Friday, September 29, 2017

Can we Bank on these Banks??

I had to apply for a Loan and I approached two Banks. Two Huge Banks from India.

One of them HDFC while the other being SBI.  My first interaction was with the representatives from HDFC Bank, and though they promised earlier disbursement of the money, their approach of their employees was bad, to say the least. No respect for customers and no method to speak properly. Though I can say, maybe its an exception, and its the mannerism of people rather than the Bank, the feedback has been consistent from different sources.

I had a completely different experience in SBI Branch. The manager sat with me and explained it in a nice manner. Got all the documents together and helped me to fill the documents and within 15-20 minutes completed all the formalities. I must say that the attitude of the manager of a branch was so humble. Again this can be limited to certain people, but again, the feedback from many of friends with SBI has been really good.

I sometimes wonder, why is this such a big attitude change when it comes to such huge two Banks in India.

But one thing is for sure, I would never approach HDFC Bank for any slightly complicated work.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Facebook Check-In

In your typical day when you visit your facebook timeline, do you see any check-ins from your friends on it ?
I do have some observations about them and probably some of my thoughts behind them,mostly sarcastic :)

  • When travelling outside India, its a must to check-in on Facebook. Else the airlines will never give you the boarding pass.
  • The check-in while travelling abroad should be at each of the transit airports. Else they can't use the washrooms in the transit airports, nor are they allowed to buy anything from the airport duty free shops
  • One of my friend in the US, checks-in almost twice to thrice a week, travelling within US. Its from Atlanta to Detroit or to New York or wherever. That's when I realised that in US it must be a mandatory to checkin first on facebook before you check-in at the airport counter.
  • Those who are abroad, say the US/UK kind of folks, will check-in when they visit a Temple. Probably the priest will give Prasadam  only for those who have checked-in.
  • You will not see any one in India doing a check-in into temples, unless if its a trek to a mountainous temple or visiting the temple has a historic reason rather than a religious angle to it.
  • If one visits a Five Star hotel looking beautiful photographically, then its kind of a must to check-in on  facebook. The taste of the food is immaterial. It should be visually appealing.
  • If you are travelling to Leh Ladakh , then its a sin not to to a check-in. The mandatory photo should be the Pangong lake preferably on your Enfield Bullet and a Nikon DSLR. 
  • One of the most important check-in especially for this year(2017) was to check-in before going to watch Bahubali 2 . Without the check-in the you wouldn't be allowed inside the theater at all.

The only real thing I see value in such check-in is marking yourself safe when there is some incident in your area or so. Your near and dear ones will know that things are fine. Else every time I see a check-in on facebook, I have to try real hard not to post any sarcastic comment on the same,


Saturday, September 09, 2017

Electric Cars In India

Just a couple of days back , there was a comment from the concerned Minister that there will be a strong push for the Electric Cars In India. I must say that, its a good move, and given the level of emission related issues in big cities and others too, it is quite a need of the hour.

But I do feel there is a lot of bottlenecks for reaching the usability which the Petrol or Diesel cars have reached as of today. And more importantly the cost of these cars.

If I go back a few years , November 2011, I was invited for the Launch of Chevrolet Beat Electric here in Bangalore. I had taken a few pictures too.




Those days the only Electric Car was Reva, and for me it was way too small a car. Smaller than Nano if I can say. And the cost, quite high. The reason for the high cost was right from their end, as the numbers were and are still quite less. What one spends on buying, would be made up on the spending less on Fuel.

But this Car , Chevy Beat was good and quite big, Infact its the same body of the regular Chevy Beat.
I did ask this person, (sorry forgot his name) as to when it will be launched in India. He calmly said, that they will not be launching in India anytime soon, Because it was not feasible due to the costs and the battery life. Had this car launched, I am quite sure, there would have been many who would have bought it, instead of the Reva(now, Mahindra Reva).

Coming back on the reform mandated by the Government of India that, we would need to change. I still have the same questions which were open when I had seen this Chevy Beat.


