Prsad Speak !

10 years ...

2010-11-02T16:25:00.003+05:30

This was when IE was the browser of choice and Netscape Navigator was on quite a few desktops. I had been preparing for this for almost an year and in a more focussed manner for the last month or so. The previous few months were spent gathering information from people I knew and met a few more while getting this information. The last few days were spent on meeting people ( a lot of them I had not met in a long time, and some of them I had just grown apart from).

That morning I woke up and took a morning walk to the beach , which was something that I had always wanted to do but rarely did. I took a camera with me , and captured the rising sun. In the evening I went to the temple and returned home. While returning home I went to the beach again wondering if my decision was correct or not , till a statement from my mother sent a message that , it does not matter what my decision ends up at , it is the correct thing to do. In the next five years, my life would change and it would be proven that it was the correct thing to do despite the hiccups that came in the way.

Late that evening towards midnight , I walked towards an Indian Airlines Airbus from the International Terminal at Chennai to fly to Singapore from where I would be flying to San Francisco on an airline I had not heard of till I got the ticket ( EVA Air) . As I was packing my hand luggage that evening , my father dropped in a suggestion that I carry my camera to take some photographs on my way to SFO. With all the things in a my mind I thought that was a tangential suggestion, but I took it anyway. I am glad I did. I still carry my camera when I fly ... helps capture the memories better !

Its been 10 years to the date since I flew to the US to work there , and fulfill my ambition to work at a major brand name . God has been kind !!

We made the Network !

2010-01-28T21:46:00.002+05:30

As of this morning India time, Sun Microsystems ceased to be an independent company and became a fully owned subsidiary of Oracle.

It would be interesting to see if and how Oracle would make money out of the same product portfolio that Sun had, and was struggling to make money. The keywords here are "HOW" and "IF" . Either way it would make a good case study.

Worried for Bangalore again

2009-11-09T10:38:00.004+05:30

When BSY took oath with a clear mandate , it looked like there was hope for Bangalore again. Things did move, there was the Metro which was put back on track, there was some clear plan for infrastructure development around Bangalore, the NICE corridor was at allowed to open and collect toll.

Now the wise-guys Reddy brothers have done it again. They put the CM on notice and what this means is all the governance is going to take a back seat and survival will be of paramount importance. Good luck Bangalore !

Ek Din Hong Kong mein ...

2009-08-22T19:40:00.018+05:30

There was a time when people had to travel to Chennai from Bangalore to take a flight to the US. This is not too long ago, maybe 10 years back. Last year with the introduction of Dragon Air /Cathay Pacific connection from Bangalore, we can travel to the US especially the West Coast, with a single stop over at HongKong. On the way back the connection is even better. The travel time is around 22 hours ... in case you get the afternoon flight out of San Francisco. If you don't , you get to spend 18 hours in Hong Kong .

But you get to see Hong Kong if you are not lazy , jet lagged or tired !

Most flights from the West Coast arrive at Hong Kong around 6:00 AM and the flight to Bangalore or Chennai leaves at 10:00 PM .

Immigration is easy. Indian nationals get a 14 day visa on arrival ( as long as you are not planning to work ). You would need to fill in a form and show your boarding pass for the onward connection ( to India) and that's all !

Hong Kong International Airport is designed in a way that arrivals and departures are separated into two different levels. The lower level is the arrival and the upper one is the departure level. All transiting passengers are asked to got through a security check and proceed to the upper departure level and await their connection. However, if one wants to go out to the city then , they should clear immigration at the arrivals level itself. One is not allowed to come back to the immigration once they have cleared security and gone to the departure level.

The big question is what do you do in Hong Kong for the next 12 hours or so ? Well, you could go sightseeing, go around the city just to get a feel for it or shop ! What is mentioned here is what I did and is a suggested trip for people who have about 12 hours to spend at Hong Kong. This involves sightseeing , getting a feeel of the town and some shopping at where else but the appropriately named Ladies Market !!

