Prem's

Trek Kotte Abbe Mandalpatti Kalur

2012-03-11T20:58:00.001-07:00

This trek was the first organized by TAM ,sister concern of CAM.Myself and Hari decided to opt for it.Couple of his friends were also interested in it.We had most of the gear needed for trekking .Started on Friday night (Mar2) from Bangalore. Even though you ride a ultra delux bus , if you are in the last seat ,even the GOD cant save you , leave alone the driver.Though the road was not that bad , it was filled wiht potholes to wake me up every half and hour.We started at around 11 at night from Bangalroe and reached a place called Makkandur at 5 PM. We had freshen up at a home stay there.Nice place and friendly people.I tried to get some sleep but couldn't.Took bath and had early breakfast and packed lunch too by 7 AM. We need to carry only the things needed for this day's trek. A jeep would carry the rest to the base camp. Since there were 4 of us , we took 2 bags with us and left the rest for the jeep to carry.We need to travel to the base of hill by a KSRTC bus.This journey was around 30 mins. Nice view all along the way.Very light habitated localities.Last stop was Kotte-Abbi.Our trek starts now.At the start place there was a beatutiful little falls.Due to timing constraints were couldn't take a plunge.It was a percursor of things we were about to encounter in thi trek.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

There were couple of volunteers and a guide. Both the volunteers carried walkie talkie for communicating among themselves.I had a couple of them too . We synced into their channels so that we can in touch even if were lost.It was the first time i am using it in realistic manner and it was working fine. First section of the trek was bit confusing . There were no single path we can follow. After few hiccups , we got on the trail.We saw a green snake on the first section of trek,which was through dense forest.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

The climb was bit steep here. Both Periya and Lavanya were new to trekking and this was their first ever trek for them. So we picked up their backpack too ,to ease their work. Entire trek was filled with sections having ample shade and sections where we were directly under the sun. Both this sections were alternatively placed so that you dont worn out in sun for long. There were also occasional streams crossing the trekking path. A splash of cold water from the stream would refresh you in no time.Had lunch around 12 PM near by the stream.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

Since we were not that hungry we took only half of lunch we carried and decided to take the rest after couple of hours . After lunch there was one section of around 3-4 KMs on dusty mud road with no shades. Crossed this not-so-charming section by induling in a story telling session (of some recent tamil movie) by Lavanya .Beleive me ,not all are good at story telling. But it seems she was an expert in it and it kept us walking without complaining about the mud road.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

After around a hour on this patch entered the shady patches again . It was around for hour or so . At the end of this patch we hit the jeep track which takes to the mandalpati peak. We finished of the rest of lunch before hitting this road. The volunteer that back wasn't quite happy about us delaying the trek :) . We quickly finished of the lunch and hit the roads and soon joined the rest of the gang. Though we were walking on the road this patch of trek was very nice with deep valleys on one side and hills on the other side.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

Most the of vegetation had dried up and it looked beautiful in soft brown color. There were some other groups also talking this path in two wheelers and in jeeps.After a around 90 mins we reached forest office at mandalpatti - the peak at this area. After resting for around 30 mins we started to trek down towards Kalur , where our camp was supposed to made. It was mostly down trek and the path was marked by markers all along the way. There were few houses at the bottom of the hills. Since it was the last section we have covered almost 15 KM in hill , there was a long gap between people. Since the path was tricky we had to wait for the next one behind to appear from the woods to show them the way. After this though we walked on the plains it was bit confusing to reach the camp spot. if we didnt keep sight of someone ahead of us , we could easily lose track.It was getting darker too. Finally reached the camp site at 5:30 or so. The site was beautiful and stream was mesmerising in this background.Though the stream was wide, it lacked depth to take a plunge. bit disappointing .

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

But found the place where it was deepest (no more than a feet) and dipped the body in that crystal clear water.It was completly refreshing. Pitched our tents and had dinner. Later that night decided to have camp fire. Cross the stream and ventured into village in darkness and took collected firewood . Had some games during campfire.After the camp fire spent some time near the stream.Could have taken some snaps if i were carrying my tripod.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

Next day was a half day trek. Same the pervious day with patches with shade and sun shine in alternative pattern. Started around 8 AM and reached the final spot at 12 AM after ample rest all along the way.

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

At times the path was quite confusing and people had to wait for the people behind to give them the direction or make signs like this .

From Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

The bus was waiting for us. Had lunch there and started towards Bangalore with memories of a wonderful weekend.

Album link

Kalur-Mandalpatti-Trek

Winter Camp at Kothi (Manali)

2012-02-11T23:19:00.000-08:00

I was introduced to Indiahikes when some of my friends took a Himalayan trek through it. While browsing their site got interested about a winter camp and immediately finalized on trying it out. 6 of us , 3 each from bangalore and chennai grouped up together. Plan was to take flights to and from Delhi and take overnight bus travel to/from manali.

We reached manali at around 8 AM and it didnt look like a important tourist destination in India.Main town was filthy.We had to get ready by 12 PM and need to find a place to rest till then and refresh ourself. Took a hotel room near the busstand for 4 hours (Rs500).Only one person was able to take bath in hot water. Others had to be satisfied with freezing water. Temperature should be be < 5 degree Celsius . Every thing in the room , right from blankets to wooden chairs were chill. Called up Aarthi for reporting and she asked us to come to a junction from where cab will take us to camp site. Started around 12 PM that day. The camp site was at Kothi . It was on the way to Rohtang pass . All through the road there were shops which were closed or had very thin attendance .Could infer that tourist inflow was very minimal at this point of the year.

Once out of manali commercial town ,view was beautiful. Both sides of the road and even the road in some places were covered with blankets of snow.Its a first time i am encountering snow of this magnitude. We were even worried if we could cope up with it. Aarthi mentioned that it was one of the coldest winters in recent times.Learnt that till 2 days back the road was closed for traffic and the previous batch of wintercamp was canceled due to bad weather.Feeling lucky :).

After 20 mins of drive we reached a spot in kothi till which jeep can ferry us. From there camp site was 1.5 KM or so in walk.But the catch is that its uphill walk in fresh snow with all the luggage.Since we were all set from the hotel it was easy to proceed. After around 20-30 mins of walk through snow covered landscape we reached the campsite. During this walk the surrounding view changed from being beautiful to being mesmerising.This is the paradise where we will stay for the next seven days.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

On arrival we were given a 'warm' welcome. Yes hot tea awaited us.For the next 6-7 days hot tea became part of our staple diet. We were shown the dormitory.It was neat and arranged well. Since we arrived ahead of others , we picked the beds of our choice .There was a tandoor which we learnt was used to burn wood to keep the room warm.We picked the beds around the tandoor. After a long journey by bus on the previous night and after a stressing walk in a cold weather natural tendency was to hit the beds for a nap. Slowly people trickled one by one and we mutual introduction happened. Associating names to faces was diffucult for atleast 24 hours.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

It was almost evening when everyone has settled down. That evening we had a short walk in snow to get used to the climate and get to know the method of walking in snow. Snow was around 2-3 feets high on average.First person leading in front has to make the way. Its bit of a hard job. He had to press the snow hardly so that other can walk easily on that path. It was for around 30 minutes in one direction and it become dark on returning. Food was simple , fresh & hot and we simply loved it. I didnt hear anyone complaining about the food.

Next day we had a half day trek up hill.Sun was bright and climate was clear. We had a nice walk.Up hill trek should have taken around 1.5-2 hours .

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

It was a slow walk interleaved by sufficient stops to rest and have fun.While comming down we had even more fun as we slided down steep slopes. Unfortunately Hari lost his point and shoot camera during one of the long slides. We couldnt get a clue of where it would have dropped and where to search.Down hill was hardly 30 mins and we were back at camp site for a late lunch.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

After resting for couple of hours we had to check the array of shoes and slides and pick the one which suit us more. We picked and labelled them.That day over dinner had a introduction of each of participants. Though many were form IT ,it was good mix with doctors , businessman , voice over artist etc. By this time all the people in our dormitory had got mingled well. Myself , Dinesh , Hari , Arun , Manoj , Nazir , Adithi , Deepu , Sandeep , Jihar . Cinema was the most important theme but was not limited only to that.I still remember few sms read out by Adithi and Deepu. We also spend much of time playing cards inspire of chilling weather driving us to bed .Learnt few new card games too.

Next day we started skyiing training right infront of the cottage . This place was geographically well placed for training but was bit small for 20+ people training simultaneously.One of my friend who had been to this camp in previous years had mentioned that then they had to carry their boots and skis to another place and train there .Luckily we were saved from the extra time to be spent in travelling. First day at skiing was filled with innumerous 'fall-downs' , 'cleaning the shoes for snow' & 're-fit of skis' .I was too time consuming that i tried more hard not to loose balance alteast to avoid this process.Towards the end of first day i could get balance.

Next couple of days conditioned improved and at the final day of training i could manage without falling even for one time.But i couldn't master the turning on both direction as few did. I could do turning only in one direction confidently.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

Last day at the camp we had a day long trek to solang valley.There were two options there. Either stay there and take adventure sports or trek more to temple. We skipped adventure sports as it was bit costly being a tourist place and decided to towards the temple.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

It was around 2 KM from solang valley and there were hardly anyone apart from us on this stretch. I was surprised to see a family with a little kid (probably aged 2 ) also taking this path towards the temple. On reaching the temple we were served tea as prasadam :). The temple was completely covered with snow and were asked to remove our shoes for proceed to the temple. Most of us stayed back , but a more adventurous gang (4/5 people) remove the shoes ,had polythene covers over the socks and proceeded to the lingam. This trek wasn't a complete trek as for most parts we walked through habitable places apart from the stretch from the solang valley to the temple.We returned just in time for dusk but decided to halt at a place some 1 KM from the cottage, so that we could cover the last stretch in dark. It was nice experience to walk in dark .Later that day had the sendoff party with specialy sourced chicken .

Next day packed stuff and left the cottage at around 10 AM after bunch of photographs and exchange of phone nos and email ids.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

We were dropped at manali at around 1 PM and our bus was supposed to start at 4:30.Another must see natural wonder at manali is the hot spring or sulphur springs. They are formed by volcanic activity underground and it was GOD sent one for locals to get cheap hot water. After a bit of confusion we decided to take the bath at the hot spring. Remember that we haven't taken bath at all throught the camp :). There were couple of places having hot springs. A temple near the town center had one which was publicly used. So we (10 of us) decided to go to a place where we can have hot spring bath in a hotel.It was located some 8KM from manali and we hired a tempo (charnges Rs600). Unfortuanatly on reaching the hotel , we found that there is only one bath room having hot spring and also have to wait for 1 hour (till 2:30 PM) to get it opened. Hotel charges Rs100 per person. Luckily there was also a public pool adjacent that hotel. I checked that and it was clean enough.Four of us decided to take bath here.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

Other six decided the wait for the hotel to open and take bath.For those of us at the public pool there was no time restriction and i almost took bath for almost 30 mins.Boarded the bus at 4:30 PM towards Delhi . We had a nice sleep , thanks to the hot water bath , that we skipped even dinner at the motel.