  1. The Battery Life and the charging capacity needs to be increased to give more mileage per charge. Yes, they have improved, but not really there.
  2. Where do we charge these cars ? We don't have enough charging points to charge them, Let alone outside home, even in our apartment complexes, we would almost need one per car park if we will all have electric cars
  3. We need sufficient charging points outside home. Yes, few malls in Bangalore,like Forum Mall do have special parking for electric cars and free charging, but we need a lot of them. Yes, the airport parking also has them in Bangalore :)
  4. Since there are not sufficient charging points, there have been talks of providing batteries on exchange at the so called charging points.
  5. This would mean, it would almost be imperative to have similar or same batter configurations required for all the cars, or maybe just a couple of categories to make them easily exchangeable.
  6. If there is still considerable charge left in the Battery, and still needs to be replaced, then we might be almost giving back considerably charged batteries during exchange. That will be another business of its own then.
  7. If we plan for long drives, then we would need such Battery Exchange Points. How would one really know, how good those batteries are and how far will they push the vehicle ?? We have already have lot of cheating while filling petrol or diesel. Will this not take it to another level ?
  8. Even if we have charging stations, and the speed of charging does go up quite high, like in the case of today's mobile's, but it wouldnt be too less a time. Not to mention the queues. We already have lot of queues at Fuel Stations for the given number of cars today. 
  9. Though we are trying to fix an environmental problem of air pollution, will there not be more batteries disposed with Electric Cars coming in ? and I dont think that these batteries are anything of less polluting, though much lesser than petrol and diesel, but the waste material of the batteries would be another thing to take care, especially the lead nodes and the acid in them.
It is indeed the future of cars and there is no doubt in them, more so considering the fossil fuels getting consumed at alarming rate. But there is an urgent need to take care of lot of things, when all the cars get into the Electric Mode.

But yes, the air would be better to breath and there would be no noise pollution from the Petrol and Diesel Engines. That would be something to look forward to.

I just hope that they come up, charging of these batteries with solar power also , which will make it a lot convenient, while driving , the batteries get charged on their own :P


Friday, September 08, 2017

Gauri Lankesh

We have been getting Lankesh Patrika at home since a very long time, and the paper for those times, ie when we were still kids was quite a brave one. They would expose politicians and actors and off course the killers etc. They were the Crime Patrol or Savdhan India of those days, if I am not wrong.

To be frank, though I had heard a lot of Lankesh ie, the Father of Gauri, in so many years being in Bangalore also, I hardly heard of Gauri. Only some news here and there , but nothing serious. 
I am not sure, what she was working on, but given the lineage I do feel she would be doing a good job as a Journalist 

Whatever the reasons be, that she was killed , it must have been some serious news which she had and hence the result. Cant be anything else for sure. But what I really didnt understand was, why State Honours for her ?
I am just not able to explain that to myself. Just a journalist being killed, so she should be given state honours..Just dont get it ..

Thursday, September 07, 2017

The Old 500 Rupee Notes

No matter what , I can surely say that the old 500/- Re notes during the demonetisation are the ones which I liked the most. Today, the grey colored 500/- ones are just not attractive or having a feel good factor.
The 2000/- rupee notes, must say, I hate them, both, for its usability as well as the color. Pink ? Really ?

Now we will have some more new ones coming, a 200/- and a 50/- . Lets see how they look.
But to frank, I think the new set of people who are designing the notes are from colleges who have got thru reserved category. Can't think of any other valid reason..


Small Apps

Its really been sometime, since I visited this blog and wrote an article. Facing a weird problem. The articles which I plan to write, after opening the laptop, I am just not able to remind myself. And then finally I give up and dont do anything. Today, I thought I will just try to run through my whole day and see if I can recollect. Not that I could recollect anything, but just thought to update something I did so that I do remember.

One of the things which I was planning to do was to create a small program or an excel sheet, which can compute the amount of EMI which are pending based on the total amount payable. I knew it would be simple, but I have been putting it off for a long time.

I sat with the excel for around 20 min and I was able to get whatever I needed from that small app. It gave me the insights which I was looking for and make more informed decisions on my repayments to the bank.

The point is, that, when many things are in your mind, one does tend to forget and all the clutter only makes life more miserable.

So, point to be noted is that, as soon as something comes up in the mind, get to it and take it to closure. Reduce the lists. Rather focus on completion.