I had a blasting start of day today… As soon as I reached to my bike today, i thought of going by train from vashi… and on the way I also planned to take a chance with the newly launched “GO Mumbai” card. The same type of card I saw in UK, so I was curious to see its implementation on Mumbai locals and best buses. And believe me I hoped for the best, since I had a faint idea of how it should be working. And then began my journey for Go Mumbai.

As soon as I landed on Go Mumbai counter, the girls/ladies/aunties, selling the same had little clue of what the card is, so they kept referring each other when ever I asked any doubt. They had few pre-installed tag lines on them which they kept repeating, this card wont run on western and do swipe your card before getting in and after getting out. So anyway after a few questions to and fro, i thought what the heck lets try this one. Its just 75 odd bucks. So heres a summary of my total experience:

The bad ones first:
The counter girls were selling the card for 75 and didnt had change of 100!

The card costs 25 (thats fair) and the recharge is min. of 50 (thats also ok!) but you will get only 42 rs. to spend, now what they hell… why this extra money, just for saving my time from the queue you will charge me 16%… whoa… and then the worst thing of all…

There weren’t any coupons available on any of the counters. And they told they have stopped selling coupons. The only possible reason I could have thought of is to promote/push people to use the stupid Go Mumbai card, for which they are generally charging extra. I mean come-on cant you see the advantages, I am already paying the ticket bill… tht means am buying tkt for sure and the same thing i got with coupons so why to stop selling them… anyway…

and last but not the least.. there were 2 machines, one red and one green on Vashi station, out of which, as expected one was not working so i swiped the card on the other one and moved ahead. Now thats ok till the time when I remembered that two colors meant, one for general and one for first class. And I dont remember which one is which and one which I have swiped the card and then there is No machine on Mahim station, gosh, where should i swipe my getting off station. I said ok, let them have all my money this time POOR ME!#$&^&*#

The good experiences:

Out of the painful experience on vashi/cst local, the only good part was that there was no rush from wadala to mahim. though go mumbai didnt had anything to do with it, but thats all good that has happened to me since morning!

Overall experience:

I would say “GNO Mumbai”. Thank you very much, i would like to try again after a year, hopefully by end of which service would have stabilized a little bit! I would give GM, 1out of 5. Use it at your own risk!

I was reading an article in yesterday’s ET, something called “The Page 1 people”!! In that article the editor kept bragging about how BIG Indian market is and how its posing as the next threat to the Chinese market. That really made me wonder, is it so? So I thought why not to compare the pros and cons of the whole situation and will see how much of it is true.

So, to start with pros. India’s biggest asset as compared to China is that locals speak English or atleast have a dire thirst for English. This has given India a wide edge from other Asia Pacafic countries like Korea and Japan. Other pros I guess could be intelligence levels. I myself haven’t interacted with any chinese but, I have a gut feeling that Indians are more intelligent where as Chinese are hard-workers. So, this kind of gives India another edge in global market. And then seeing the Bollywood market is definitely on a boom. Indian policies favor people going out of country, in fact the kind of policies government is marking now a days is promoting people to leave India. So you can get a good established Indian brand out in any country. Infact a few of my friends in US are planning to put up a company there and then definitely they would prefer India over China for setting up an office abroad!

As for cons, to start with, India’s infrastructure is no where compared to what a developed country should have. Sometimes I feel, it would have been better if British have never left India. Atleast they have built a great Infra and would have kept rupee in good position. I wonder just 60 years back rupee was equivalent to pound! The bursting population is next on the cons list. Atleast China was able to control its population blast, infact now they are on the negetive side!! India on the other side seem to be ignoring this fact. Then there is evergreen corruption in India, but I have no clue about the corruption level in China. And then which country doesn’t have corruption, but having said that many of the Indian officials are like, they want to get the whole pie for themselves. Common man, let others also have some. And last but not the least cons I think is, Congress government. I don’t know much about politics, but the congress behaviour seems like of divide and rule. They are such a fan of reservations, first they pushed it in elite colleges and now in private sector too. One thing is for sure, in the next elections I too am going to vote and atleast my vote wont go in favor of Congress! With the kind of policies comming in, I don’t know how India would challenge China in global market…

Now here is a good Inspirational video from YouTube. The site really rocks.. great concept, great execution and class service

Here is the world’s easiest quiz. Try and see how many can you answer! (Press Ctrl+A to view the correct answers)

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
Ans: 116 years, from 1337 to 1453.

2) Which country makes Panama hats?
Ans: Ecuador.

3) From which animal do we get catgut?
Ans: From sheep and horses.

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
Ans: November. The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours.

5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
Ans: Squirrel fur.

