3 years !!

naanushande.com is 3 years old now.

Following are popular posts for last one year

Favorites:-
-Going to office by BMTC: Experiences of commuting by BMTC. Sharing some amusing moments.
-Skiing at Bearstown resort: Maiden Skiing experience at Bearstown's resort in South Korea.
-Skandagiri Expedition: Welcoming new year atop Skandagiri betta.
-Harsha Bhogle - Career in these times: An inspiring speech from India's top cricket commentator.

Top contents statistically:-
-Rottikallu Homestay: A weekend getaway near Sakleshpur. Several adventurous activities like trekking, river-walk are conducted.
-Brand Equity Quiz - Finals: Experiences of the quiz show hosted by Derek O'Brien at Leela Kempinski, Mumbai.

Contents of previous blogging years which are still popular:-
-Photography Workshop - Kalyan Varma: Whenever Kalyan announces dates of his next workshop, this post sure to get a few hits.
-Kudremukh Homestay: Two and half year old post still getting sufficient hits.
-Sitanadi Rafting: A trip with Ctrl-Esc group.

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Imagining India - Transportation Sector

Currently I am reading Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India - Ideas for the new century. In the book the author takes the reader through various events in Indian history which has led to globally competitive Indian economy. We are not yet there but are on the way. The nice thing about the book is that the author has put together many known and unknown tit-bits in a structured manner.

I referred the book for an academic presentation on 'Transportation Sector in India'. Other than transportation Nandan discusses about various unique characteristics of India. How governments plan to introduce Hindi as an official language was resisted by some southern states. And we continued with usage of English for official purposes. It was a blessing in disguise for the nation in general.

Following some solid excerpts from the book regarding history of Transportation Sector and Infrastructure sector in general.

• India now presents us with a bewildering landscape – of vibrant, private enterprise choking up as it meets crumbling public infrastructure.


• Yashwant Sinha, the finance minister under NDA government, has remarked that all centuries coexist in India.


• For British India, infrastructure meant building roads and rail that focused on colonial requirements, rather than responses to popular demand.


• After 1857 revolt, security became British India’s core obsession. Triggered massive expansion of rail infrastructure. Rail connectivity grew from zero trains in 1850 to a network spanning close to 10,500 kilometer by 1875.
  


• View of roads and railways as an investment towards safety – to move people and goods in and out quickly, and avoid being concerned by enemies – has plenty of precedent.The Romans built Britain’s major road systems when they had occupied the restive island, and many of these still exist. Another parallel was the Eisenhower-era expansion of roads in the United States during the Cold war, to ensure the rapid rollout of the army in case of an attack at home.


• Indians road Congress, 1930. development of rural road. First road plan released in 1943. Ambitious agenda for roads was meant to be carried our over 2 years. Enthusiastic plans, soon gathered dust.


• Between 1950 and 1970 – while passengers and goods traffic increased more than thirty fold, road length went up only five times.


• Rail network increased – 0.5 percent in 1950s, falling to a barely detectable growth of 0.2 percent in 1960s, 70s.


• First major railway project since British Left India, the 750-kilometre Konkan railway on India western coast, came up only in 90s.


• India’s infrastructure vision was top down and govt got carried away with trying to prove to the world what India was capable of. The urgency to turn a desperately poor country into a gleaming industrial power had promted the state to emphasize higher education over primary power plants, steel factories and massive dams over rural roads, and building new cities over reforming older urban pestholes.


• Short-horizon Indian governments have favored short horizon initiatives, expanding subsidy policies and freebies that have an immediate, big bang in PR, even if the real effect in a whimper. For most governments, investment were anyway a lose-lose option. With govt so unstable, it was likely that the next government would take credit for what you did.


• From 1980s India has remained in ‘perpetual election mode, as every one or more major states face the voters’.


• Indira Gandhi – Ramped up subsidies – food, fuel, electricity which elbowed out investments in more universal public goods such a hospitals, roads, railways.


• Subsidies – always tempting – guarantee instant pay-offs for government.


• Incredibly low user charges for road transport and railways – more the state built more it lost.


• Vinayak Chaterjee – heads consultancy Feedback Ventures Ltd: ‘When you talk about building highways, canals and rails in a country like India, you come up against a big constraint – land’.


• N. Sheshagiri describes politics of infrastructure in India – ‘ ten quarreling men holding each other’s bit of hair, and no one is willing to either pull or let go’.


• After 1991 reforms: There was no clean break ideology when it came to India’s infrastructure sector. Infrastructure actually touched a new low in the post reform period. The focus during these years was on rapidly expanding the role of private enterprise, including an infrastructure – it was a thirst long denied and it had to be slaked. In 1992-96 the government drastically cut back its own investments, leaving the glass half empty in the hope that private funds would pour in.