Thanks to Indiahikes and the Hosts of this winter (Romie, Aarthi and and their son Aryan and they team ) and very enthusiastic gang which accompanied us. It was a memorable trip.

From Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

Rest of photos can be viewed at

Winter Camp & Ski training at Kothi ( Manali )

[Book] Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2011-12-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

I received the tamil translation of this book from Muthukumar during the recent visit to his home. This happened to a page turner. One disadvantage of reading a international best seller in tamil is that few specifics such a place , name don't get registered in the mind. On the other hand reading is much more fluent that i finished of the book in 2 days.

Regarding the book , its written by John Perkins who happened to be a cheif economic analyst of a consulting firm , advising leading MNCs on international projects. He had advised large scale infrastructure projects being undertaken by worldbank loans in many (what they call as ) third world countries such as Indonesia , Ecuador , Panama , Saudi Arabia , Iran & Iraq. This book gives a vivid picture of how Oil happens to be single reason behind geo political relationship across. USA, being one of large scale consumers of oil, has critical national Interest in securing oil imports for many more decades. Apart from securing oil reserves , other major aim for US to find alternative market for its companies outside its borders and also cheap labour (outsourcing) in order to increase profitability.

From the end of 2nd world war when US was unanimously declared as world power till 1970s , all the political equations lingered around the theme of elimination of Communism.The oil shock of 1970 , when OPEC nations stopped the export of crude oil for few months resulted in oil price sky rocketing from 1$ to 8$ , changed the political motivations of US completely .

Now their main motto is as follow

1. Identify countries with huge oil reserves .

2. Force them into mutual economic agreements , so as to secure import of oil from them. In return these countries were forced to take huge infrastructure projects undertaken by US companies which brings the oil money back to US. Countries which entered into such agreements where given special treatments , such as making sure the kings/dictators where shown in good light in world media (Ex Saudi Arabia , Dictator Shah of Iran in the 1970s, dictators of Libiya & Egypt (till a year back) etc.

3. Oil rich countries and their leaders who didn't bite the bait were projected as enemies of international peace and all chances were used to crush the regimes there and install a puppet regime which will sign whatever agreement US wants ( Present day Iran , Iraq , Ecuador , Venezuela , Panama , Libiya , Afghanistan etc )

Execution strategy is as follows

1. A well coordinated mafia consisting of US Govt , Western Oil companies , MultiNationalInfra companies , pseudo financial institutions such as World bank , Asian development bank and last but not the least the CIA , employ's a strategy which is fine tuned for every country

2. At first world bank & MNCs enter into agreements forcing these countries to take huge loans from these pseudo financial institutions under the unrealistic projections that these infra projects will make GDP/GNP of these countries grow at a faster rate (ridiculous rates ot 15-18% of gdp growth was projected) . The author is one of such leading economist who project imaginary growth rates which they themselves don't believe. These projects are used to suck money from countries rich in petro dollars. Countries which cannot pay back loans are used as puppets governments . They are used as markets for invasion by US companies and also forced into "backboneless supporters" in UN

3. When leadership of some countries doesn't agree to these one sided agreements , accidents are orchestrated by the ruthless CIA. On many occasions week internal oppositions are funded /supported to topple the leadership ( remember the recent Libiyan internal war )

India

In this book there is no reference to India as author was not engaged any projects based in India.But turn of events in India not any different from the global space .

1. Union Carbide gas leak tragedy in Bhopal (1984).When the incident happened Govt of India was so weak that they didnt have courage even to arrest the Indian incharge of this company.Infact leaders including Rajiv Gandhi & Narsimarao had to take personal care of this person to safely reach US. After two and half decades of economic growth India is in a position to voice against Dow Chemicals ( current owners of Union Carbide ) sponsoring London 2012 Olympics.Still Indian govt couldn't muster courage to voice for compensation for the affect people.

2. 123 nuclear agreement . US government is forcing this on us. This has a clause that limits the maximum liability for the multi national suppliers of the atomic reactor to 50 million USD ( then revised to 500 million USD after pressure).Govt which says that there is no possibility of disaster in nuclear plants are not able to convince the suppliers for complete liability even for manufacturing defects.

3. TamilNadu govt is planning to provide free laptops to all high school & college students (a multi billion USD project . Socialistic projects in TN are percursor for things to happen across India ). When inviting tender for this procurement , requirements initially targeted linux based laptops with 320GB HDD & wifi. Then came Hillary Clinton's (US secretary of state) visit of tamilnadu's CM. Within weeks qualification for this tender was changed to 160 GB & Microsoft windows 7. Wifi was sacrificed in order to accommodate win7. This is despite the fact that linux is more advantageous for students.No prizes for guessing what conspired in the meeting.

4. In military procurement for Indian Airforce , US govt almost forced india to purchase from US companies and when the deal went on the other way, US expressed their displeasure from official govt channels. These show how intermingled govt and MNCs has become

List goes on ...

How to Invest in Gold

2011-11-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

Form the time i had shown interest in gold April 2010 gold has been up almost 50% in a span of 1.5 years. This should be historical bull run for the precious metal in all history.Last article's aim was to show that gold gave better returns compared to inflation on a consistant basis. But a return of 50% in this period is by no means normal.Such a sudden spike has driven lot of people to consider gold of investment recently ( retail investers tend to enter at the tail end of any bull run). Widely used method for investing in gold are as follows

Traditional method of buying jewellery
Buying gold coins ( from banks , dept of Post)
Gold ETF

Lets see what would be optimal method to invest in gold.

Jewellery
From investment point of view this is the worst method .
Pros:

Can feel the aesthetic value of gold.

Cons:

5-25% more to paid for making charges etc depending on the intricacy of design.
No universal rules ( most of charge charge cost of gold for stones weight too )
During small value purchases, consumers don't have negotiating abilities
should take of safe keeping
vat/sales tax should be paid over cost of jewellery
Wealth tax ( 1% for assets more than 30 Lakhs)
When we try to sell back returns from jewellery , we will take a hit of 5-25%

Gold coins
Pros:

24 Carat, 999.9 pure. Imported from switzerland (why the hell does it matter ? )
Distributed by banks , Dept of Post which can easily relied than Jewelleries
Tamper proof packing

Cons

Atleast 10% premium ( due cost of distribution )
Price are not uniform . Vary highly between banks (see the table below)
Should take of safe keeping
Price of lower denominations are very costly (some cases extra 10% costlier)
1% VAT/Sales Tax over the cost of coin
Subject to Wealth Tax ( 1% for assets more than 30 Lakhs)
Banks don’t buy back the coins.So you have sell back to jewellers
When we try to sell back returns from jewellery , we will take a hit on the 10% premium paid.

ETF
Exchange traded funds from mutual fund house
PROS

Assured purity of 99.5%
No premium charges ( As there is no cost for distribution as it uses the existing stock market framework )
No VAT / Sales Tax / Securities Transaction Tax
No Wealth Tax

Cons

Cant physically feel the gold
Easy to realize investment returns
Volumes are low

Lets see the prices of various options on Nov 4

Price of Jewellery

	22 Ct	24 Ct
Dinamalar	2637	2820
Prince Jewellery	2640	2824

Price of Gold coins at various banks

BankName	Lowest Denomination	Highest Denomination	Price per gram	Tax
SBI	6235(2gms)	150350(50gms)	3118 - 3007	exclusive of Value Added Tax/Sales tax.
IOB	6141(2 gms)	292774(100gms)	3071 - 2928	exclusive of Value Added Tax/Sales tax.
HDFC	8520 (2.5 g)	330620(100g)	3400 - 3306	including sales tax as applicable in Mumbai
Corp Bank	6221 (2 g)	289254(100g)	3111 - 2893	exclusive of Value Added Tax/Sales tax.
ICICI	3514 (1g)	60564 (20g)	3514 - 3028	exclusive of Value Added Tax/Sales tax.
BOI	12138(4 g)	146882(50g)	3034 - 2937	exclusive of Value Added Tax/Sales tax.

NAV of Various ETF

ETF Name	Price	Volume ( in Lakh Rs)
Goldman Sachs Gold ETF	2685	3386
kotak	2697	670.34
Reliance Gold ETF	2601	446.65
SBI Gold ETF	2733	217.44
HDFC Gold ETF	2745	174.52
UTI Gold	2668	121.43
Religare gold etf	2761	49.42
ICICI Prudential Gold ETF	2745	23.8

Conclusion :
Based on the pros and cons listed above the best option for investing in gold is through Gold ETF.

Comparision of Payment Gateways in India

2011-10-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

It all begin when a friend asked me about the possibility of setting up a ecom site for his traditional business.Since it involved both B2B and B2C segments, one of the areas of interest was online payment ie) user purchasing a commodity in his site and paying via credit card/debit card/NetBanking online. Though i have used this facility as a consumer almost on a daily basis , i wasn't aware of the underlying business model and hence decided to explore it. As usual, armed with Google, digged through the net and following is the overall summary

Service Provider	Charges ( Initial Setup Cost +Yearly Charges + Transaction Charges)	Comments
CC Avenues	7,500, 1200, 7% / 40,000,3600 , 3%	Industry Leader.Most widely used . No 1 Player
ebs.in ( Axis Bank )	30,000,2400,3.25%	No 2 Player
ipayin.com	NIL,2500 + 3.99% / 25000,4500,2.99%	Integration into webpage seems to be easy. Not sure of quality of service
HDFC	Info not in public domain
ICICI Payseal	Info not in public domain	Seems they dont care about startups & smaller companies
PayPal	NIL,NIL,3.4% + .3USD	Cannot Receive payment in INR. Many international currencies supported. Apt for US faced ecom sites.Can take delivery in INR in Indian Bank Account

Few points to note

Irrespective of using CreditCard , DebitCard or NetBanking transaction overhead seems to be same.
At least 3% transaction charges

This point intrigues me a lot. When i pay Rs200 for a book in flipkart someone is getting Rs6 . Hmm I guess this is very high for waffer thin margin business like retail. I can understand if the underlying mechanism is credit card ,then the charges imposed by card issuing agency ( MasterCard , Visa,Amex ) will also be added to PG's cost of service.But if NetBanking is used and amount is immediatly debited from consumers bank account , what's the need for extra charges. Is banks imposing charges similar to card issuing agencies ?
At a point when Govt wants to push cash less transactions for the purpose of transparency and eradicating black money ,this ( high charges ) is definitely a road blocker in this direction.

Cost of service seems to be uniform even in matured market like US . Paypal asking prince is above 3% . But quality of service seems to be better there.
Mostly merchants are not happy with current model of business

Domain is so large that there is ample scope for more players

Wish List

RBI should come up with a common platform , inline with NEFT, atleast for NetBanking ,where money transfers from consumers to merchants with least overhead and that could be easily tracked , monitored and audited.

If anyone reading has first hand feedback on any of the service provider please leave it in the comment section ,so that benefits everyone.

