Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓
October 2nd, 2008 — Uncategorized, car
Tata Elegante is the latest car under design from Tata Motors and its based on an entirely new platform. Tata Elegante comes under the luxury category of cars and is a sedan.
The design is very modern and the car has a male look. Look at the sexy headlights and the from grill.
Tata is planning both diesel and petrol variants for the engine. The Cylinder capacity will range from 1.4 liters to 2 liters. The gear box will have both manual and automatic transmission options. The most surprising fact is that, it will be a 6 speed gear box.
Some of the luxury features that Tata is planning for Elegante is Satellite based GPS navigation and Cruise control. Cruise control is a very advanced feature and is found only in some advanced cars.
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September 29th, 2008 — Education, Uncategorized
Today my cousin who is a final year engineering student in a well reputed college in central Kerala came upto me and asked whether I had an IEEE membership. Instantly I understood her need cos i have been hearing the same question from many, she needed a project for her final semester and her teachers would allow only IEEE projects.
Now whats with this IEEE criteria ? There are many engineering colleges in Kerala who set this stupid IEEE criteria. Now how many of those staff members can actually guide the student through an IEEE project ? How many of them even understand the synopsis of an IEEE project ? Ive been wrestling with computers for over 12 years now and most of those IEEE stuff is still Greek to me.
I suggested her that she do a Voip implementation using the open source telephony framework asterisk. Its something that I can help her with, and also its some skill thats in huge demand. But she said, another Voip project got rejected and this wont be approved. How crappy… a project getting rejected just because it has a familiar word “Voip”. The situation is no different with academic seminar.
Let us be very practical here. Will the 4 year good for nothing syllabus make the student capable of doing an IEEE project. All these students are going to join some project institution and buy a project. Whats the point in forcing them to do the so called IEEE project.
In my opinion we should let them do something that can do on their own within the limited time period. Even if its a simple project, doing on your own is far far better than going to an institute and getting a ready made “IEEE” project.
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September 29th, 2008 — Uncategorized
A 100 storied building to be completed in Cochin in 2010 ? I couldn’t believe it when I heard it for the first time. Kinfra is doing it and they already have appointed a consultant for the design work. The building will come up in Kalamassery.
These are some of the highlights.
- 56 lakh sqft area
- 30 floors will be a 5 star hotel
- Parking space for 22000 cars
- Half a kilometer tall
- 5 floors convention and exhibition center
Finally Cochin is also in the big league
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September 29th, 2008 — Uncategorized
My Love Life – Part I
Today I want to talk about my close friend’s love life. He is actually 3 months older than me but I am 1 year elder to him (Please don’t ask me to explain that – you need to know advanced quantum physics to understand it – and if there is anyone who has done PHD is quantum physics – they also need to know molecular biology) Both of us are 24 years old and pretty much followed the same path when it came to studies (computer science stream – and yes he did score better marks than me most of the time)
Well all in all he a very nice guy. A little afraid of girls, Loves spending time watching movies and doing anything on the computer. And by the way is working too…Any way all this started when he was doing his UG. The management was very strict at his college. Though it was a co-ed, they were not supposed to talk to the opposite sex, each sex had their own staircase, and basically there was no freedom.
We were all brought up with a lot of freedom, though we had boundaries. Our parents never put pressure on us to do this or do that not even on our studies. And we were thought to do our stuff on our own – even studies, we never really went for tuition’s (may be once or twice for a month or two)
Anyway – going back to his college day – he used to be always very upset about the way his teachers and the authorities acted at college. One day he and his mates were having fun chatting outside the college (the usual tea shop outside the college). Any way there was an incident where someone tried to tease a girl and it was brought to the attention of the college authorities. The college authorities decided to suspend all the students who were standing by the tea shop for one week as punishment.
My friend – though pissed off with the authorities, was happy to get the one week off. He sat at home watching movies, went to his friends place…he was enjoying himself. By the way at that time my friend had managed to convince his dad to buy him a Mobile phone (a Sony Erickson model) and he had this Airtel connection where he had to pay Rs30/- every month and he could send any number of SMS free for that month. And believe me – he used to abuse that service. Now he can type out an SMS Message without even looking at the screen or keypad – though I have not measured his word per minute speed, I can tell you he is pretty fast and accurate.
Since he was not doing anything – one day he decided to do a small experiment. He started to send out SMS’s to numbers that preceded his number. His msg was introducing himself and asking the opposite number if they were interested in chatting. Just like what you do on yahoo chat rooms. So he was sending this msg to random numbers. Most of the numbers he never got a reply. Other numbers he got negative reply. But there was this number – a girl who called herself Sanitha; SMS’ed back. That was the first positive SMS he had got. Any way he got busy chatting with the girl on SMS and she also used to regularly send back messages.
This went along for a long time. They exchanged personal details. She was from West Bengal, and was studying at a premier intuition. She was the only child in her family. Finally my friend and she decided to meet each other. So the date and time were fixed. They were supposed to meet at a very famous mall in the city in the afternoon on the 15th of AUG. My friend was very excited. At last he was going to meet an SMS Pal. He decided that he was going alone.
In the evening he came back beaming. I asked him “What happen?” He replied “You know what? She lied to me.” I said “What?”
“Yea! Her name is not Sanitha; her name is Moumitha” and he went on to tell me about her, her friends, the fun they had at the restaurant. Though I was a bit apprehensive, I was happy for him. He had at last decided to move into the bigger world and make friends. Any way he started, visiting her and her friends regularly, to restaurants, to the beach…He was enjoying the new found friendship. All his friends used to try and woo him, to try and get him to introduce them to some of her friends. He used to always say “no, she is just my friend and I will not take advantage”
I think this friendship went along for a few months before she decided to propose to him. She had started to love him – she confessed. He told her that frankly he was not in it for the “Love”. Any way she convinced him about it and he also agreed – though he never said the words “I LOVE YOU”, he later told me. I also did not take it seriously, and left it alone. He started spending more time with her. He used to spend the weekend going for shopping with her, or going to the beach, going for movies. He even started talking to her for the whole night on the cell phone….