• Infrastructure investment has been a roller coaster of policy in most countries, as when British nationalized its utilties in 1940s, but later reversed it and introduced private but regulated systems in the 1970s and 1980s.


• Markets do not work well in infrastructure, and this springs from the nature of public goods – which are ‘expensive, durable and immobile’. This makes private infrastructure vulnerable- after all a company cannot recall a road if it proves to be a loss. And because of this, governments may be tempted to break promises with companies by reneging on the terms of public-private partnership or forcing them to lower tariffs.


• Infrastructure boost: NDA, Vajpayee, had a penchant for announcing infrastructure projects with poetic flourishes at Independence Day events. 'Vajpayee made infrastructure politically fashionable, something that it had never been before'. says Vinayak.


• Another key innovation of the NDA government was the highway cess consumers paid on all fuel to fund the national highways. This created a seperate revenue stream for NHAI to build roads. UPA government used a similar strategy when it levied a cess on air travel to support airport development.


• Both the NDA amd UPA governments have also attempted to address the delicate issue of land for infrastructure with bills to amend the 100-year-old land acqusition act to ease up land purchases.


• Praful patel: air reforms - permission to buy airplanes for private aircrafts. 50 airports to 80 airports.


• Sudhir Kumar, secretary to the railways minister, notes that the sector which was written of as 'a debt trap in the terminal stages' in 2001, had nearly doubled its operating margin by 2007 and had profits of Rs 250 billion in 2007-08.


• Towards better infrastructure in a demand-driven, ‘grow-first, build later’ model, in direct contrast to China’s slickly top-down, supply driven approach.

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DuckTales Wohoooo !

Remembering those childhood days ... when we used to watch back to back cartoon series Ducktales and Talespin on DD-1.

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Core South Indian Food at Mumbai

Cafe Madras, Matunga

After trying out all major eat-outs at Andheri, somehow I couldn't not quench the desire to have core south Indian food. Finally it when I went to Cafe Madras, Cafe Mysore at Matunga twice in a weekend, once with my friend Tassa and other time with my batchmates. Not only one can get the proper south-indian taste, but also w.r.t price the food is very affordable.

Cafe Mysore - Oldest Restaurant in Mumbai for South Indian Delicacies.

Mysore Masala Dosa.

To have food in a darshini style compartment plates after a long time was a different feeling altogether.

Filter Coffee

Mysore Paak

To get there from Andheri:
Going Matunga from Andheri is relatively easy. One can take Harbour Line trains which start from Andheri at platform 6 and 7, get down at King Circle's station. From King's circle one has to walk(5-10 mins) towards Arora theatre to reach a park-cum-circle. At the junction one can find both Cafe Madras and Cafe Mysore. There are other famous eat-outs at the same place. Will try those in next visits.


View Matunga in a larger map

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Brand Equity Quiz 2009 finals

[image source]

Rohan Khanna and Sandeepan Chaudhuri of Accenture(Delhi) lived up all the hype and emerged as clear winners of Brand Equity Quiz. The margin of victory was so high that the last buzzer round was played just to decide who is 2nd, 3rd and 4th. The venue of the quiz was Leela Kempinski's Grand Ballroom and the host of the evening was Asia's No.1 quizmaster Derek O'Brien. The evening started with two semi-finals(buzzer round) in which ten regional winners were filtered into four finalists Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore & Chennai.

Overall a decent quiz, but the suspense and intensity as it was in Mumbai regional round was missing due to over domination of Accenture(Delhi) team. IBM(Bangalore) came second in contrast to speculations done by media i.e. it's going to be contest between Mumbai v/s Delhi.

Some Questions: [in a random order, interesting ones]

• Why is the roulette wheel on a casino table is commonly known as "Devil's ring" ? --- sum of all the numbers on it (from 1 to 36) is 666, which is the 'Number of the Beast'.


• Cicardium rhythm stress is commonly known as ? --- Jetlag


• If RoI = return on investment, then what is RoTI ? --- Return on Training Investment


• Which company operates most playgrounds in United States ? --- McDonald's


• What is "Client Golf" ? --- Deliberately losing a golf game against a client for winning a business deal.


• Which five letter proper noun(as a part of username) was banned by yahoo mail for a brief period ? --- Allah


• What's so special about the company which has Australian Stock Exhchange ticker DPL ? -- Daily Planet is one of the first brothels(establishment dedicated to prostitution) to be listed on a stock exchange [read more].


• What are “chicken cutlets.” ? --- It's the common term used for a silicone bra insert that is used to create the illusion of larger breasts.[read more]


• What special thing was done when Pope John Paul II visited Hollywood in 1987 ? ---They removed the one 'L' from the sign to make it HOLYwood.