US Trip Photos

2011-09-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

LasVegas

GrandCanyon

London

LasVegas and GrandCanyon

2011-09-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

A trip to US wouldn't be complete without a visit to the sin city.From SantaClara it was a 530 miles drive and most part was through barren deserts of Nevada. Both of us were eager to visit ,but due to the issues we faced with car on the Yosemite trip ,we were bit hesitant to drive this long.The other option was to travel by air or a mix of flight and car. When we checked the rates it was around 450$ per head for direct flights from SanJose to LasVegas and back. Other option was to fly till LA ( 80$) and take a rental car from there for 4 hours. Here too car rent was around 250$ for 4 days.It wasnt affordable and hence decided to stick to car for the entire trip.After Yosemite trip we changed the car to a same model ( KIA Forte) with different colour.

From LasVegas

During preparations colleages in US office were very helpful .Inspite of their busy schedule Sandeep,Ratnesh,VijayAsokan & Josephine spent a lot of time explaining what to do and more importantly what not to do.They spent so much time that i literaly felt embarased for wasting their time.Sandeep gave a crisp writeup on what places to visit and more importantly what should be skipped( attached with this blog). Since there are number of casinos / hotels , visiting all of them will simply drain our time and energy.Since we are short of time any small mistake would have ruined our plan.We had long weekend for labour day( 3 days) and we made it even longer by adding couple of more days ( Friday and Tuesday) and made it 5 days affair.2 days were exclusive for travel which left 3 days for Vegas and Grand Canyon.Booked rooms at Exacalibur. It came to around 400$ for 3 days.Later extended to 4th day for 40$. Apart from this charges they charge 15$ for using the amenities.We could have take taken other hotels far away from the strip which would have been cheap. But being in the strip saved lot of time and energy.

We started on Friday( 2 Sep) morning 5 AM from home .We stopped only for lunch and fuel , a total of around 40 mins.Driving , drive and still drive. Quite tiring.The entire stretch was barren and temprature raised to 100F as we approached Nevada desserts.

From LasVegas

We had sun screen lotions and sun glasses , which helped to reduce the effect of hot sun on us.We reached Vegas at around 2:30 just in time to checkin into the hotel at 3 PM.A long queue awaited there.After waiting for around 20 mins checked in and took a room at 15th floor.Room was neat and meet our expectation. Lucily we didnt choose the LA route. On the day we traveled there was a fire on the highway connecting LA and Vegas and traffic was disrupted.We could see the smoke fumes when we were traveling but could find the reason only on watching TV at the hotel.Took rest till 7 PM and started for the casinos.

We have heard that water is the elixir of life.But it seems Beer and Margareta (a cocktail made mostly of vodka) were the elixir of Vegas.Luckily we had carried lot of water as per Sandeep's guidance ( a 10 litres can , a 5 litres can & 18 * 250ml bottles).Entire cost of these came to around 6-7$ in SantaClara. At vegas at the strip one 250 ml bottle was sold at 1$ and withing the casino it was 1.8$. Frist couple of days the heat was intense . I used to pick margarita to keep myself cool.It was made of crushed ice filled with vodka and flavors of our choice.We can sip it for long time and keep us hydrated.These bottles used to be really big . Medium sized one which i picked once was as high as my knee(cost 11$).

From LasVegas

First day we visited couple of casinos Luxor , Mandalaybay. .

Playing in Casino and Day Trading
   We had a initial stop loss of 100$ (max loss at which we would stop gambling) .Unfortunately both of us were not aware of any card games played there and we stick to machines where we can make bets as low as 1 cent. I was not here with the hope of making money at the casinos but wanted thrill of gambling. Hence always made bets with lowest possible values and there by increased no of bets at a given cost. Realized gambing and investing in stocks(for short period called as trading) are pretty much the same. Some rules to stick
    1. Have a strict stop loss (a level where you will stop gambling)
    2. When bets go in your favour increase ur stop loss and continue gambling ( trailing stop loss)
    3. When bets go against you , book losses and move on
    4. Accept that everything is random so that you dont attribute success to your intelligence or failure to your ignorance

    Its very easy to accept these rules in gambling but not in stocks.We tend to think that short term movements in stocks due to some logical reason and fail to accept the underlying randomness. Since we had a very tight schedule we couldnt play much .We played at max 5$ in each casino. We should have made bets worth 75$ and expectedly on most occasions lost and made big on few bets.Finally the tally was a profit of 20$.At last someone is returning from Vegas with money :) . At each casino i would bet till the last cent and print out a voucher.These voucher can be redemed for cash at vending machine.But i chose to keep the 1 cent vouchers as souvenirs.

From LasVegas

Concept of LasVegas was itself mindblowing. The entertainment hot spot for the entire world , created right at the middle of a desert.Who in his sane mind will think of it. Where do they get water for these hundreds of thousands of people who visit daily.If you have watched God Father ,you would know by now how casino business were created.During the later part of last century when the law enforcement tighened their noose around the mobs ,they wanted to move into legitimate business of high returns .Casinos was the prime among them.

From LasVegas

There were number of casinos. It would have taken a full week to visit each of them. We choose the ones marked as "must vist" by sandeep.They were really awesome. Grandness of each of them was mindblowing. Ceaser's palace , Venetian had replicated hot spots in greece and venice. Inside venetian there is a boat ride similar streets of venice. NewYork NewYork has replicated must see places in Newyork.

On the 3rd day we planned for a trip to GrandCanyon.We decided to visit south rim and it was 4 hours ride from Vegas.We booked with a bus tour paying 80$ per head.Due to labour weekedn it was highly crowded and started from vegas at 8:30 delayed by an hour.On the way we visited the Hoover Dam built on the Colorado river. Next stop was at the National Geographic museum where we saw a short film(35 mins) on the Grand Canyon(15$) on a iMAX theatre. National Geographic movies used to look splendid on a 32inch TV itself. No prizes for guessing how nice it will be on a imax theatre. Impressive movie hall and even more impressive moive.

Then we moved to south rim where had just 2 hours to cover this spectacular 7th wonder of the world.Clock was running ahead of its usual speed. Relativity :). I could have sat for hours looking at this god made wonder.Completely lost track of time and after last minute frantic walks finally we reached the location bus was supposed to be parked but couldnt identify the exact spot. After few frantic calls to the driver we reached 15 mins later to the bus.We had one more companion to be late and he too was a Indian :) Finally showed them what IST was. It was quite a surprise, everyone was sticking perfectly to the time.In my past experiance i have never seen a meeting/trip start sharp on time even in (supposedly) highly disciplined software compaines. Definitly a point to improve for us. One thing regret missing there is the helicopter ride. For a cost of 120$ or so ,they will take you from the top of the canyon all the way down , land near the river and then comeback , all in 30 mins. We didn't book ahead and really regret missing it.

4th day visited the left over casinos starting from 10 AM .Visited most of the leftover casinos.Had buffet at Harrah's.By 6 PM we were worn out and returned to hotel.Kumaran was completly down and decided to rest at the hotel.There were 2 more must see spots which were very far by walk. So took the bus (called as deuce) and went to Fremont street. This was supposed to be down town of vegas. Few old styled casinos were there. It seems casnios started here and when the goverment wanted some norms to be followed , the mobs moved out of downtown and selected a outer place ,which now became the strip. There were comparitively few visitors the this street. Fremont street was nice with live shows going on the streets.Entire street ( 200 meters long ) was covered by large screen(lcd) which was good to watch.

From LasVegas

Now the only left over place was the Casnio Stratosphere and time was 12 PM. Though 12 PM was not a time to rest at Vegas , this casino was outside the strip and roads around them were deserted and i had no company either. After much back and forth thought finally decide to visit this too. The speciality of this casino is that there is a hall at 108th floor which can accessed by payment(16$) and few amusement rides there. I took ticket for entry and any one ride and went up.

View from this hall was mesmerising. Entire city of Vegas can be seen at one shot.Huge hotels looks at miniatures at this height.You need not raise your head to look at the moon.

From LasVegas

Then the rides. At the first ride they will drop you from floor no 108 . It will be free fall till floor no 10 or so and then will land safe at the basement. It was awesome to look at. Since i had the camera and bags i didnt want to take it . I was bit frightened on seeing this too :)
I choose a ride called as insanity .Its a ride where we take hoirzontal circles at high speeds. The catch is that the revolutions are made outside the building ie) literally at a height of 108 floors.quite wonderful.

From LasVegas

There were 2 more rides . I wish i could have taken these rides unlimited(34$) if i had time and company. Another thing which i missed is the gun show. There was gun show where you can view all guns , handle it and even fire live bullets from it.It was far from the strip and i couldn't find time to visit it.

The next day we started on 10 AM after settling bills at the hotels. Didn't stop for food anywhere. Just refilled fule couple of times and took rest for 10 mins , at two rest areas and finally reached SantaClara at 7 PM.Drive direcly to Saravana Bhavan for a authentic south indian dosa and coffee to commemerate the successful tirp :)

More Photos @

LasVegas

Mono Lake , Mammoth Mountain & YoseMite National Park

2011-09-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

This was my 2nd weekend in US and we really wanted to drive long on this. We chose Yosemite National Park ,which is 4 hours/180 miles/290 KM drive from Santa Clara.
Three of us Myself, Kumaran & Ratnesh were in for it .

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

Our initial plan was to start early morning say 5 AM .But later changed the plan to get started by 12 AM in midnight and reach Mono Lake for sunrise. We were not ready to believe the GPS completely and took prints from Google maps. We started around 12:30 AM and no major stops on the way, apart from picking coffe from McDonalds. I hate this coffee ,made a decision to never take it hereafter. It was a long drive as i was awake through out the trip. Sun was supposed to rise at 6:21 AM , but when we reached there at 5:45 sky was already well lit even though sun hasn't risen. Now we were in the high way and we need to take a small road to the lake. After looking for the road quite a long time and trying some trial and error on few unmarked path, we saw a car taking the road to the lake and we followed it and reached the lake just in time to see the sun rise.
The unique proposition of this lake is the nature of water ( high density due to mineral content) and tufa ,sort of coral reefs formed by mineral deposits. Water looked crystal clear but while touching it was like oil and tasted miserably :).

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

We saw the sun rise here . We couldn't have the view of sun due to clouds but it was picturesque seeing the horizon getting painted first in red then in glittering gold by the sun .Apart from us there were 10-15 people.

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

Initially our plan was to go to Yosemite national park from here . But we were pleasantly surprised by the snow on the hill top surrounding mono lake. Mammoth mountain which was famous for its snow capped mountains was not in our plan , as we didn't expect snow at this point in summer. But now we changed our plan to accommodate mammoth mountain too. On the way there was a place to refresh our self . It seems to maintained by government and it was pretty clean.

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

Not even 5 minutes into drive from here ,front tire got flattened. After a bit of trial & error experiments , we were able to replace the spare tire. But spare tire was not full sized one and it was meant for only short term drive. We didn't want to waste time repairing it and our calls to renting agent(budget) was also not responded properly .So we decided to carry on the trip and change the car itself the next day.Later came to know that it was a wrong decision. We shouldn't drive for long using spare tires and that too in the front axle. Anyway we came to now this fact on the next day only when we were mentioning this incident to colleagues.

We continued to mammouth mountain. There were only traces of snow . During peak season there would be meteres of snow above the ground it seems . We took the cable car to the top of the moutain and spent about an hour there. View from there was very nice. This is the first time i am encountering snow and so even though there were only little snow it was thrilling for me.