And before I realized it “Holly Shit” this guy was serious about this relationship. He even called up her parents and introduced himself and told them about his intention of marrying her. This went on for I think 3 years or so. By that time I was out of the country with a good job, and he had signed up for his PG in a better college. Whenever I used to call him, he used to talk about her also, and tell me all the fun they had.
By the way I forgot to tell you about this other girl at his new college. They used to call her “Vath” (Duck). She was studying for and UG engineering course. My friend’s class mate’s told him that this girl was watching him and following him everywhere. That was cool eh? Any way, he was deep into his other relationship, and as I had mentioned earlier, he was afraid of girls – so he never had the courage to go and directly speak to the girl. Any way he had fun with the girl following him around. But he made it a point to let her know through “orkut” that he was already in a relationship and was unavailable.
Read Part II of My Love Life to understand the whole story. I know “Falling in Love” is a common thing in India. Though I have liked some of the girls who studied with me; I never had the privilege of “Falling in Love”. Please leave your comments – and let me know what you think of this little story and your own experiences.
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September 25th, 2008 — Uncategorized
Part III: You Would not believe this…
For those who have not read part 1 & 2; here are the Links:
Part1
Part2
We finally changed out subject and started talking about Botswana. Botswana is the only African country that has a very strong currency (That is after 2 devaluations of the currency by a total of 25% in 2 years) and has been politically stable for the last 40 years or so…and probably the only country on this planet that has lend money to the World Bank. Botswana is a very small country with 1.6Million people. Their main source of income is export of Diamonds and Export of Beef. Apparently the government of Botswana can continue to feed their people for the next 20 years without even another cent as income.
People in Botswana have been traditionally Nomadic Cattle farmers. They have a very relaxed attitude – there is no hurry in Botswana. (You can have a child by the time they process something… 
)Last 10 to 20 years have seen Botswana grow at a very fast phase. This fast development has been fueled by the money coming in through diamonds. Botswana has a higher percentage of SUV’s that South Africa. All looks so rosy…
Any way my customer started talking about his neighbor. This guy applied for a loan to CIEDA (Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency) to start a business. CEDA is an arm of the Ministry of Trade. Their job is to review proposals from Citizen Entrepreneurs for different ideas, and if the Idea is good – finance the proposal. Very convenient ah? That to at very low interest rates, or even no interest rates and in some cases it is converted into a grant. Any way this guy got approval for finance for setting up a plastic molding factory. They brought in the machinery from somewhere in Europe and set up the operations.
They had only 2 molds – one for plastic spoons and the other for forks. Any way this gentleman starts production and piling it up in his warehouse. My customer happens to visit him at that time. He asked him why he was piling up the stock. The gentleman responded “have not yet received any orders”. Oops! And he was still manufacturing more…
In the international calendar December holidays are considered to be the most important holiday of the year. In Botswana also these holidays start from the mid of December and end by the 3rd of January. By the way, in Botswana they have this custom of having an extra day holiday after a public holiday. And if the public holiday happens to be on a Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday will also be a holiday. Though the holidays are finished by the 3rd of Jan, people start returning only by the mid of Jan.
My customer’s neighbor also went for a holiday. But he left his 4 big air conditions working. Being a good neighbor, my customer tried to call him on his cell phone. He would not pick up the call – he would just cut it off. My customer tried sending him SMS’s. No reply. So as usual he returned by the mid of Jan and came straight to my customers office – and asked him why he was fanatically trying to call him. My customer in turn asked him why he was not picking up the call – to which the gentleman replied “I was on Holiday” and my customer replied “well your aircons were running, I wanted to inform you about it…”
The gentleman’s business did not last very long. He closed down after 6 months of operations. He even gave his 4 air conditioners to the landlord as payment towards 3 month’s airier in rentals. And CEDA took all the machinery and was trying to auction it all to try to recover its money.
There was another similar incident. This guy received a loan for almost BWP 800,000=00 (that is around USD 130,000) from CEDA for setting up some business. He walked straight into the Nisan Showroom, looked at the car’s, choose the car that had the maximum speed printed on the speedometer and gave them the cheque from CEDA. The manager there explained to him that they could not take the cheque, as it was in his name, and that he should go to the bank, deposit it in his account, then withdraw the money required for the car. The gentleman was very upset, He told them that was a very long process and he could not wait.
Two weeks later he was at my customers place. He wanted 100 bucks for petrol in his new merc. My customer was surprised and asked him how he managed to get that car. The gentleman told him the story at Nisan Motors. After that he went to the Merc showroom and the guy’s there took the cheque, and delivered the car within 2 days. (they did all the bank work for him also and since it was a government cheque, there is no way the bank will dishonor it) My customer borrowed him the money, and the guy was gone.
After a few weeks my customer happen to meet him again. This time, he was not driving his merc. So my customer asked him “what happen to your new car?” He told him that he was coming back from this other town with his two girlfriends, and they had an accident and the car was a write off. Also he had forgotten to take any insurance. My customer was shocked and asked him, what he did with the rest of the money, he said he had paid off his girl friend’s home loan. I don’t know what CEDA sold to recover their money…
My customer was telling me – “we are here and making money, cause there are so many of these people here, who don’t know what to do and how to do….”
Am I happy to be in Botswana? Maybe yes…
More on the way. Meanwhile please leave your comments…
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