Author Archive

Jun 19

Swiss Travels – I

Its been 3 full days and a night since I arrived in Geneva, Switzerland. My first ever trip outside India, and to the envy of everyone to the most beautiful place on earth! With this trip I also began one of the things I wanted to do before 30.

I had always imagined that my first trip outside India would be filled with excitement right before I’d leave, however, it hasn’t really been the experience. The travel plans and stay were sketchy till the moment we reached Geneva, and of course the purpose of the visit is business. I have been loaded with so much work that they have even estimated my weekends in the work plan, which means I am locked up at office and am getting to see nothing at all…atleast for the next 14 days.  I’d try to sneak out a bit sometime.

Anyhow, having seen only bits an pieces of the place between my hotel to the office…I observed and laughed at the fact that the cute hotel receptionist’s name is Elodie…which remarkably sounds similar to a hindi gaali!

People love to wish you Bon Jour everyday while meeting you at the office lift, even if they may not know you. Somehow my perverted mind feels like replying to them in another hindi gaali…just for the fact that I can get away with it :P

But the truth is that people are nice, yesterday we were getting soaked while waiting for our bus in the drizzle and this lady passed us by, she came back and made us move to the bus stop’s shelter nearby so that we do not get wet. The fact being we didn’t share a common language as I know nothing of French.

Geneva has a very good rule of giving free bus/train passes to people if they stay in any of the city hotel for all their stay, this saves you a lot of money and of course easies your life.

Public displays of affection is quite common here, people would be walking around and suddenly start hugging and kissing at any junction or public place, like as if they had this sudden urge and couldn’t hold themselves back. Strangely it seems okay and not awkward!

Geneva enjoys a fair mix of people from around the world, the ongoing world cup is a witness to  the same…today saw Algerians creating a ruckus before their match with UK, two days ago people were running around Brazlian colors too…its a truly cosmopolitan place. Yesterday the Swiss win over Spain resulted in a 10% discount of all products at a local supermarket chain!

It is okay to show bare chested women in TV ads here, saw this eye popping Denim after shave’s ad which would have made RSS, VHP and the likes back home gone crazy! If only HUL could show those ads in India, I bet they’d treble the sales of the products!

It rains each evening, it doesn’t get dark until 9-9.30 PM which I think is awesome! French has made my life difficult as a vegetarian, can’t read the food menu properly, I think I may have nibbled half a chicken sandwich yesterday thinking it to be eggs than chicken :-(

Hope to take pictures soon and know the place more than just street side observations….for now the desi bhaiyya would sign off!

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Posted in Tourism, Travel

May 26

Every morning she waits…

Another old post from my old blog, am just getting nostalgic and lazy! This one was written back on Feb 15, 2006

Every morning at 7.55 AM my office shuttle(another word for bus) starts from JP Nagar First Phase taking the turn to the East end main road and finally reaching BTM Layout…

I have a particular seat which is in a way my seat on the left side of the bus, just for the simple fact that 4 minutes into the journey to my office I would be passing in-front of the “Brand and Bargains” showroom and around 8 AM I would witness ‘her’ waiting like everyday for her bus.

I don’t know where she works, I dont know who is she but all I know is that I wish to see her everyday, in a way a lucky charm for me! She ain’t the prettiest girl, but then she is different…she could be working anywhere maybe Infosys, Wipro, TCS or anywhere…

Its already more than a couple of months when I am sitting at my seat in the bus waiting eagerly to have a glimpse, and then move on without thinking of her till the next day, the probability is that I would never know her in person, I may never know her name even…

She might never know about my eagerness to just have a glimpse of her, but it doesn’t make any difference…this relationship, if i take liberty in calling it one, is different. In a way I don’t wish things to change, there is this hidden beauty in all this…and I wish to retain it.

Its a routine that I wish to continue…to see her waiting every morning for her office bus right at 8.

Note: I never talked to this girl back then as expected, funny I don’t even remember the face now!

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Posted in Life, Thoughts, story

May 14

Lunch Box

Wrote this post back in 2006 on my previous blog, it was apt to migrate it on Mother’s day(got delayed by a few days):

Its 6.45 AM today, a Monday morning. As I struggle to get ready in time, my stomach rumbles reminding me of its demands for a breakfast. Time is short, and I am yet to get ready for work, opening my larder I discover that I don’t have anything ready to eat, thankfully a few slices of bread and jam come to my rescue. While I am exercising thin layers of jam over the slices, my mind went back to my school days, barely 5-6 years ago when mom used to prepare the school lunch and breakfast for me.

It seems a different age now, but I do remember those delicious savouries which she used to cook just for me all those years, getting up early to prepare them to my liking. I never ever bothered to thank her for them, perhaps we all never do. Every morning while waking her sleepy son she used to give a choice between this or that, some days it could be as simple as the jam-bread and on others it would vary from aloo paranthas or cutlets just to my liking. Today I am on my own, living in an Alien city where thousands of people get up – work – return home and loop again like zombies. Nobody seems to care whether poor old me is getting the right breakfast, or am eating at all. Guess what! this was the Independence or job life which we waited for all those years in college….

Before I forget…I thank you Ma for all those 12 years of early morning breakfasts and school lunches, which today seem to me a princely feast in comparison to what I can cook and eat….

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Posted in Life, Thoughts

May 05

Table for two please..or four?

“Get a big TV, don’t buy a small one. Get a 3 burner cooking range, two burners is too small”, with these instructions my daily phone call to Ma comes to an end. Its been less than 3 weeks since I moved to the new city and found myself a pad. Of course the place is empty and its been upto me to spruce it up the way I want it.