A good idea is to start early say around 8:30 AM from HKIA after getting through immigration , having a wash /coffee etc and getting currency exchanged. In case your carry -on is something that you would rather not lug around in Hong Kong , there is a cloak room kind of arrangement in the Arrivals Hall in the Airport where you could leave the bags for a fee.

The main areas that I covered are

The Ngong Ping Monastery where there is the largest bronze statue of Buddha . Take a bus S1 from HKIA to Tung Chung and from Tung there are two choices . One is to take a bus from the Ting Chung Bus station to the top over winding roads and some scenic drive. The other is to take a the cable car. Unfortunately when I went the cable car was out of operation. It opens at 9:00 AM on weekends and at 10:00 AM on weekdays. You could take the bus back to Tung Chung or try and take the cable car.

Back at Tung Chung I ( we) took the MTR ( metro rail ) to Hong Kong island. The train drops you at Hong Station of MTR which is below the IFC1 ( International Finance Centre 1 ) building. Once you come up from the MTR station, you reach the IFC mall where you could shop or window shop ( depending upon what you want to or can buy ) . You could certainly catch up with some food here. There are some decent restaurants here. More of that later.

At this time you are in the downtown of Hong Kong and the next destination is The Peak.One could take a bus or take the Peak Tram. The Peak Tram is more exciting since it goes up at 45deg incline. I walked from IFC1 to the base of the Peak Tram station. The walk takes upto 15 mins in the hot and humid Hong Kong weather and then you realize the value of an AC in climes like that of Hong Kong. Hong Kong feels a lot like South Bombay ( well that's my opionion ). The walk to the Peak Tram station would take you through the iconic HSBC tower and the Bank of China building. A good thing about this walk is that there are signs to guide you to the Peak Tram station. All you need to do is to get the Connaught Road from IFC. There are skywalks with good signage , so that should not be too hard.

Once at the Peak , you have a choice ( yes again ! ). You could get a good panoromic view of the city from either Sky Terrace which is a building on top of the peak , on whose terrace is a vista point. Or , you could simply walk a little bit along the trails and get a view. Needless to say , the natrure trail is free and the Sky Terrace is not. The two photos are attempted panoramic shots from the Sky Terrace and the nature trail and I will leave you to figure which one is what ...

The next stop was the Star Ferry Pier at Central ( which is quite close to the IFC ). I took a bus down from The Peak ( I think it was 15 ) , and this gave me a good trip through parts of the Hong Kong Island. The bus was a double decker and I got the front seat which gave me a better view than what I would have got being seated elsewhere in the bus. The bus comes via the downtown and it was quite an experience seeing the traffic being managed so effeciently in the crowded business district. The bus drops off passengers at the Central Ferry Pier and the Star Ferry Peir is a shot walk from there. Once the at Star Ferry peir board the ferry to Kowloon Island. The Ferry ride gives a good view of the Hong skyline. Once at the other end, one could take a walk to the Clock Tower and get a better view of the skyline from the Kowloon Public Pier.

The next stop is the Ladies Market ( for the shopping afficiandos ) , and to get there , one needs to take the MTR from the Tsim Tsa Tshui station to Mong Kok . The Tsim Tsa Tsui station is walkable from the clock tower and one can walk through parts of Nathan Road. There is a lot of scope of window shopping here too. It also adds to the 'city-experience' . At Mong Kok station , there are signs which guide you to the correct exit to take you to the Ladies Market. The name of the street is Tung Choi street, but I think its better known as Ladies Market. The Ladies Market is a place where one can strike a good bargain and as is wont with such places, one can get cheated as well. Hence my advice is be careful. My personal favourites are fake handbags, scarves, and silk novelty items like cell phone covers. Its advisable to carry Hong Kong dollars in change.

By this time , it should be nearing 5:00 PM , if one has gone to all the places mentioned above. Depending upon when you want to be at the airport, you could head back or go around Hong Kong a bit more. To head back to the airport , take the MTR from Mong kong towards Tsen Wan and change to the Tung Chung line at Lai King. Once at Tung Chung you could explore the shopping complex at the Tung Chung MTR station or head back to the airport on bus no S1.