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

After mamouth mountain ,we drove towards Yosemite National Park. There was a severe forest fire in one portion of the park and i was bit worried if we could access all the places .But all the must visit places were out of the danger area .We could see the fire engines and forest ranger vehicles whizzing to and for on the road.
We visited lot of vista points .There we could park our car and take some snaps and enjoy the nature.Mostly there were moutains,streams and coniferous tress. Mountains were huge and beautiful.Half Dome , a mountain which looks as if it was cut into half was the important one. At various points in the trip , we saw the same mountains ,falls from different altitudes and angles.

From Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

Every view was equally beautiful. We went to the top of the hills (glacier point ) and had a full view of the entire area from there. Then we drove down to the valley . It was almost sunset at this point and we started to travel back.We thought of going straight to Sanjose airport and change the car . But by the time we reached the city it was almost 1 AM and we were damn tired (24 hours non stop driving ) and hence postponed the car change plan to the next day and reached home.

More photos here

Mono Lake, Mammoth mountain & Yosemite National Park

Crisis Economics

2011-08-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

Crisis Economics by Nouriel Roubini & Stephen Mihm. This is the 3rd of series of books which i was reading on the recent Financial crisis.Others being Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan .

One common credit for all these authors is that they had in one way or other predicted the economic crisis even before rest of the world . So now its time for them to write books in 'I told you so' tone :). Invariantly all of them try to articulate the reasons for the crisis. Taleb has his own reason - 'Tail risk' or 'Black Swan events' which weren't given enough attention. Mostly he finds fault with probabilistic distribution adopted by the investment bankers. Roubini and Raghuram , both eminent professors , agree between themselves , that fault lines run more depth than what is seen from outside .Entire system is being rotten.And the worst of part of the story is that we havn't cleaned up so far.We are just decorating the skin of a soon to be dead cancer patient and admiring at his recovery.

Crisis Economics is the best among them and following is excerpts from it .
Crisis are part of parcel of capitalism . He differs from the concept that crisis are black swan events (least random one off events as described by Taleb ) but structural events associated with boom and bust.In the past centuries we have seen boom and bust cycles which occurs in a predictable fashion, off course mostly in the hindsight. Whenever a major invention , discovery , shift in technology happens ,there is a euphoria associated with it and when it goes beyond the fundamental reasons it turns out to be a boom which invariably land in a bust. Tulips , Industrial Revolution , Rail Road Companies , the recent dot com and finally now the Financial Derivatives, all follow the same path .Each crisis provides a opportunity to clean up the mess and make the system far more robust. All the major financial controllers ( Federal Reserve , SEC etc ) where formed in response to crisis in the earlier path of 20th century. Unfortunately this is not happening now.

Banking sector is in such a mess that they have taken the entire world into ransom. Still there is no one to supervise them effectively and no rules to adhere to. They do what ever they want to maximize their profit ( inturn their bonus ) and when the tide changes they go hat it hand to govt to bail them out ( ironically again have large bonus ). Glass–Steagall Act, which was safeguarding the world from the financial system from their inception in 1932 to 1999, prevents banking and investment banking to be under a same company.Now its a writing in the wall that the institutions which have become "too big to fail" came to their current form after this act was removed in 1999.There is no plans for breaking down these evil empires.

     People refrain from doing bad things , not because they are inherently good , but due to fear of getting punished by law. Corporations aren't any exception.When corporations are sure that what ever they do Fed will be lender of last resort to cleanup their mess , they have little incentive to do their work properly.After the crisis of 2008-09 , we have done so little in eradicating the reason for this crisis , breaking too huge institutions , regulating complex derivatives (correctly predicted as Weapons of mass destruction by none other than Warren Buffet ) , almost of no Govt supervision of these companies ,insane risk management, carry trade , funny rating agencies and ridiculous compensation system.

        Everyone is interested in reading about predictions . But its quite a experience to read a book of future prediction , when the events predicted were unfolding in front of your eyes .This week will go in the history for all the drama happening in Capitol hill over the issue of increasing the dept limit of US from the existing limit of 14.3 trillion Dollars by Aug 2 deadline . Failing to reach a accord will mean that US Govt will default on its dept. Though there is less than 0.01 probability for this to happen this time ,but one thing is for sure .Status quo of United States being the economic super power and the dollar being worlds reserve currency($) are about to be changed.Only question is , if it be a orderly event spanning over decades or will it be a catastrophe ? Only time can answer it.

     Last time we faced any such structural change was when US & Dollar took over the baton from the Great Britain & Pound during post World War 2. But now we dont have a clear player to take over the lead.Closest possible is China and its Yuan. But there are several reason for why China cant be a No1 anytime soon - not a democracy , not a open economy , Yuan not being a free floating currency , huge dependence on export.

In order to clean up the mess the author wants the following to be done
     World Financial system to be revamped ,structural cleanup
    Countries to reduce the fiscal deficit/surplus so that a balance is maintained.

But there is no indications of steps in this direction being taken.US continues to increase its deficit and China continuing to increase its surplus. They both are in a parasitic relationship which has become increasingly difficult of both nations to get out of. The more time they continue the more complex it becomes. Unless there is pre planned orderly unwinding , it could to lead to huge destruction which could make all the past crisis look like a mere hiccups .

India ..
    India seems to be in a far better shape then the rest of the world . RBI plays the right role of central bank defusing boom by monetary supervision.Banks are better capitalized , thanks again to RBI.Far more self reliant economy than the rest of BRIC with least dependence on export and favorable demographic dividend.

Singapore Trip Videos

2011-07-11T08:56:00.000-07:00

Santhosh Marraige Reception

2011-07-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

Date : 26 June 2011
Location : Ambattur , Chennai

Though i have purchased this HD handycam many months back , this is the first time i processed the captures and uploaded into youtube. Raw HD data takes about 2MB per sec ( 16100 kbps bit rate ) . Processing HD output is highly time/cpu intensive and takes huge bandwidth to upload. Stumbled on a software called VideoPad and with its help , converted those huge videos into 1280 *720 mpeg stream at a bit rate of 4500 kbps.

Night Trek To Makkalidurga

2011-06-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

This time we decided to join a night trek to Makkalidurga organized by BMC.Reasons - wanted to do a night trek and didnt have time to organize one on my own.Myself , Karthik , Hari and Abhinav decided do it.BMC was charging Rs750 for this trek.Bit costly as it includes only rental cost of van and morning breakfast .When three of us boarded the van at LifeStyle around 10:30 PM , it was already fully packed with atleast 25+ people.Abhinav joined at Mekri circle. We reached base of hill at around 12 PM.

It was 2 days past full moon day and visibility was good under moon light. 2 days back we had the century's longest lunar eclipse. It would have been a different experience had we taken the trek on the day of the eclipse .After the usual self intro (so boring this time) we started to climb. There were 3 organizers.Being a night trek , no one could see others face clearly and might be because of it there was no interaction too. It was a large group made of number of cohesive small subgroups. Trek as pretty much easy. The night view of towns nearby was nice as moved up.

From NightTrekMakkalidurga

Since it was quite boring 4 of us played 20 questions for sometime.Trek was for about 100 minutes including break. As usual at the top there was a small temple and few diapilated structures.

From NightTrekMakkalidurga

Even though it was small trek , taking it on a friday night made us tiresome. We used the sleeping bags and started making our beds.Winds at this height was very chilly and blowing at good speed.It was quite a experiance to sleep under moonlight.

From NightTrekMakkalidurga

When i woke up at around 5:30 AM , few photographers were tyring their best to get good view of the sunrise. But it was bit cloudy in the east direction and we couldnt get the good view of sunrise.

It was quite a task for me (as usual) to wake up Karthik.After few snaps we started the trek down.

From NightTrekMakkalidurga

It was hardly 45 minutes and we started back to bangalore at around 7:30 AM. Since we were sleep starved we couldnt enjoy the down trek / return journey.Had breakfast at the outskirts of Bangalore at 11 AM. Breakfast was hardly needed.Instead we could have reached home early to take good rest.

From NightTrekMakkalidurga

Singapore

2011-04-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

        Though "trip to singapore" was a long pending agenda , catalyst to this trip was a random internet advertisement in which Tiger Airways promised* (yes the * was intended) to and fro to Singapore at a very low cost (some thing around 5K INR). This concept was readily accepted by Venkat , Bharathi and Karthi and we booked tickets within couple of weeks. Final travel cost then was around 10K for a single passenger including all charges.Later Bharathi dropped out as Balu's marriage was in the same weekend that we have booked tickets. There was no provision to reschedule these low cost tickets and hence others planed to stick to the initial plan.Later one day during breakfast when i was mentioning this plan to Hari , he offered to joined in. Luckily his ticket was even cheaper , 7K INR. The departure was scheduled on 3 March at 11:45 PM from chennai. Three of us ( Myself , Venkat & Hari ) started by Brindavan Express from Bangalore and reached Chennai at 8 PM. We reached airport at around 9 PM where Karthi was waiting. We had sufficient time before checkin and hence decided to have dinner in airport. It ironic that there was only one hotel ( 20 seater) in the entire International airport.

There was a couple of new camera and camcorder we were carrying. If we didnt show these and get receipts from the customs ,it would added to our customs limit on return.So we approached a customs official to do the necessary paperwork.You need a spectacular negotiating ability to get a work done from a Indian Government official. After lot of cajoling he accepted to do his duty. At least 25 minutes was wasted by this useless fellow. We had only 3:30 hours to sleep that night.I couldn't sleep during the journey. Next day we landed right on time at around 6:30 AM PST.
    First was immigration. Myself and Hari came through the same counter and i preceded him. The agent at our counter was very stubborn.She was having a detailed look through the passport and questioning people for more time , whereas other agents were relaxed and finished the process quickly. She even reported two passengers to her higher authority.They were taken to a separate room for questioning. When Hari finished immigration ,he mentioned that when they scanned his passport my photo was showing up there !!!!. Ooops how could it be possible ??..Okay .On rewinding the past events we got the reason for this confusion.We both applied Visa simultaneously and have given applications without pasting/fixing the photo in it .The agent processing the application has switched the photos and finally as per government of singapore we had a different face. If we can do this why not others, whose aim to forge a entry. I have read somewhere [The Day of the Jackal] that when some sees your identiy cards and verifies against your face , he looks for similarities between both of them and mostly let away even if few things are similar. Very true .Even a strict agent cannot identify difference between these two photos and the orginal faces. Its hightime that We should get away from photo based identification and resort to more foolproof methods such fingerprint , retina etc .Lucily we were saved :) Else we would have made headlines in nextday's newspapers for trying to enter singapore with false visa.
       Our hotel booking was in littleIndia at 12PM. We thought of reaching there , deposit the luggage and wander around that area till 12 PM. Arriving at the airport we were clueless on how to travel to the hotel . Our poor planning was already showing its effects. We didnt even have a map of the city , no bus/train routes info , no local mobile phones. There was a cab stand it was mentioned that cost would be around 45$ . oops .. There was bus taking passengers freely to some train station. Since it was free , and since many people boarding it , we too got into it :) . Inside the bus we were discussing how to proceed next . On hearing our confused speeches couple of people offered to help us. One passenger told us the route in MRT (local train service there ) and also mentioned that he will be accompanying us until 2 junctions and one stretch we had to travel on our own. There were prepaid cards to pay for train journey . It costs 10$ with a 5$ travel value. This card can be used for buses too. We bought 4 such cards.For reasons not known to us the person who was guiding us didnt have a card and bought a ticket , even though he was long staying resident. With this card the travel was hassle free . No queues to get tickets . Jus swipe the card on the entry and exit and automatically the ticket charges are calculated and deducted.[ Recently read that same methodology is planned for Bangalore metro too . Lets see how they implement it ]. This is a must in chennai too. Mostly the wait time for tickets in chennai metro used to be 15-20 mins in peak time . MRT in singapore was archtectural marvel.Its completly underground and runs in 2 / 3 layers in intersecting points. Stations were not only clean but very apealing , inline with 3 star hotels in India. Official mean of communication is English , Tamil and Chinese. All public sign boards and public announcements are carried out in these three languages.