• What is Fong Kong ? -- Products with fake designer lables.


• This Russian has a European patent for a "Method of playing a lottery game" ? --- Gary Kasparov.


• Why for a brief period in 2003, banks in China quarantined currency notes ? -- SARS outbreak.


• Why in Oct 2008 a clock at Manhattan ran out of digits ? --- The 'National Debt Clock' ran out of digits because US National Debt debt exceeded $10 trillion for the first time.


• In the world of business, what is ABCD ? --- ABCD (Aaya, Bai, Cook, Driver) is a customer segment.


• One can find free ads of which organization in NCERT Class XI textbooks ? --- Indian Army.


• In early dot-com era five rivals of Microsoft were represented by an acronym NOISE N-Netspace, O-Oracle, I-IBM, S-Sun Microsystems, What is E ? --- Everybody Else.


• Which type of Mangoes are used to make Frooti drink ? --- Totapuri.

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Landmark Quiz 2009, Mumbai

The first edition of Landmark Quiz Mumbai was held on May 1st 2009 at St. Andrew's Auditorium - Bandra. The quizmaster of the show was Navin Jayakumar. The quiz started off with preliminary round of 40 questions. For the final round out of 164 teams, eight teams were shortlisted . The winners of the quiz were the team by name -"Swami and friends". Overall the quiz was good but unfortunately there were minor goof ups and also there were some boring moments also.



Some highlights:

• It was first landrmark quiz at Mumbai. The annual city open quiz has been conducted since 1988 in Chennai. From there it was moved to Bangalore, Pune and now to Mumbai.
• Many questions in the quiz were related to Mumbai. There a few questions on common mumbai slangs and one-liners. Some of those questions turned out to be bouncers to us.
• The cut-off score for final round was 32. We were very far from it !
• Navin Jayakumar did the job well. But somehow he could not match the flair of Derek O'Brien. The spontaneous humor, suspense build in the last round, as done by Derek were missing in this quiz.
• The end goof up bit silly. The quizmaster had forgot that he has give trophy to the winners.
• 'Swine flu' was the buzz of the evening. Many teams had name their team based on it. In fact best team name was "Pigs Fly .. Swine Flew".

Winners

Questions:
[ I have noted that most of the questions .. will update here after composing it properly].

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IPL 2.0: It's a surprise package

The second edition of Indan Premier League started off on April 18th exactly on the same date of the first edition. Like the first the second season will definitely won't have the novelty factor. However different country, different conditions have changed the equations. Also, there have been a few surprises in the script so far. The team which finished at the basement in first season "Deccan Chargers" are on the top with 100% winning record. Last year's champs Rajasthan Royals have experienced mixed season so far. However their trump card Yusuf Pathan has already scripted two awesome victories.

Personally, the experience has been different than previous year. I along with my PGPM batchmates are taking a few minutes off from our busy schedule to watch a few overs of some matches together. Seeing a cricket match in hostel is a different experience altogether. Also the internal PGPL game, a superselector type game conducted by Kalpesh has enriched the experience. Each one of us has formed a thirteen member team and every match we will score cumulative points depending on performance of the players. Instead of Oooh, Aaahs, Howzzat we will be shouting 15 points to me, 25 points to me!

Cross posted at ipl-buzz.blogspot.com

Some highlights of last two weeks.

• The first day belonged to veterans. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid came out with flying colors with solid batting and ensuread victory for their team. Anil Kumble made a difference by his extraordinary bowling figures 5/5.
• Spinners are key players in bowling attack. Anil Kumble, Piyush Chawla and Yusuf Pathan are keeping batsmen on their toes. Even part time spinners like Suresh Raina are able to check the scoring rate. In yesterday's match RCB v/s KKR, 15 overs of RCB were bowled by spinners. Who had speculated this before the start of the tournament ?
• Malinga has been the best among pacers. The Sri-Lanka bowler representing Mumbai Indians has been a tough customer to handle with his toe crushing yorkers.
• Gilly and Hayden are still the best. Former openers of world beating Australian team have been major scorers in the tournament so far. Their breezy innings had given solid foundation to their respective teams.
• Rains have been major villains in this IPL. Two games were completely washed out. Also results of two matches of Kings XI were decided using D/L method. On both occasions Kings XI were on receiving end.
• Super Over is a super idea! The first tie of IPL was the match betwen RR and KKR. The winners were decided using a new format super-over, a format in which both teams will given an over each to score maximum runs. KKR scored 15 runs and RR's Yusuf Pathan chased the runs in just 4 balls! The format has been welcomed by many cricketing experts.
  