Once at the airport, you would need to go through immigration security and then you back at the departure level.

Here is a Google Map representation of the trip that I have described above. This should give a better picture of where you are headed and how long it could take.

View Hong Kong Trip in a larger map

Food ? I found that there were not many choices for vegetarians in Hong Kong. The IFC Mall has a few good places and I found Pret-A-Manager to be good. Its a soup and sandwich place and I liked it. There are Burger Kings and McDonalds as well. A good idea would be to grab some cakes/coffee or sandwich at StarBucks.

In case you want to do more or something on your own , there is the Hong Kong tourism board website which is quite useful. What you want to do and can do is a function of what your enthusiasm level is, how well you feel after a 14 hour flight and the weather in Hong Kong of course. My recommendation is do not over do it !!

There is also a Symphony of Lights show which is supposed to be a big deal in Hong Kong as far as tourists are concerned, but that happens at 8:00 PM and that cuts too fine with the time needed to come back to the airport and catch your flight back to desh !

Why I am unhappy with the BJP

2009-04-05T16:32:00.003+05:30

Lets face it. Here is a national party that is yet to get its act together. We are a month away from elections and here are these folks without even a clear agenda on what they are contesting on ?
Its been a known fact for the last 4 years or so that its USP AB Vajpayee would no longer be the PM candidate and it had to be Advani or someone else. The someone else was never discussed. It was to be Advani which is fine. Then, you need something beyond a PM candidate , and that's not a hate speech by a candidate who is known to come from a background of dissent and divisiveness. Neither is it a sulking senior leader who refuses to attend a meeting because a tent-wallah had been elevated to the same pedestal that he occupies.

Here is a party that claims and probably in most way represents the urban and sem-urban middle class, which
is now totally lost on what its fighting on. It should be issue and not people !! Here is a list of issues that I can think of
1. Slow pace of infrastructure development ( the NH progress is an example)
2. Instability posed by smaller regional parties
3. Simple change !!
4. Lesser tax and more accountability in spending !
5. Power situation ??

Pub Culture

2009-01-31T15:29:00.002+05:30

The good thing about technology and working in technology is that you get a set a specifications on how a particular technology can be used or implemented, and what is in scope and out of scope. Not only that we also have versions of these specifications , so that we can say that this is out-dated and that this is in.

Unfortunately , there is no such thing for culture. And, I guess that is the problem that our "Senas" are facing. There are no specifications on what our culture is , and what is our culture as far as women are concerned. As an example lets say there was a specification for Indian Culture numbered CSR ( Culture Specification Request ) 2000-02 wherein there was a chapter 11 named Indian Women and there was section which said the following :

11.1.2 : The women MUST not drink in a public place and any such instance of women found to be drinking shall be followed by the throwing of punches ( see Chapter 9 on Raising Exceptions and Errors )

How simple would that be ... We would have no debates on what is Indian Culture and who should protect it. Jokes apart, I am amazed at the response of some of the people in executive positions on this incident.

Sample this :

There was an incident in Kerala , wherein policewoman got drunk in a party and puked !! BTW, this happened not far from Mangalore. Was she not a woman or not an Indian or maybe she is outside of the purview of culture.

In every second or third hooch tragedy there would be an instance of a woman also dying.

Wonder , why that is OK ? Is it that these women do not wear jeans , T-shirts ( markedly western or urban wear ) and speak in English ( again markedly urban ?? ). Is it really about culture or is it about an excuse to "teach those city people a lesson" ? I think its the latter, and the irony is that the perpetrators would love to be one of the city folks and are probably doing everything to get there !!

Long Hiatus ...

2008-06-21T22:41:00.003+05:30

Its not that I did not have anything to write about, its more of I did not have time. Should be back with a blog soon.

I have had the chance to travel around a bit , so trip report are in the offing ...