       We reached the hotel around 10 AM and we were tired.Checked into a room earlier and took rest.On the first day we planned to visit zoo.Still we didn't have a map and we had no idea of how to proceed . Since we were running out of time we decided to get a taxi. But none of the taxi stopped when we showed our hands.Intriguingly we observed what has happening .Opps there was a stand to get the taxi. There was queue here too and whenever a empty taxi passes by this stand , first person or group got into it and proceeded. No Negotiations . Accurate Meters .. Interesing !!!. Finally we got to the taxi after a long drive (20-30 mins) . Cost was 18$ .Zoo was pretty much good.

From SingaporeTrip

Got a couple of maps and found out that the entire city and all its tourists attractions were very well connected by bus and MRT. We never took a taxi after this. That night we visited Marina bay and Singapore flyer , a huuugee the gaint wheel was a attraction there. Per head cost was 29$ ( Rs 1000 ) for one trip .It was spectacular to get a bird's view of this concrete jungle in glittering night lights .

We had the idea of tasting authentic Chinese dishes and got down at China Town MRT station. All the dishes were priced around 10$ . We ordered Spring onion , a chicken dish , a prawn dish , a plate of meat ball and a cup of rice . All through the process of ordering we couldn't communicate with them in English .Sign language and marking the menu card were communicating methodology used. Good that Chinese didnt know English that well , so that we could maintain our dominance in IT and ITES industry. Each dish we ordered were too huge.For instance the meat ball dish had 4 meat balls each of the size of a tennis ball.

Every day we used to reach our hotel around 12 PM and the street used to have traffic as if it was 8 PM. We would shop around at the Mustafa center .Every day we would shop around till 2-3 AM and got up late in the morning. We bought a local sim card .Process was pretty simple . Shopkeeper scaned my passport and thats all . No paper work,, Nothing . In minutes i had a local phone . Cost was 8$ for 10$ worth of talk time. International calls to India was dead cheap. We made almost a hour worth of local and international call and still few SG$ were there.Couple of my friends were staying here . Initially i had contacted them earlier through mail and phone to get some details but scedule was so tight that i couldnt meet them.3 days were very short time :( Should have been atleast 5 days to call it a trip .Atleast now i could call them up and ask for some suggestions .

Next day went to Sentosa Island. Universal Studios also lies here and i have booked tickets for this ( S$ 72 per head). Our idea was to cover the entire island in one day. There was three ways to reach the island from the mainland . Landroute , cable car and Mono rail . We decided to try the cable car and spent lot of time to locate the starting point of the cable car. It costs around 25$ for to and fro and view was awesome from it.

From SingaporeTrip

we reached very late at around 1 PM here and that day was not enough to cover the Universal studios itself. Attractions here were the 4D show , water world set and live climax stunt , rides in Egyptian set and Jurasic park.We were pretty much occupied till 7 PM , the closing time of the studio.

From SingaporeTrip

We didnt visit few items in Sentosa Island. It was already 7:30 PM. Just picked up few brochures at the Information desk and found that there was a music fountain show at one part of the island. We decided to check this out. It was some 30 mins show. A story was depicted with laser shows , fountains and lights at a beach.Pretty much nice.It was almost 10 PM and we called off for the day.We reached Orchard Road and we were damn tired to roam around and returned after spending some time there.

From SingaporeTrip

Considering previous days experience @ China Town , we didnt want to take risk with dinner and had it at authentic chettinad restaurant itself at little India . Then asusual shopping .. If you are traveling from India , definitely LCD TV is a must buy here. it almost 30-40% cheap here ,but International warranty is not provided . Initially i had planed to buy a 32inch LCD TV (LG/Sony) for a budget of 20K . But there was 42 inch LG Plasma at the same cost and so i went for it. Indian price was around 45K and i got it for 600 SG$(22K INR) . In this amount we can claim a refund of tax at the airport of some 50$. Customs officer here was opposite of what i have seen in chennai. He sealed my application immediately and politely mentioned where to drop it . Within 10 days i received my refund.

Final day we decided to stick to Sentosa Island itself as there were lot of tourist attractions still there. We used the famous underwater tunnel , seal show , dolphin show , and finally spent some time at the beach there and started .

From SingaporeTrip

There were lot of adventure sports which we couldnt try out due to lack of time. One among them was the traveling by hanging in a rope at some 500 feet higher for a distance of say 500 meters over the beach.Today our visit was very short. We had to return and packup for the airport. We returned at around 5 PM bought some souveniers and started towards the airport.

My 42 inch TV was weighing around 28 Kg and we had only 15Kg baggage ( as initial plan was for a 32 inch one ). Tiger Airways was charging around 200 US$ for this baggage . It was more than to and fro ticket. Luckily my friend Sangeetha who was a resident in Singapore was there to send us off. Gave here the TV and made arrangements so that my other friend Mani who was also resident will bring this during his travel ( scheduled in 2 weeks time after that ). Had these people were not there to save the day i would have lost almost 7-8K INR.

The airport was very spacious , clutter free even though it was the budget terminal. Only place where there was any crowd here was at the duty free shop selling liquor. Venkat bought few for his friend . I was in no mood to purchase anything here after the chaos with TV .But later picked a premium scotch (Chivas Regal 12 years ) at the duty free shop at chennai. It costs around Rs1500 here whereas in Bangalore it is retailed at Rs4500. Should be around 5000 in Chennai .We are allowed to take 2 bottles each. i could recoup all the travel expense just buying and reselling 2 bottles :)

From SingaporeTrip

Final Cost of the trip came to around 26K INR per head including travel ,lodging , food and sightseeing.

Few learning

3 days was too short for us. Around 5 days is needed .

Plan accurately even before starting to avoid wasting time on planning

For purchase decide the items/models to buy before hand , dont waste time evaluating models here
If you are buying TV make sure you ticket has sufficient baggage and price of TV is within custom limits .

Make sure you get the GST refund forms at the shop and get them validated at the airport

[Trek] Skandagiri

2011-02-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

It has been a long while since i attended any trek .So after a tough schedule in January thought of trying a trek - skandagiri. Couldn't get enough members from Citrix. Finally a group of 5 people - Myself , Bharathi , Rajesh , Sushar & Nandhakumar decided to proceed . It seems night trek was the specialty of this mountain range.Since none of us had done it earlier ,we decided to opt for day trek inspite of hot climate - not a optimal option though.

We started in 3 bikes at 5:30 AM. Bangalore was sooooo cold.Riding at 50-60 kms/hr on highway ,chillness in air was so intense that i felt as if am wearing a cotton shirt. Sweater & a sports Tshirt was no enough to this climate.Hands become numb as if i a surgery can be performed without anesthesia.Luckily got a glove from sushar.We rested wherever possible to have hot cup of tea.

From Skandagiri Trek

On the highway

Route was along NH7 high way, cross new airport and proceed to chickbalapur.Had breakfast in a restaurant opposite to large park at the center of this town.From this point take left ,adjacent to the park and proceed for around half a kilometer where a road proceeding to left has a arch.Turn on to this road and proceed in whatever direction that this small road takes you. Lot of fields , settlement ,brick factory are on the way and finaly we will reach a dead end and we need to take right from here.This road lead to pagagini mutt.
There were not caretakers for parking by the time we reached there ( around 9 AM) though few cars and bikes were parked there. A worker in the mutt told that sun would be very hot and there would be no water at the top and asked us to get back. After gaining his confidence by spending thirty rupees ( same strategy to follow either in parliament or in a street corner ), he agreed to take care of our bikes.
From the mutt there is a path , as large as needed for a car to travel ,some 750 meters , till the starting point of the trek.This point can be identified by a large stone with some instructions written on it. Unluckily we didnt hit this road and instead took a small path directly towards the hills ( ஒரு ஆர்வம் தான் :-) ). We kept on reaching dead end ,backtracking and choosing a different path in a cyclic fashion .

From Skandagiri Trek

Searching for paths

From Skandagiri Trek

Returning back after meeting a dead end

After a hour of intense encounters with steep rocks and thorny bushes i could feel that we were lost.But unluckily there were no one to seek help from.Finally a local person called us down ( we were almost 1 KM up in the wrong path) and told us that we were on the wrong path and offered take us in the right path for Rs300 ,till half way of the trek after which path would be clear one. In reality it was too high a price for guard for 50% of the trek, but its was seller's
market and we couldn't do any bargain.
He took us to the correct road.In hindsight it was a blunt mistake that we couldn't stop laughing at our self.The path so well laid that it was more like a path to a hill top temple , albeit with small hiccups.It took around an hour to reach the spot where guard would depart us. There was a medium sized rock on the right and a steep path leaves on the left.From here the path was turning into a jungle track.Initial trek had a greenery. We had to cross five remains of fort walls.

From Skandagiri Trek

One of the fort wall

We had enough loads of water ,chocolates,dates & glucose to energize us to proceed.We took a slow path resting for every 20 minutes all along the way for photo shoots and snacks.There were dilapidated remain of rest places which should have been used by soldiers.

From Skandagiri Trek

Remains of a soldier's cabin

From Skandagiri Trek

Yet another fortwall

Last stretch was steep and had little green cover exposing us to the hot sun. In-spite of sun , chill winds were blowing at these altitudes giving us a feel of entering a AC car after wandering in hot sun.Finally we reached the top at around 12:30. There was a small temple , which morphed into a miniature hotel selling bread omelet , maggi and water cans.

From Skandagiri Trek

Finally at the top

From Skandagiri Trek

Waiting for lunch

items were ridiculously priced . ( one break omlette at Rs 20 , Maggie at Rs 25 and water bottle at Rs 40) .Since we carried bread with us ,we bought omlette for our lunch.After about 30 minutes of rest ,we started climbing down and was a easy job as expected.

From Skandagiri Trek

Breathtaking view from the top

One of disturbing scenes all along this trek was the litter , mostly water bottles , polythene covers of snacks ,beer bottles and what not spewed all over the path and mostly the top.In all the treks one of motivating fact is the unadulterated environment , but here the litter gives feeling as if it was market corner.Forest department should take control over such sites and control such menace to the environment.