6) The Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean are named after what animal?
Ans: The Latin name was Insularia Canaria – Island of the Dogs.

7) What was King George VI’s first name?
Ans: Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert.

8 ) What color is a purple finch?
Ans: Distinctively crimson.

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
Ans: New Zealand.

10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?
Ans: Thirty years, of course. From 1618 to 1648. He he he..

N’joy!

The Goverment is getting desperate to improve the quality of education in India. And for this the amount of fund they are allocating is magnanimous. Surprisingly I am in agreement with government this time. According to Rediff, goverment is comming out with a new term in accordance with IIT/INI, now comes, IIEST which stands for something Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology. Also, the government is planning to open up three new IITs and planning extension of centers/satellite campuses in various states. Now this I think is a far far better idea than increasing some stupid quota just to gather more sympathy votes.

There are seven colleges proposed to get IIEST standard. IIEST will have their position/standard somehwhere between IITs and IISc. Nothing has been finalized yet, such as the date of official announcement, enterance type, academic curriculum etc. etc. As for opening up new IITs, the most probable places Karnatka (I guess, Bangalore), Andhra Pradesh (I guess Hyderabad) and Bihar (I dont where will they open up in Bihar). But the good news remain, earlier talks were to convert the seven colleges shortlisted to IITs but none were found worthy of status and their improvement would have cost more than what it will cost to open up new IITs. Plus I think whenever this kind of conversion should take place, they should open up new colleges rather than converting the existing one. Atleast I would feel bad if someone changed the name of my almamater to something else.

As for other news, they are constantly working on reducing the stress on a 10+2 goer. I would suggest why not just take a lucky draws and invite the first 3000 lucky draw winners! Now they have converted it two paper exam, rather than three and stress is more on objective type questions! So far, IITs seem seriously threatened by Kota-ites…

Wow… wrote a lot a about entrepreneurship today… so will not write a long blog here…

Thought for the day:

It’s not about whether you get knocked; it’s all about whether you get up again…

Word for the day:

Ostensible (adj.) – Appearing to be true, but not necessary so

Usage: Aspects of environmentalism have long been criticized as using ostensible concerns about nature to serve private purposes such as property values.

Internet Security keeps ringing bells in my head whenever I connect to Internet through my personal comp. I first took notice of it when I saw a video about Google on Google videos. Do you know that google keeps a track of everything you do on google and keeps interrelating its data entries! And by everything, I mean literally everything, even the word you type to search on google. The related words that google search suggests is based on these words only. So I guess, the overall database structure of google is something like it keeps a track of gmail/orkut users, like who is signing from which machine, and it keeps the track of search keywords, like which machine is searching for which keyword and relating the two it can easily make out that you are searching for that thing. Wow! people know so much about me without my knowledge!!

Anyway, so I increased the security of personal firewall (Sygate) to manual and maximum, so that I know which machine is trying to contact which program on my computer and sending the data to which IP. And then the results started to come in, and O.M.G. many of the sites stopped working on my computer. For example, yahoo, WP(:-s), MSN messenger etc. etc. I am so surprised to see that people do want to know me this desperately and at any cost.

To my surprise google gets all my data from the browser (which I have given full permission to access net!) and these sites call other programs to get the data. Though there is one more program (something called SAcc.exe, surfaccuracy) which continuously try to send data to google and I keep stopping it. God what is happening to this techno-driven world, will anyone let me keep my private life private??

Anyway, to cut the long story short, no one will let me do anything on their site, till I give them access to this personal data. And I, the poor soul, am left with no choice, being a true techno, have got soo much dependent on net that I allow them to take away my private life. sobs… So the gist of the story is think twice before connecting to net, as they are watching out for you.

I am now wondering if Matrix was a Reality or a Movie!!

Well, I always wondered why people blog, don’t they have anything more intresting to waste time at rather than blogging and posting craps over the internet. But then from another point of view I find some of these articles really interesting, informative and worth reading. And a definite reason that blog serves as a great promotion platform (even google agrees to this, then who the hell am I to argue!!) and a good money making tool (though WP is not the right place for this!). So now I thought, lets give this also a shot. But then next question arises what to write… completly blank post will rather be an innovative idea I guess and seeing my english and essay writing skills, i guess the best idea too. But then I don’t want to look that crappy over the net, so lets write something. I guess to start with, let me share the poem I like the most, over the net. The best and the most motivating poem (atleast I think so..):

The Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is just an empty dream!
That the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! And life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And with partings, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing over life’s solemn main,
That a forlorn, shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let then us be up and doing,
With a heart wherein we strive,
Be not like dumb driven cattle,
Be a hero in the strife.