Trip Report Part2

2007-06-25T10:11:00.000+05:30

Changi is a city that bustles to life as soon as the early morning arrivals start coming in, bringing in people for a transit. I got a coffee and a croissant for breakfast , got a nice foot massage in the electro-mechanical massagers that have been provided by OSIM in the transit lounge. SQ16 was deperating from was E4. I headed towards the gate to find quite a bit of a queue at the gate. The flight was full, not suprising for SQ16, which is one of the main links between India and SFO !

After a quick security check, I was waiting in the lounge trying to catch some photographs.

I could not help overhear a conversation between a lady and a co-passenger. It appeared that lady was an American citizen of Indian origin, and it appeared that she was returning back after letting out her property for an astronomical sum of Rs 1 lakh a month. I figured she must be one of the contributors to high rents in India, and the "poor" software engineers get blamed for it !

Now the 777-300ER with SQ is a new "product" as they call it ! The interiors were different and more brighter and with bigger PTVs ! You just got to travel in one of them to experience it !

The cabin !

The bigger PTVs ... check the resolution out !

Word processing program on the PTVs. Did you get the USB keyboard and USD pen drive today ?

Take off happened at 9:30 or so and we took off to the south, took a 180 degree turn and then flew over Changi !

Overflying Changi again !

The fight to Seoul ( Incheon ) was uneventful and we landed on time ...

The terminal at Incheon is one of the best that I have seen ! Its spacious and unlike HongKong , they have not crowded it till the ceiling !!

SQ16 at Incheon .. note the length of the 777-300

777-300ER

We took from Incheon at around 6:00 PM local time and the much publicized "mood-lighting" concept was in use ... It was evening !

After dinner I slept off and woke at about 3 hrs to go to SFO. After breakfast , I opened the window shades to see if it was clear outside. It was not ... which was not surprising. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Point Reyes and Golden Gate while we landed ! It cleared up right before we flew over land !

Golden Gate ! Wish I had a better angle...

SFO downtown

Landed at SFO !

I could have taken more photographs, but airhostess did not want a digital camera to interfere with the plane's electronics ! I paid heed to her advice :-)
We landed at 12:10 PM 30 mins ahead of schedule. Immigration was a breeze and I grabbed some lunch at the food court and headed off the rental car counter to get my car ...

Been Away ... Trip report Part 1

2007-06-09T17:21:00.000+05:30

I have been busy and away for a while now. But I got to do something that I like to do, fly ! And guess what , that too in a Boeing 777-300ER

WARNING : For those folks not interested in a trip report/planes/and what I did ... here is your chance to move away !

Trip details :
BLR->SIN SQ 529
Dep 7May 23:15
Arr SIN 06:20+1

SIN->SFO via ICN SQ16
Dep SIN : 8May 09:15
Arr SFO : 8May 12:30

With a hectic weekend preceding my travel , I was a bit relieved as we travlled towards the airport in Bangalore wading through the traffic. Online check-in for international travel seems to have caught up and Singapore airlines too has a fairly good site to check you in. They do not let you print boarding passes yet, but you can at least get a seat allocated.

Now, most the "window" people like me ask for a window when we book tickets and that leaves very little room for seat change when you actually checkin. In addition, you can only checkin seats for the segment of flight which is less that 48 hrs away. So that means you need to start checkin in 48 hrs before your next flight. The website does not clearly indicate that ... A better user interface would be useful here ! I had checked in for my SQ529 and not Sq16 , because of a website glitch. Hence I wanted to be early so that there are no issues.

Now Bangalore International , is an apology for an airport. It has grown so much with little space at its disposal, that planning becomes very important ! That's something that the airport management missed out ! I arrived at 19:15 for a 23:15 flight and was asked to wait outside the airport till 20:15 ( when the counters opened ) . The waiting area between the parking lot and the airport doors was a no mans land , and , was not exactly upto international standards , actually was not even upto Indian standards !