திராவிட வரலாறு

2011-02-07T10:03:00.000-08:00

சில நாட்களுக்கு முன் வேலையே இல்லாத ஒரு சுபயோக சுபதினத்தில் , இன்டர்நெட்டில் பொழுதை போக்கிக்கொண்டிருக்கும் பொழுது , நூல்உலகம் என்ற வலைத்தளத்தில் "திராவிட வரலாறு பாகம் 1 " என்ற நுலை கண்டேன். நமக்கு தெரியாத வரலாறா என்று எண்ணியபோதும் , ஏனோ படிக்கவேண்டும் என்று தோன்றியதல் உடனே வாங்கினேன். விறுவிறுப்பான ஒரு நாவலை ஒத்தே அது இருந்தது.

ஆக இதுவரை என்னக்கு திராவிட வரலாறு தெரியாமல் இருந்திருக்கிறது. அதில் உள்ள சில உண்மைகளை தொகுத்துள்ளேன். உங்களுக்கு இவை தெரியுமா என்று பாருங்கள்.

* காங்கிரஸ் குல கல்வி ( அதாவது அவரவர் ஜாதி தொழிலையே அவரவர் படிக்கவேண்டும் ) என்ற முறையை திராவிடர் கழகத்தின் எதிர்ப்பையும் மீறி கொண்டுவந்தது.

* பெரியார் நடத்திய வைக்கம் தீண்டாமை ஒழிப்பு போராட்டத்தை காந்தி ஆதரிக்கவில்லை.

* பெரியார் ஆங்கிலேயரை விட காங்கிரஸ் கட்சியையே வெறுத்தார்.

* நீதி கட்சி மற்றும் திராவிடர் கழகதினர் இந்திய விடுதலையை முழு மனதுடன் ஆதரிக்கவில்லை.

* இந்தியா குடியரசு தினத்தை ( சன் 26 1950 ) கருப்பு தினமாக திராவிடர் கழகம் மற்றும் திராவிட முன்னேற்ற கழகம் கடைபிடித்தனர்.

* 1965 ஆண்டில் ஹிந்தி மட்டுமே அணைத்து நிலையிலும் ஆட்சி மொழியாய் இருக்க வேண்டும் என்று 1950 இல் இந்திய அரசு முடிவு செய்தது. அனைத்து அரசு தேர்வுகளும் ஹிந்திலேயே நடக்கும். அனைத்து மாநில சட்டசபைகளும் ஹிந்தியிலேயே இயங்கும். அனைத்து மாநில உயர்நீதிமன்றதிலேயும் ஹிந்தி மட்டுமே உபயோகபடுத்தபடும். அரசு கல்விக்கு வழங்கும் அனைத்து மானியங்களும் ஹிந்தி மொழிக்கு மட்டும் வழங்கப்படும்.

* ஹிந்தி மொழியை கல்லாதவர் நாட்டை விட்டு வெளியேறலாம் என்று இந்திய மத்திய மந்திரியே தெரிவித்தார் .

* ஹிந்தி கல்லாதவர் தேச துரோகி என்பதே காங்கிரஸின் நிலை.

* 1965 இல் தமிழகத்தில் கலவரம் உண்டானபொழுது ஆங்கிலேயரைவிட கொடுமையான அடக்குமுறைகளை மத்திய மாநில காங்கிரஸ் ஆட்சிகள் பின்பற்றின.

* 1965 பல நுறு பேர்களை கொன்றபிறகும் தன் நிலையில் மாறாத இந்திய அரசை உலக நாடுகள் மற்றும் ஐநா சபை கண்டித்தன.

* குடியரசு தலைவர் ராதாகிருஷ்ணன் கண்டித்த பின்னரே பிரதம மந்திரி லால் பகதூர் சாஸ்த்ரி தன் முடிவை மாற்றினார். தமிழும் தப்பித்தது ..

தமிழக அரசியல்வாதிகள் ( முக்கியமாக கலைஞர் ) "தமிழ் தமிழ்" என்று அறிக்கை விடும்பொழுது ஒட்டு அரசியல் தான் செய்கிறார் என்றே அதை அலட்சியம் செய்துவந்தேன். நண்பர்கள் பலரும் அப்படியே எண்ணினர். ஆனால் தமிழை காப்பற்ற பல தியாகங்களை செய்துள்ளனர். இப்பொழுது எப்படி இருந்தாலும் , அன்று அவர்கள் செய்தது மிக பெரிய சாதனையே.

இந்த உண்மைகள் தமிழர் பலருக்கு ( 20- 30 வயதில் உள்ளவர் ) தெரியாது என்பதை நண்பர்கள் முலம் உறுதி செய்துகொண்டேன். இத்தகைய முக்கியமான வரலாறு ஏன் எந்த பாட புத்தகதிலேயும் இடம் பெறவில்லை ?

வென்றவர் எழுதுவதே வரலாறு என்பது பழமொழி. ஆனால் தமிழ் நாட்டில் தோற்றவர் தான் வரலாற்றை எழுதினர் போலவும்.

DataBackup

2011-02-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

In our world of increased dependence on computers we store a lot of critical information (both official and personal)in our laptops/computers.You must have heard horror stories of data being wiped out due to multiple reasons

Getting stolen
Suffers a irrecovreable damage due to HDD corruption etc

But we continue on a mis belief it wont happen to us. As per Murphy's law "Anything that can go wrong ,will go wrong". So better be prepared.

Is there a sense of anxiety creeping .Then this is for you read on :) .

I too had a thought process on how to buy a insurance cover on this possible loss of data. First attempt was to buy a portable HDD and back up. But there are some downsides such that we need to do it regularly. Checked with friends on how to solved it. Then i searched through online and got the following link.

http://www.idrive.com/

Features :
They provdie 5GB of storage for free which can expanded on payment.

Trial:

Jus tried it over the weekend . Backed up a folder of size 130+ MB. I didnt measure the time it took for upload as it did it over saturday night. Next was to verify the integrity of files that were backed up. Tried restoring the folder back to my laptop (offcourse in a different location ) and checked few files . They were safe.This time measured the time taken for restoration . Some 35 minutes for restoring 130+ MB on a 750 Kbps home broadband connection.

From Prem's

Disclaimer:

I have evaluated comparable solutions to find the optimal . Just tried one and it worked. Checking integrity is also based on checking few files.

TaxPlanning-InfraBonds

2011-01-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

Jan-Mar months are those in which very rampant tax planning takes place, especially among the salaried class and i'm no different. I have used up all sections available for tax saving except for the new section ( 80 CCF) introduced in last budget - Tax free investment upto 20,000 made in Infrastructure Bonds.In the past i have shown least interest towards dept instruments and all my investments are in Equity instruments.Thought of checking infra-bond's usability for tax planning and hence this post.

On a random check one the net came across the following deposit open
IFCI 8% pa 5 years lock-in period (opion2)

Some similar funds
L&T infra 7.5% 5 years lock-in period ( scheme closed for investment now)

PFC & IDFC are will open for subscription in the later part of January

At a first look these interest rates ie) around 8% looks minuscule in comparison with inflation rate of 5-6% and food inflation of 15%. But we need to take the income tax saving also into consideration.Following illustration holds good only for a individual falling under 30% tax bracket .

Investment : Rs20,000
Repayment : Rs29,386 ( at the rate of 8% the end of 5 years)

Incase if you dont make this investment , you need to pay a tax of Rs 6180 on Rs20,000. So the picture changes considering the tax saved as follows

Effective Investment : Rs13,820
Repayment : Rs29,386
Effective interest rate : 16.29% ( after considering tax savings )

The interest payment at the end of 5 years is taxable at the hands of the receiver.

Effective Investment : Rs13,820
Repayment : Rs29,386 - 9,386 * (30.3/1000) = Rs 26486
Effective interest rate : 13.89% ( after considering tax savings & tax payment on interest)

Risk free interest rate of 14-16% that too from a PSU is a compelling argument.

Some more advantages :

1. These FDs are listed and can be hold in demat form . No more hassles of maintaining all documents
2. TDS is done only when interest paid exceeds Rs 10,000.In this case its Rs9,386.

3. As there is no other options under Sec80CCF there is no comparison possible.

NewYear Resolution

2011-01-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

   Right from the days i remember i had the practice of taking some resolution every year .Though i had very good experience in taking resolution ,my track record of following the resolution was abysmally low. Normally it wont last till Pongal (Jan 15). Last year i was so desperate to stop this losing streak that i decided to take a newyear resolution which i would follow at any cause. After careful thought i decided on the following resolution
    Hence forth dont take any NewYear Resolution
Awesome isn't it .I felt invincible as there was no chance of failing to following this. I followed it will due diligence till this year (?!?!?) .So i spared myself on tedious process of selecting which resolution to take this year.

    But suddenly i came across a blog this morning expressing the importance of financial planning and particularly about insurance. This was one of the area i knew i was missing completely but didn't work it out due to shear laziness. This read along with recent sudden hospitalization of few of my relatives made me to take the following resolutions today ..

   1. Take a term insurance as per rule of thumb ( 5 * Per Year Earning + Outstanding Loan)
   2. Mediclaim (additional to employer provided one) policy to cover all the family members

Oopps i broke the resolution i took last year :(

[Review] Increase of maximum size of Retail IPO/FPO portion to 2 Lakh - Follow up

2010-12-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

The following are the details from MOIL (first ipo after the rule came into effect) basis of allocation

Total no of Retail Applications : 13.02 Lakh
% of applications requesting 1 -2 Lakh : 39.95 %
% of shares allocated to such applications : 87.89%

Above statistics is as per our expectation and clearly smaller size of (questionable) retail investors are blocking a huge chunk of IPO. Gradually those investors who have capacity to invest only small sum of money will be driven out of this process. Hence this rule change has morally defeated its sole purpose "increasing the participation of retail investors".

From Prem's

[Review] Increase of maximum size of Retail IPO/FPO portion to 2 Lakh

2010-11-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

Recently SEBI amended the IPO norms to change the max limit for retail investors to Rs 2,00,000 from the existing limit of Rs 1,00,000. Reason stated was to increase the retail participation and to enhance the returns of the retail investors.Looks like a investor friendly step taken by SEBI.Isnt it ?.Lets try to dive deep into book building process and try to understand how its going to affect retail investors based on two large recent book building process - Coal India & PowerGrid.
In Coal india IPO there were total of 16.26 Lakh application from retail section. Among them 8.89 Lakh applications were for 1 Lakh and in total they received 81% of the total shares reserved for retail investors.Remaining 7 Lakh investors has to be content with 19% of the shares. The numbes were similar in PowerGrid FPO too .
Total Retail Applications 14.18 Lakhs
Applications for 1 Lakh 7.94 Lakhs
Total shares allocated to this segment 80%

This is not a unfair distribution since the shares are distributed in the ratio of the total shares they have bid for. Lets now consider the situation in which max limit is increased to 2 Lakhs. This is not going to affect investor who apply less than a lakh .But investors who used to apply at 1 Lakh earlier MAY increase their application size up to 2 Lakh ,depending on their affluence. Lets consider that 50% of them are affluent to invest 2 Lakh in a ipo and see how to demand graph changes

Application for 1 Lakh and above will corner more than 85% of all the shares available in retail section.This leads to a situation that investors who can invest less than a lakh (50% of total investor base) will have to share 15% of shares. In most of the cases this will lead to lottery based selection. Eventually these small investors will lose interest in this process (IPO/FPO) which will be dominated by a more affluent section. If this is the situation for large issues like Coal India (15,200 Cr) and Powergrid FPO (Rs 7440) , the deviation will be more pronounced in smaller issues of size which are more frequent to hit the streets.

