fantastic handling and was responsive, but was way too overpriced at close to 8.5 lakhs. The Hyundai was an explosion of power. It was exhilarating to ride the torque curve, I was constantly letting the revs drop to below 1000 and
then flooring the accelerator. Initially nothing happens, but when it crosses 2000 rpm and the turbo kicks in, the power comes on in a violent manner and the car surges forward. Very soon, you're doing some serious speed indeed. Still, it was way too overpriced at almost 9.5 lakhs OTR and it doesn't even have airbags!!!

Yesterday, I test drove the Maruti Suzuki Dzire. I didn't like the looks and it was a bit cramped, especially compared to the Verna, but the engine was a revelation. Sitting inside, we couldn't believe that it was a diesel, it was so silent and free of vibrations. The power does not come on like the Verna as it is just 75 bhp instead of the 110 bhp, but it is still fairly fun to drive. The top end model is 7.65 lakhs OTR and its surely going to be a huge success.

It's still not all advantage diesel. The fact is that modern petrol engines are even more refined and silent, and they still have the edge when it comes to all out performance. The clincher is the fact that they're priced significantly lower than the diesel version (blame the Indian obsession with fuel costs and greedy manufacturers). So, if at all, I decide to buy another car, I still think I'll go with petrol.

BIAL

I went on a long motorcycle ride last Saturday morning to visit the new Bengaluru International airport to check out the progress of the project and also the connectivity and travel time.

I had last been on this side of the city almost a year ago. At that time, to call it chaotic would be an understatement, it took us almost 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to the Hebbal flyover and the airport was a further 25 kilometers beyond. This time, I started off at 5:55, so I expected it to be a lot faster. I also had a chance to look at the first two "magic box" projects. The Cauvery underpass is a joke, which could only have been conceived in Bangalore, the city of "signal on a flyover". To have a busy arterial road wind through a U-turn is sheer madness and I bet that the net traffic flow will be slower than before. Plus the underpass is so narrow, that unless you were specifically told, you'd think it was a pedestrian pathway. Heaven help Bangalore, as they are planning to have 46 more of these all over the city. Anyway, back to BIAL, the ride through the city was fantastic, the overnight rain had cleaned up the roads and the traffic was non-existent, so I reached the Hebbal flyover in 25 minutes.

Bellary Road was being widened into a 6 lane highway and the project is almost complete. Luckily for motorists, they have not built too many signals or speed bumps, so I was able to maintain a constant 70-80 kmph speed right till the turnoff to the airport.I could have gone much faster in my car.

The trumpet flyover taking you from the highway to the airport was a source of much amusement a few months ago, when they realised that it would not be ready in time. This would mean that the entire airport traffic would need to take a U-turn to get off the highway. Imagine the chaos at peak time. Luckily for Bangalore, L&T took over the contract and completed it in double quick time. The interchange was completed this week, though some final asphalting was going on and I was forced to go through the mud road on the side to get to the airport road.

The airport is around 5 km from the highway and BIAL has got a nice 4 lane road leading to it. I couldn't help think, though that it would have been better if they had made it a 6 lane road to avoid any congestion. They do have space to expand, if required. I couldn't get too close to the main terminal building as it is still not open to the public and I didn't want any panga with the security guards. It's definitely larger than the HAL airport, but still looks much small that I expected. I was also quite disappointed to see the car park, they claim a capacity of 1500 cars, but it doesn't seem much bigger than the old airport car park.

Overall, everything had a not-yet-completely-finished look to it. I'm sure the airport guys will claim that they were ready on time, but secretly must have been quite happy to have been given the extra month to get things 100% complete.

The biggest talking point so far has been the travel time to the airport. I started at 5:55 and reached an hour later. On the return journey, I took the longer route via the Outer Ring Road and still reached in an hour and 15 minutes. My feeling is that the journey from Hebbal onwards is unlikely to be more than 30-45 minutes even in peak hour, so the bulk of the time is going to be getting to Hebbal. I feel that the IT crowd and others that protest are extremely hypocritical and their statements and are only looking at their own selfish interests and not the overall best interests of Bangalore. So, when people in Electronics City complain about the 2 hour journey, I don't think they even consider that when the airport was in HAL, it would take people in Hebbal and Rajajinagar atleast 2 hours to get there. The fact is that any new airport could only have been constructed far away from the city and in a sprawling city like Bangalore, that will always mean that the distance and travel times vary significantly.

GPS is so cool

In India, GPS receivers are still very rare and proper maps are rarer still. Even when available, the receivers are too expensive, so unless you really have a compelling need, you're unlikely to invest in one. So, though I've been reading about GPS for over 10 years now, I've never ever seen it in action. Until now.

Last week, during the Savandurga ride, I saw Rohan checking out his GPS receiver periodically. At the end of the trip, he had produced a map layered over a Google Earth image of exactly where we had been during the ride. I was suitably impressed and wanted to try it out for myself.

By sheer coincidence, my friend Shashi had bought a GPS receiver from China. It was a simple Bluetooth receiver that hooked up to any external device like a mobile phone or PDA. He's also just invested in an unlocked iPhone, but because its so badly locked down, he just couldn't get it to work with the receiver. So, he had resigned himself to just watching his stationary position on his laptop and was getting very frustrated about not being able to use it to the fullest potential.

In the past, I'd considered getting a GPS receiver for my Nokia N800. In many ways, it is an ideal navigation tool, with a large screen and adequate storage capacity. Maps were always going to be a problem, as the few solutions for India obviously didn't support the N800. At that time, I had thought that if someone could write a program that would use publicly available maps like Google maps or Yahoo maps, it would be very useful. I had not researched further, as I didn't have a GPS device to play with. However, now that Shashi had one available, I asked him lend his GPS receiver, and started googling for N800 GPS solutions. Very quickly, I came up with a program called Maemo-mapper.

Maemo-mapper is a mapper application that can interact with a GPS and plot the current position on a map. A lot of other applications can do this, however, the beauty is that it can access many publicly available maps like Google Maps, Google Satellite view, Yahoo maps etc. Amazingly, this was just what I had wished for a few months ago!!!

It is fairly simple in that it can only display your current position and route on a map. It cannot create driving directions automatically, this needs to happen in an external program and can be imported into this. It does, however, have the ability to export your location data as gpx files, which can be imported by any mapping program or a number of Google maps mashups and shared with others. This is a much more likely usage in the Indian context as driving directions are unlikely to ever
be reliable given the ever changing urban landscape.

I borrowed the GPS receiver for the weekend and took it with me everywhere. It was a lot of fun sitting in a car and watching it move on the map.