Finally at 20:15 we were let in and I was one of the first people to check in ... As my luck would have it I walked upto a trainee. Checkin in BLR for Singapore airlines is handled by AAI-HAL-JWG ( Ya ! Airports Authority of India, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd Joint working group ). Most of the staff is quite effective, but this guy was quite at sea and was unable to find me a seat that I wanted for SQ16 and also took 25 mins to check me in. This inspite of the fact that I had entered my passport details.

Checking done, waved a bye to wife , went upstairs had my dinner , went through immigration which was a breeze and went through security to the departure lounge. BLR has two gates, and the holding area looks pretty much like the holding area in a "Tirupathi queue" holding area.
There is a Cafe Coffee Day that does good business and it exemplifies the phrase "captive customers" given that its the only coffee shop inside the security hold!

SQ530 arrived, and it was 22:45 - time to start boarding ! SQ tries to board passengers as per row numbers , but that does not help here... there were quite a few people crowding near the gates. Now that is something I find hard to understand ... you have allocated seats, you are asked top board in such a way that it causes minimum inconvenience to others and yet people feel a bit insecure about getting on the plane !

Time passed, people got in , I got in ,settled in my seat . I wanted to take photos , but was not allowed since BLR is a not a civil airport and besides the light was not great ! A Thai Airways A330 came in and parked next to us. Push back happened at 23:20 or so and we were off to the Marathahalli end for a take off roll. We took off over Challagatta took a U turn towards east and were headed off in the direction of Chennai ! Bangalore does look cool from the air !

I turned my attention at the inflight entertainment system and decided to listen to some music. Supper was served at around 00:45 , and I must say that I was a bit hungry. As I normally tend to do, I did not consume all that was served ... Supper past midnight with 24 hrs of travel ahead of you is not my cup of tea ( pun unintended ). I slept off for two hrs and was woken up with the announcement that we were descending into Singapore. We descended through some clouds and I could see the entire expanse of Singapore . We landed at around 06:10 local time and it was still dark and taxied to a gate (e20). I got out out and Changi was bustling pretty much like a town coming to life in the morning !

I took a stroll to excercise my feet and went for a coffee . The sun was rising

The sun rises at Changi. Photo taken from Terminal 2 Transit area.

What's next in Silicon valley ?

2007-04-14T10:39:00.000+05:30

According to this post , there is not much to look forward to ! To me it looks like yet another doomsday prophet . The Valley IMHO is still the most potent meeting ground for techies and I have not heard any other place that seems to be rivalling it at least in terms of output .

The Mad Dog Show

2007-04-03T16:46:00.000+05:30

Amit Verma has a nice post and I could not agree more !

Uncle Sam wants you !

2007-03-30T10:00:00.000+05:30

According to this article in Rediff , there has been an increase in the number of Indian immigrants, who want become American citizens once they are eligible for it. No surprises, given the increased rate of immigration since 1998 and the fact that a lot of people got Green Cards issued in 2000-2001 .

With the possibility of a dual citizenship becoming very real , getting a US citizenship is like opening up doors to the employment capitals of the world ( at least for Indians) . There are a lot of people in the queue for getting a GC and follow it up with a citizenship, with some of these people planning in the range of years 2012 -2015. Hmm... I am not if one can predict 8 years down the line...

All this is not easy and requires a lot of planning , luck and resilience ! As a side-note , this benefits all the airlines that fly from India to the US and back, with all these people , their parents / in-laws flying in and out till the time they get a citizenship or just decide to come back !

In my opinion, these are uncertain times. Why ?! Well, to start with the immigration bar has come down, the US needs people, but then there is a huge supply and a subsequent backlog of the people waiting to get naturalized. Two, the US is no longer a destination where the chances of getting a better job are definitely and markedly higher, at least when compared to the situation 10 years ago. Three, with outsourcing and cost cutting and the uncertainty in the US economy, foreign policy the predictability of the future has come down. One can always argue that the standard of life, transparency in public dealings, education system kind of negates this lack of certainity and predictability, but even then the choice between US and India is no longer as clear as it was some time ago !