Now this decision doesnt sound much investor friendly right ?? If SEBI's aim was to increase activeness of retail investors it should have maintained status quo in the max limit.

From Prem's

UnProductive Employee Unions

2010-11-05T00:14:00.000-07:00

Historically employee unions are formed with the aim to protect the rights of the employes and that too particular of those in the lower strata, whose voice normaly never reach the corridors of power. To achieve their aim, union leaders normaly have to confront the management in decision which are not employe friendly , call for protests ,strikes etc. But later these unions have deviated from their original path and now consider that their only work is to oppose the management on whatever decision they take.They have evolved similar to those in the category of oppostion parties in India. It might be due to their communist friends who are always in the oppostion bench ,barring couple of states.

    Here lets take case of recent ipo of coal india and see how the employees were affected by sheer stupidity of the union leaders. As with any public sector company looking for disinvestment , coal india too faced strict oppostion from the unions. But they couldnt defend their stand for long due to pressure from finance ministry and agreed for a ipo. Even though they couldn't stop the ipo they didnt stop opposing it. They ordered all their members to stay away from the ipo , as step to show their disaggrement. Lets see how foolish this decision have turned to be.
        This IPO was well received by investment community around the globe and based on subscription it turned out to be a block buster. There was demand for 15 times of share in offer ( ie 15 people were ready to buy a share in offer) .Retail segment was subscribed by 2.4 times. Some 15 Lakh retail investors applied for shares.But employes didnt take active part in it .Among the 3.97 Lakh employees ,only 25,000 applied for shares and employee portion was undersubscribed by 0.1 times. These 25,000 employees should have been from the middle/higher management of the company who dont mind about the union's decisions.
        Shares got listed and it moved from Rs232.75 to Rs340 on day one , a mind-blogging returns 46%. A employee who would have applied for 1 Lakh (the max he can apply) would have gained Rs46,000 on day 1. When 15 Lakh retail investors (including me) had gained around Rs15,000 and foreign investors by billions of dollars , the employees who have build up this company stands to gain nothing. Investment bankers (FII)in New york or London should be be enjoying a sparking Diwali whereas the poor employees searching for micro credit agents to fund their Diwali purchases. Rich gets richer and poor stays poor , but this time due to their foolish decision .

Comming to the argument , these unions should leave back their age old communist policies which good to read in history books now rather than to follow it in principle. They should have used the collective argument power to get more incentives for employees. They could have asked for a 5% more discount on share price for employees than retail investors. Most of 3.97 Lakh employes should have their monthly salary in the range of Rs10,000 .They cannot mop up 1 Lakh and start a demat account just for this . Union could have argued for special previalages by which a employe benefit trust can get all the shares allocated for them ,without paying upfront money , sold them in open market and redistribute the profits to all employees equally. Surely company management & SEBI would have wholeheartedly accept for such a demand. Such a move would have given Rs16,000 as bonus for each and every employee. Unions should start to embrace capitalism and find innovative methods to benifit their stake holders. In essential adapt to the changing (economic) climate are get ready to become extinct.

My Home

2010-11-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

From MyHome

I kept on postponing this writeup as it would be very lengthy one but now finally decided to pen it down. A old adage goes on to mention "Building a Home" and "Getting a marriage done" are the toughest jobs to accomplish.This might not be entirely true in current scenario ,where you can get everything done by outsourcing.But still these two items commends a lot of planning & management.The main reasons could be that these are jobs you execute very rarely and also it has high degree of dependence on external factors.
All this started a during late 2007 when my parents wanted me a build/buy a house.Their main aim was to suck out the liquidity from my current accounts so that i would have less to spend ( same reason why RBI increases CRR :) ). Moreover there is social stigma attached to home ownership.I decided to stick to my native town.It took almost six months ,around early 2008 , to zero down on the land to buy.

Land prices were on high side of my budget . One ground ( 2400 sqft) for quoting for 16 Lakhs [ Rs 666 per sq ft] in prime locations.Finally i chose a plot of 1500 sq for 5.6 Lakhs [ Rs 373 per sq ft]. 3 months back when i checked, it was quoting at 4.5 Lakhs. At that time i was not that interested as we have to cross a old unplanned settlement to reach that spot from the center of the town. But later i could see that for the price point i was comfortable , i could get only 10 KM from the center of the town.But this spot is barely 500 mts from the center.

View Prem's Home in a larger map

I have tagged my home in this map.You can see that its surrounded by paddy fields on one side and a irrigation canal which flows nearby.

So i decided to buy this plot.Another interesting factor of this plot is that its govt guide line values is 9 Lakhs .I had to register for this high value and pay tax for entire amount.I took a realty loan from SBI and they provided 80% of the guide line value.So i was able to cover the entire cost of land in the loan itself.
Interestingly this plot has appreciated to 9 Lakhs since then [ Rs 600 per sq ft] in a period of 2-3 years. But the prime area which was quoting Rs666/sq ft 3 years back are still around Rs700/sq ft.I feel that parcels of land which are cheap ( can be due to many reasons , like lying in the outskirts of city) tends to appreciate at a faster rate that what is quoting at a premium price.Hence if you wish to invest in reality go for outskirts for greater rate of return.

Next process is to get the approval for construction. For this we need to hire a Engineer ,prepare a plan for the home you are planning to build and get it approved from govt authorities. Ironically this wont be plan you will execute in 99.9% of the cases.This is because of some stringent govt rules regarding the buildup land and overall land available. The rule is that you have to leave 5 ft on adjacent sides and 10 ft on front and back.If you follow this rules a plot of 1500(30*50) has only 600 Sqft( 20*30) of buildup area..So what to do ??. Just get the approval according govt norms and build according to your wish and be ready to pay a token fine for the deviation.The fine which i had to pay came around Rs300 for a 6 months period.

My plan as per govt norms comes around 1250 Sq.But my actual plan was around 2000 sqft. One issue which will raise because of underquoting the buildup area is that you will be able to get loans according to govt approved plan only.SBI was ready to value the construction cost as Rs1000 per Sq ft and offer loan of 85% of the total amount.There were able to sanction a loan for Rs10 Lakhs.

Next was the actual planning.This is the most critical phase as errors or suboptimal decisions made here will haunt you for ever. So spend as much time as possible by continuous review and brainstorming. Literally i should admit that i dont have creative skills or prior experience needed here. Luckily one of my friend , Sangeetha , had then recently finished the entire process of building home right from scratch . When i gave my plot sketch and my requirement , she gave outline design in a day. My plan was to have 3 BHK duplex model of 2000 sqft .To much of my surprise this plan remain the same(almost 95%), even though i tried many more possible combination for around 6 months. So better approach a right person. Another reason for spending 6 months is due the recession in West and its effects in India.Due to jittery around the layoffs i had to postponed start date for few months.Also the cost of building materials was coming down which provided a compelling reason to wait and watch.

Financialy my aim was to execute the plan with under Rs 1100 per Sq ft ( 22 Lakhs for 2000 sqft) and also be ready for a overshoot of 10% in budget. A Labour contract @ Rs150/Sqft was arranged with a contractor. According to this he will take care of arranging labour and he will be paid approx 3 Lakhs for the entire construction. We had similar deals for wood work , Plumbing & Electrical. Final cost came to around 25 Lakhs. Initial plan didn't include compoundwall , watertank , ornamental work etc. Considering all this it can be said that project did completed within budget.

Pie charts which represents various costs are given below. This doesn't include woodwork(cub boards) and final painting.

From MyHome

More photos can be seen in the following album

MyHome

Immortals of Meluha

2010-10-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

"Whenever there is a sucessful business proposition in India hundreds of companies used to jump into it but only a few leaders last long" - VP Nokia India , when asked about the increasing competition faced by his company. Similarly once Five point someone made it to bestsellers there is evergrowing no of novelists from IIT or/and IIM background , trying their hands in writing . Recently i was recommended by a friend to read "Imortals of Meluhah" by Amish , an IIM-C alumni.

Author tries (still 2 more books are expected in this series) to create a epic ( or a miniature of it ) by taking characters from the Hindhu Mythology and forming a story line around it.He seems to believe that current GODs are lived as mortals hundreds of years back and got immortalized by their exceptional behavior.

Story starts with the introduction of Shiva , an unconquered tribal leader and his horrible enemies from whom Shiva is entrusted to save his tribes. Whenever you want to potray someone as a hero , introduce a curel villan. When goes off cycles of war and peach , there comes a messenger from a neighbouring kingdom who offers them land ,freedom & peace. He takes the risk to move his entire tribe to Meluha. It happens to be a exotic place where people bath daily , use soaps , wore neat dress & use toilets. In a secret test , Shiva turns out to be a Nelakanth ( or messiah) whom the Meluhans have been waiting for thousands of years. Immediatly he is sent to capital of the kingdom. Meluhans also called the suryavamshis (or worshipers of Sun) haven been in long cold war with Charavamshis.

After initial hesitation Shiva accepts to be Nelkanth and leads the war against chandravamshis due to a series of terrorist attacks , in one which his wife was targeted.Yes meanwhile he fell in love with princess and marries her. The chandravamshis were initialy thought to be behind the terrorist attacks.The story line more or less in expecteded lines until the war ends. But the twist happens when he interacts with Chandravamshis.Contrary to popular beleif in Muluhah ,charavamshisis are not cruel as depicted by Meluhan King .Rather they way of life is different and they too were waiting for the meshaiah to save them. Book ends here giving enough scope of building two more books.

This book happens to be a page turner though the story goes in a expected line mostly. Author has taken painful efforts to glorify the caste system of ancient. He gives some modifications to the actual system to make this possible. Its not clear if his aim is to glorify past Indian history or he himself is a fanatic supporter of caste system.Anyway it was a nice read ,without giving any credence to the story line.But when it comes to mythological stories you have only two options , either to accept it or not .Its hard to ignore it.

[Trek] Amedikallu

2010-09-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

We started as a group of 8 [ Varun,Rama,Devesh,Krishna,Abhishek,Sudhir ( Rama's room mate) , MohanRaj ( Vishal's friend) and Myself ]. Mohanraj is from satur ,did his graduation from REC Trichy - 2004 passed out and after small conversation we could identify a lot of common friends , very small world indeed .We have booked Rajahamsa bus from Majestic to Dharmasthala .Since this platform (No:23) is near to the exit , buses started right on time.Else buses starting from interior platforms from majestic used to be delayed atleast 30 mins to come out.We reached Dharmastalla at around 5 AM in the morning and this famous pilgrimage spot seems to take 10,000 visitors per day. But it was clean showing no trails of such a large population. Quality Food and accommodation are provided free of cost and it is also a excellent hill town. Why the hell will anyone hesitate to come here then .