Equipped with a shoe string budget and purely functional needs in mind, I scoot off every now and then to the nearby home stores to add bits to my shack. At the end of each such visit I report back to Ma about my purchases and how it fits in well! Unfortunately Ma always has a different view, while I look at smaller furniture, small TV, small refrigerators…her demands are for the big stuff. Its unspoken but well understood that she wants me to buy everything according to how the needs shall be when I am married. It annoys me to no end but I always stop just short of explaining it to her, for I guess she may not comprehend it too well.

When I buy smaller stuff it gives me a comfort that I am still single, not getting sucked up into the family life just yet. Anything family size makes me aware that this freedom might end soon, its almost like marking my territory by buying things which are meant a single person to use…ay! even a dual burner seems to be an overkill in my kitchen! Constant trips to attend weddings of my friends who are now a part of this epidemic(as Barney said in HIMYM) doesn’t do me any good either, for she now thinks that I am ready to be domesticated.

For now I am winning the battle by citing financial constraints(which are partially true as well) but I know one day she’d have it her way, it would the day when Ma would visit me for a few weeks and change the landscape of the house buying comforts for her imaginary daughter-in-law whose name, arrival date, and whereabouts are still unknown.

*** Disclaimer ****

The house in the image isn’t mine(flicked off the net) and I am not getting married! So please don’t congratulate me and scare the bones out of me! :-)

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Posted in Life, Thoughts, funny

Apr 17

Twitter Clients for Nokia – A shootout

I had been promising a blog post if someone suggested me Nokia Symbian based Twitter clients. So here it is, a set of 4 free clients tested on my Nokia 5230 3G phone.  Hope one of these fits the bill for you, almost all of them are easily available over Nokia Ovi or otherwise(have given a link though). Of course I have not tested Gravity, because it is a paid app.

Snaptu

Snaptu is a Java based client and as a result supported on a variety of phones, which makes it an attractive application. Another key advantage being that it is more like a mashup of different applications like Facebook, Weather, Twitter, Picasa at a single place. The user can add or remove his favorite applications as provided by Snaptu.

I have been a loyal Snaptu user since I bought my phone and have been using it primarily for Twitter.  The biggest issue which I faced with Snaptu is on screen rotate, in order to fit in to the rotated screen the application tries hard to fit in but almost always gets stuck at ‘Rotating…’ and I ended up restarting my cell to get the app back on. This is quite annoying if your phone has an accelerometer and supports screen rotate.

Advantages

  • Java application, runs on many phones including older N Series phones
  • Wide range of apps can run through Snaptu, making it a powerful single point of access
  • Auto updates silently as key app runtimes are downloaded on runtime
  • Good Interface
  • Supports Retweet, DM, URL access
  • Separately shows Updates and @ tweets, which makes it a very powerful twitter client

Disadvantages

  • Gets stuck at screen rotate
  • Speed

Tweets60

As the name goes, Tweets60 is for Symbian 6 OS. It is a very light client, particularly quick to install and use on Nokia phones. Touted as the next big thing after Gravity, I tested TweetS60 Lite on my phone, hoping that it could just be the end of the search.

Post login the application doesn’t show any signs of trying to update my timeline. It’s a long wait as the polling settings are manual. This enables you to save GPRS bandwidth if its expensive on your side of the world.

Ok so I now selected the Refresh setting from the Options Menu(not as navigable as Snaptu), but this User Interface would definitely be very useful on a non-touch phone where two menu options at the bottom are to be used for almost everything.

The application did refresh my timeline, but scrolling is painful, not as smooth as Snaptu and I ended up using the stylus. The Profile images never refreshed and while the timeline is updated I cannot scroll through.

Advantages

  • Made for Symbian
  • Light
  • Supports all basic functionalities including following, unfollowing, RT etc…
  • Can easily minimize the application to background
  • Stable

Disadvantages

  • Interface not as colorful/cool as other clients
  • Does not fully utilize touch features of your phone, although rotating works well.

STEW

STEW is a widget for Nokia phones and can be easily integrated on the main screen shortcuts of your phone. I had read amazing reviews about STEW on the net, so decided to test it out myself.

STEW opens through the browser of your phone, although this may not be noticeable.

I dab the application to open it, and wait…the screen goes blank! I get a feeling that it is hung up but no, it comes back to life…a good 7-8 seconds of staring at the blank screen. Okay so here I got, entering my login credentials, and the screen pops a warning that the login details are being sent as plain text and would not be encrypted!

Then the cool STEW interface pops up. I love the color theme and cool icons, but the application doesn’t support most of the common twitter features. All I can do is update status, search for tweets or view the refresh settings. Moreover, on screen rotate the timeline text does not justify within the screen edges, thus not readable.

Advantages

  • None really, except the interface

Disadvantages

  • Very slow load times
  • Very limited tweeting support, unless you with to type @ or RT yourself
  • Text justification goes for a toss when the screen is rotated

Nokia Messaging for Social Networks (BETA)

The is the last application I tested on my Phone. As you can see it is still in BETA, and is freely downloadable on Ovi.

The communities application supports facebook and MySpace too, the user needs to add his account details and can simultaneously login into these services.

The loading time is slick and the interface is quite comfortable. The best feature is a right side pane on the screen which has shortcuts for DM, RT, @ and favorites. It makes it very easy to use the application, it also has a planned support for uploading images directly from the phone and tweet them. There is also a drop down which can be used to select twitter pages as on the website.

One downside of the application is the constant popups requests for internet connection authentication which renders it almost impossible to use on my phone. Maybe other users do not get those popups.

Advantages

  • Nokia’s native application
  • Supports Facebook and Myspace too
  • Smooth interface
  • Supports most common twitter features
  • Screen shortcuts

Disadvantages

  • Still in Beta
  • No option to save login details
  • Annoying Internet authentication popups

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Posted in Reviews, Technology

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