Cheap Airlines, lessons learnt and a dream lost !

2007-03-24T12:30:00.000+05:30

Earlier this week CNN_IBN did another 'expose' about budget airlines 'cutting costs' and 'compromising passenger safety' . While I agree that low-cost or no-cost , one cannot compromise safety , but seriously with atrociously low prices as Rs. 1500 for Mumbai-Bangalore which comes to around $35, how can one expect the airline would make profits ? Well they would do what every business does to make profits when under pressure on margins, cut corners ! On that note I think its high time that we started believing in the dictum, "if its too good to be true, it probably isnt".

If one wants to fly to Mumbai at a price which is Rs 500 more than an AC 3 tier ticket, I would suggest one be prepared for some compromise in quality . We all accept the questionable quality of Chinese good and yet go ahead and buy it because the price is within "our-range". Ask any any dealer about guarantees and he would look at you and smirk "Saab Chinese hai !!" . Middle class India is learning its lesssons !

More on the lessons, I am thinking Sony Entertainment and Pepsi would have learnt some lessons with the Indian Tigers exiting out of the World Cup. The Indian Cricket team is not something that can be banked upon. Amitabh, Aamir,Shahrukh are more bankable anyday !

Its not about talent or potential, its the execution and delivery that finally matters. That's another lesson that the Blue Billion would learn I am hoping thanks to one Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar !

International Women's Day

2007-03-08T17:53:00.000+05:30

I have been away for a while living the "cushy-life" of a techie. I have been a night owl for the last one week and I realized that I am not too good at being one.

Today is a International Women's Day ! I have been seeing a bunch of articles around this and a couple of products empathizing with the Women of the times ! One of them was a prominent builder from Bangalore. I was not sure which "woman" they were empathizing with , the one that takes a hefty loan and pays for expensive apartments that they build or the ones who work on the construction sites . It would be great if these companies provide some extra benefit to these women who work at the sites. There are enough people to take "care" of the woman who takes those loans anyway !

What have you learnt in the last 100 days ?

2007-02-17T20:56:00.000+05:30

Last month a couple of us spent a good part of our working hours ( or waking hours in some cases ) trying to hire a few good software engineers who want to , and can work on a product. Incidentally this product is based a very famous industry standard for enterprise middleware, so much so , that there are walls in small towns in India plastered with advertisement for courses that claim to teach you that standard.

We could not hire all the engineers we wanted to hire.

I was speaking to a cousin of mine who works for one of "the-company-to-be-in" MNCs, and I started ranting about how difficult it is to hire. He simply cut me short with a "Tell me about it! , I know , we go through this process all the time" .

So what went wrong ? Nothing, we just did not find enough reasons to hire some of the people we interviewed, in fact , with most of the people we interviewed. Were we choosy ? Not, unless if you think expecting a person to answer questions based on what is in his/her resume , is being choosy.

A normal expectation is , that when you are scheduled for an interview, you would spend some time reading up on what you have been working on, what you have worked on and possibly something more. Most of the interviewers understand this and factor in some prepration time. I am not sure of all the people know this, but if you are well prepared , or at least appear well prepared the chances of you getting through are higher. Coming back to our experience , this was one major issues with most of the candidates that we interviewed. Most of them could not answer questions on areas which they had worked on more than a year ago, and some folks did not have the breadth that was expected of them in their area of work.

So that brings me to the title of this blog : What have you learnt in the last 100 days ? Did you get a chance to learn something beyond your area of work ? If you work on frameworks , did you attempt to learn the basis of the frameworks , like Java or C++.

I would have loved to ask these candidates that question. If the answer was a yes, I would have gone ahead ! Maybe that what I would do the next time over.Maybe, I should try and put this question to myself !

A lot of us spend so much money trying to buy mobiles, MP3 players and cameras, but how much of this money do we spend in buying books, that enhance our breadth or the depth in the area we work in ? We spend a lot of time on Orkut, Yahoo! and possibly other distractions on the internet, how much time do we spend to read up a book or write up a small program? Maybe we expect the IT boom to last forever, or expect the "Chinese are never going to be good in English" or we just do not care.