From Amedikallu Trek

During the previous treks ( lot smaller than this one) i had knee pain and so i assumed will get it here too. So my strategy was to "Pray for the Best and Plan for the worst" .I had taken iodex spray and also a new backpack (Rs 2200) .This seems to distribute the weight lot better than ordinary ones and even though the luggage weighed several times than the previous ones ( as it is a 2 day trip) , it was lot easier to carry .Thanks to Devesh for getting this.Apart from common rations have taken couple of extra chocolates and RedBull so as to continue without disturbing the team. I insisted on carrying Tang juice instead of mineral water which was ruled down by the central committee . Actually the strategy to push to the limits and resort to external help only when warranted . As it has worked previously i too followed it. Took a strip of pain killers to use in case of emergency.

We didnt have time to visit the temples here.We refreshed in the public rest rooms and had breakfast. 6:30 AM was too early to have any food and had a light breakfast. We need to reach a village called Shishila which is 30 Kms from Dharmastala. One bus was schedulled to leave at 7 AM and we boarded it.Though there was only one passenger apart from us , driver started right on time and we reached Shishila at 8 AM. We had called up Gokhale ( a contact in shishila whom u can read about in many blogs) to prepare breakfast and varun went to collect it. It was cute little village with not more than 10 shops.Hardly could 100-150 families live around.

Once Varun returned we started our trek right from Shishila busstop at 8:30 AM.We need to go through a proper road for around 4 KM from where we have to enter the forest cover. Its a high probability you can miss this entry point if you are not backed by a guide. There was stream with a small temple (nothing more than couple of statues on a platform). Entry point is next to the temple and there is a stone with mark 2 on it and the road sharply turns to the left.

From Amedikallu Trek

It was exactly a 9:30 AM when we reached this spot.Had 2nd breakfast here and entered the forest.First section of the trek is through a not so dense forest and it was not so steep and path was visible. Nothing challenging here except for the red soil which is very slippery some occasions and abundant leeches.There were couple of water streams in this stretch and crossed the other team from Citrix in the second water stream.Fill up the bottles with water since after this we could see only one place where we could get water and that was also risky one.This area is also highly infested by blood thirsty leeches.

From Amedikallu Trek

One curious point to note is that i have never seen leech stuck to my skin so far in the past and this time too .At max when i look for there will be few of them trying to ascend my shoes and i will get rid of them.Adding to i havnt taken heavy precaution either. Anyway its good to know that my blood is not thier favourite dish :).But Varun was on the other end of this spectrum that leeches were so fond of them. One logical reason could be is that he used to lead from the front and might be making him a prime target for leeches.

From Amedikallu Trek

At around 11 AM we entered the grass land and this section of grasslands are completely mesmerizing.whenever we went out of energy we would have Tang juice , 5 stars etc .It was quite refreshing to walk through to this serene surroundings. Weather was awesome during this .It wasnt too sunny and it wasnt raining either. Both of this could make the conditions worse extract much of you energy for same given task.

From Amedikallu Trek

After the grasslands comes the steep hills with grass cover alone its was quite a bit of task to climb them.There was steep rock section which very difficult to scale . Later came to know that the other group could manage this section with a rope.It started to drizzle once we scale this rock and we decide to have our lunch here.Bread with peanut butter and jam.During the previous section i have lost my rain coat , which was held at the top of the backpack loosely with the strings . We couldn't find it on the return either :( .

From Amedikallu Trek

After this point the task is getting harder and harder.After short 20-30 mins climb we could reach large rock providing rain shadow region.This seems to be the best place to camp and there is water source near by.But it was already occupied by a group and discussed with chennapa who was guiding them on which place was good for to tent. He asked us to go up and that there could be more camping site .When asked for routes he gave some fuzzy answer and we decide to test our luck on it.

After climbing steep path for another 30 minutes we were left clueless on the further course to take , for there was not single path on these steep hill. Varun , Rama , Mohanraj went up more locate the path and others stayed behind. There was feeble mobile tower available there and Devesh was interested in scraping a "We are lost" message in FB though his mobile. Whiled of 30 mins by talking of Hollywood stories in which heros was lost in a unmanned island or forest without any help.

From Amedikallu Trek

3 people who went to find out the path returned back without any conclusive answers. All of us trek down for 20 more minutes reached the camp site where chennapa was stayed and asked him to accompany us to find a new camp site (off course by offering some money).Devesh and Krishna stayed back to communicate with the other citrix gang. He agreed and took us to a camping site some 30 mins climb up and it was almost 4 PM now .The actual turtle and stove was still 1.5 hours climb up.Now Varun & Mohan again went down again with chennapa to bring back Devesh and Krishna back and also got some kerosene from chenappa.We erected two tents .One was safe surrounded by rocks but another was on a slope and barely 10 feets after the tent ends there was a steep valley.

From Amedikallu Trek

Myself and Sudhir went to collect some wood for camp fire and without any exception everything in the forest was wet.We collected few logs and everyone was involved in the process of igniting the camp fire. We used papers,plastics,couple of match boxes ,dry grass ,camphor tablets for around half an hour and we couldn't ignite the fire. After expending all that would burn we called off the efforts.Then attention turned towards dinner. Everyone deserved a hot dinner after a tiresome day . Myself and Varun started of the efforts with two camphor stoves.After around 15-20 mins , 12 maggies were made and was shared for 8 people. Any food served hot would be delightful in that climate.

From Amedikallu Trek

After dinner or so @ 8 PM Varun & Mohan went to sleep in one tent and other tent was made into club. Three torches were hanged down from the top of the tent and they swayed in air making a disco light efforts which was precisely suited for our card game. Devesh / Abhishek pair was invincible in the games and after around an hour or so i left to the other tent for sleeping. Tent was not placed in a smooth surface and more than all it was in slope as well which was not that convinient for sleeping.At around 5 AM it was too much inconvenient and all of us in our tent woke up and came out and checked. The whole tent was moved down the slope due the weight of bags and we were very close to the valley. There was small rock which prevented the tent from further movement else we would have all thrown out of the cliff. We kept the bags out rearranged and tried to get some more sleep.

Early morning Varun,Rama,Mohan & Sudhir joned with the other gang lead by chennapa and went to explore the top .Rest of us stayed back and continued our sleep.This gang returned by 9:30 AM and then we prepared hot MTR and started our return journey by 10 AM.Within 5-10 mintues of the journey while climbing down a small rock i twisted by ankle.I had severe pain initially and it gave away once i sprayed iodex. I was lot of careful for the rest of the journey and one injury can spoil the entire gang.Though i had a little pain i resisted stopping and kept on walking.We didnt have any rest more than 10 minutes and reached the bottom of the hill at around 1 AM .

From Amedikallu Trek

Initially we had booked return tickets starting at 10 PM but now it was planned to take a bus as soon as possible and reach bangalore in night and have a good sleep at home. Some of us were interested in sticking to the original plan and to enjoy some waters around dharmastala. Soon after coming out of the trek there was small stream and as soon as i saw it i removed by backpack/shoes and lied down in that stream .It was amazing and refreshing.Since we were running out of time i left the stream half halfheartedly in 5 minutes and started on foot towards shishila. After arournd 1 hour we reached shishila and meanwhile varun has bargained a jeep to carry us to dharmastala for Rs500. There was small restaurent in the bustand we bought out all the fish fries there.Then had lunch in Gokaley's house and left for dharmastala.The thing i dislike the most about karnataka the most is their sambhar.Atleast i know what to expect , Sudhir ( from Andhra ) was visible agitated to find a sambhar without any dhal and meals without any chutney :).
Our entire gang spans across the whole india ( Tamilnadu , Andhra,UP,Delhi ,Nepal) & hence Hindi was the binding language here. Though i couldnt get the core meaning of some funny dialogues i could enjoy it.தமிழ் மக்களே காலேஜ்ல subject படிக்கலனாலும் பரவாயில்ல ஹிந்தி படிச்சிருங்க . எழவெடுத்த அரசியல் கட்சிகள் பேச்சை நம்பாதிங்க.

There was bus leaving to Bangalore at 4 PM and we canceled our old tickets and boarded this one.By this time my ankle pain has grown up. After a funny trip we reached Bangalore jus before 1 AM.Next day went to office as usual and after some walk the pain has still grown and got swollen too. Got checked with Apollo clinic and it seems to be a ligament tear and had to take complete rest for a week and 2-3 more weeks of rest for it to be able to walk again. Hurt but not Retired. Looking for the next trip .

From Amedikallu Trek

In short to describe the entire trip as in Krishna's words "Majja Aaggaya" :).For more photos visit my picasa album

BSNL 3G DataCard

2010-09-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Having abandoned BSNL landline broadband connection ( in tirunelveli ) i was franticaly looking for alternatives. Though there were few wired options available ( airtel etc) i looked for a wireless option as i could carry it any wherever i travel. Wireless broadband was hard to find by as 3G / BWA spectrum was allocated only this month. The only carrier providing 3G based datacards was BSNL and once again i was at their mercy :(.

What would you expect when a corporate has monopoly over a business. Conventional wisdom states that they should boast thier monopoly and penetrate market with their service before competitors steps in , availing themselves a strong first mover advantage. But any management principle miserably fails before BSNL. Jus vist their home page bsnl.co.in and you'll get feel of how bad can a website be designed. There was absolutly no clarity on their schemes and how to get a connection. When i tried at thier office in Tirunelveli it was surprise to find that they dont have enough equipment ( usb data card ) on stock. I had to wait for 3 weeks. When it arrived i had to use the recommendation of my relative working there to get the equipment [ ]. It seems they get only few cards every month and they were taken by employes and their relatives.

Once the equipment arrived i could get administrative work done in a hour ( atleast they have improved in this area) .Just insert a 3G enabled sim on the card and its up. According to thier website there are 2 types of card one working with 3.1 Mbps and another on 7+ Mbps , but employes were not techicaly capable of understanding the differences. The equipment cost Rs2500 and i have to give deposit of 1500 for a post paid connection.I took a post paid account costing Rs999 + taxes per month for 10 GB download.

Data card internaly had a ROM which stored a driver . I was able to install and make the connection up and working in few minutes on my laptop. Speed was pretty okay .I didnt do much speed testing in Tirunelveli.When i carried the card to Bangalore it was working seamlessly without any issues.Speed was good here too.To test the max speed which we can expect on this i tried torrent through it. As torrent algo are designed to make maximum use of the available bandwidth i did it .It gave me almost 350 KB/s which turns out to be 2.8 Mbps which was pretty much fine.I guess the same sim can be used in 3G enabled phone for video calls, mobile browing etc but i havnt tried it .

From Prem's

Some drawbacks .
There is no clarity on if the same equipment can be used a across different carriers ( when they are availble ).I am also not sure of roaming charges , Jus waiting for the first bill to confirm things. There is no online login to check the usage amount . Driver some with a screen which shows the usage but its not accurate . After downloading a movie of size 700MB and after 1 month of usage it showing the total usage as 529 MB.

If you are higly mobile you can get this connection else you can wait for a couple of months when schmes from mulitple 3G playes/ Broadband wireless access player will pour in which will you lot of options to chose from .

PS: I am personally interested in the pricing point when Reliance Industries comes with their schemes.Its going to be destructive for current playes ( BSNL , Airtel etc) but will be constructive for endusers.