Would it help if Mr. Chidambaram gave a tax break on books and courses ?

Bangalore Express

2007-02-09T10:55:00.000+05:30

No its not a new movie, but the name of the connecting flight offered by Lufthansa from SFO to Bangalore , as per this article in SJ Mercury News ! Nothing new, since SJ Mercury News always has a thing for glamorizing anything to with the Indian Tech community in the Valley !

Interesting stuff in this article , about finding jobs/clients on plane to Bangalore . The "cynical" me thinks , that its in line with the hype around the growth in Bangalore. The "hopeful" me thinks that I would offered a job someday on an airplane !

Air India's new colours

2007-02-07T12:05:00.000+05:30

Air India's new colours are on its latest Boeing 777-200/LR

I like it esp. with the cream and the Centaur pointing upwards. Now if only they follow it up with a new service "scheme" !

On a related note , some of the colour schemes of the private airlines is quite interesting . Here is my take on them

1. Indigo : Keeping in tune with the name , a Indigo base with blue wavy stripes. One of the best !
2. Air-India Express : Great combination of Red and orange/yellow with a Indian ethnic motif (typically a monument) on the tail ... very nice, at some time might get outdated
3. Spicejet : A mix of red and orange ... spice .. got that ! I like the bubbles on the tail .
4. Jet Airways : Blue tail, grey underbelly , ochre stripes looks very official. In some ways I like that since that conveys some seriousness about what they have to offer . I think they are probably one of the more serious players in the game !
5. Kingfisher : I like the red ! But there 's just too much of it in the interiors . There is the Kingfisher logo on the tail , nothing imaginative .
6. Air -Deccan : Minimalistic ! All white with the log on the tail, and a stripe over the windows . I do like the way the strip fades into a pattern. If there is any other colour on the plane , I guess that paid for by the advertisement sponsors.
7. Indian : Ok they came up with a wonderful log ( the Konark wheel ) , but they just went ahead and screwed it up with the colour scheme used ! A classic case of Shah Rukh Khan becoming a Govinda ( their respective sense of dressing being the metaphor)
8. Go-Air : They took a leaf out of TNSTC ( Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation) which paints each of its buses in a different colour. A simple "go" emblazoned in "PINK" , "GREEN","BLUE" and "ORANGE"
9. Paramount : All blue with a white underbelly , which is quite different from the rest of the lot. Gives you a kind of the old "US Airways livery " feel.
10. Air-Sahara : Well if you can't think of anything else ... there are the national colours ! Surely worst of the lot !

Aero India 2007 : Update to the last Post !

2007-02-06T14:27:00.000+05:30

So it looks like my wish #1 from the last post is coming true. Accoring to the The Hindu there is a bus service from MG Road to the AFB at Yelahanka run by CitySwaps . The CitySwaps site does not mention anything about this though ... My mind is changing !

Aero India 2007 : Bangalore Traffic

2007-02-03T10:35:00.000+05:30

I was planning to visit Aero India 2007 , but an article in The Hindu this morning made me think twice. Well , no prizes for guessing, the event being in Bangalore , the traffic is expected to be bad on the way to Yelahanka. The traffic police is expected to make some arrangements, but from my past experience that is like applying a pain-balm for fracture !

When is the traffic ever good in Bangalore one might ask, but that is another question for another day.

Right now I am re-evaluating my plan to visit Aero India ! Here is my wish-list for travel options to Aero-India

1. Run shuttles (BMTC trailer buses) from MG Road, Hebbal every half an hour
2. Run a small shuttle train twice a day from Bangalore City ! ( Naah ! too much read tape there ? )

The first words ...

2007-02-02T19:25:00.000+05:30

I have been blogging for a while now. The challenge has not been in terms of what to blog, but more in terms of how-to-get-myself-to-blog . Sankar motivated me this morning by showing off his new blog and here I am ...