• Ajantha Mendis is not a mystery anymore. The KKR bowler who had been nightmare to batsmen is no longer a mystery bowler. The bowler gave away 16 runs in just 4 balls in a super-over decider. In other match againt Mumbai, the opening combo of Sachin and Jayasurya dismissed his deliveries to stands several times. In yesterday's match the mystery bowler was out of playing eleven.
• International T20 stars may not be IPL stars. The major example for this Robin Utthappa. The T20 specialist who RCB had exhanged from Mumbai in place of Zaheer Khan is yet to bat beyond first over in the tournament. Not only batting he had been sloppy in the field too. In the match against DDD he dropped a catch at crucial juncture. At that point the match could have gone both ways.
• One anonymous blogger has created flutters in the blogosphere and entire cricketing world by posting many funny inside stores of team KKR. The KKR team management is yet to find out who the mole is. It is some internal person or an enthusiastic bloggy on cyberspace. Still a million dollar question ...
• Last but not the least - Strategy breaks! .. Lalit Modi's marketing brain's idea has received tons of criticism. On several occasions batting team has lost a wicket within first over after the break. For the viewers too it's a patch in the extertainment quotient of watching a T20 game.

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Brand Equity Quiz 2009: Mumbai leg

The Mumbai leg of Brand Equity quiz was held at Chavan Center(Nariman Point). The quiz was open only to working professionals in India Inc. So being part of student community(this year) the only option to experience the live quizing as an audience. The quiz master was Derek O'Brein. He kept the audience entertained with his usual spontaneous humour.


The format of quiz was similar to Landmark open quiz which had attended previously. The difference was that questions had something do with business. Overall it was a good quiz and Derek brought the house down many times keeping janta entertained.

Some highlights of the show

• Generosity in giving away audience prizes. Sometimes the entire row used to get hampers.
• Advice to Unilever team as they failed to qualifying for finals by 1 point : For next two years take a transfer to Indore as qualifying would be a cakewalk there.
• When AXIS Bank gave away some clues for a question without answering it, and SUN capitalized on the mistake to extend their lead. Derek said " AXIS bank is making sure that ICICI Bank(who were second) should not win this quiz!".
• The build up of tension and suspense by Derek when there were only two teams in the race. Without even acknowledging whether the answer of ICICI Bank was right or wrong, Derek called upon chief quest and his prize distribution volunteers to give away prizes to ICICI bank. Then he announced the show is still on as the answer of ICICI bank was right.

Some nice questions

• Corrections Corporation of America is the largest operator of _____ in the U.S.A
• You can win an ipod from the website nailthethief.com by throwing rotten eggs on whose face?
• Which district of Uttar Pradesh is nicknamed as Suhag Nagri because it fulfills everything a Suhagin wants?
• In 1983 Korean Airways flight was shot down by USSR for intruding into their airspace. After this incident what did then US president Ronald Reagan ordered the US military to be available for civilian use ?
• What is Poorism?
• What is wife acceptance factor ?

Find all prelims questions at
- The Curious Quizzer - BRAND EQUITY QUIZ -09 MUMBAI EDITION

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Megapixels Galore !

Megapixels Galore is my new photography blog. The blog is hosted on my almost defunct domain shande.in. The URL of the blog is photos.shande.in. The blog is my first endeavour using wordpress CMS. Suggestions and comments from any perspective are welcome.

In beginning for first few days, I will post all my best s captured in last 3-4 years. There will be one post per day.

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Alibagh Trip

It was a holiday for Holi and my enthusiastic batchmates of PGPM planned for an outing to Alibagh, one of the nearest weekend getaway from Mumbai. After taking suggestions from mumbaites in our batch we decided to take a ferry to Gateway of India towards Alibagh.

As per plan we left Hostel at 6.30 am, took a fast local from Andheri to Churchgate and from took a taxi to Gateway to India. While some of us were standing in the queue, others including me roamed around the gateway of india doing photo sessions. 26/11 events have really changed our mentality. In contrast to my previous visit last year this time I chose to capture the image of Taj Hotel first, not the famous Gateway of India! Surely it was an effect of image getting burnt on my retina due to media coverage.

Ferry travel and Sea Eagles
At 8.30 am the ferry departed from the jetty and we were on the sea waters which were used by terrorist to enter into Mumbai. After 10 minutes of initial journey the ferry was followed by several sea eagles. They used to catch the food items thrown by generous travelers by using their maneuverability skills. Looked like it was a day-to-day activity for sea eagles. The phenomena turned out to be challenging task for me capture by camera. I managed to get a perfect composition after 25 attempts.

After an hour journey we reached Mandwa Jetty, from there we took a tempo to Alibagh. Our first obvious activity was having breakfast at an hotel near bus stand. The menu of the food items turned out to be very amusing. There were about 30-35 variants of masala dosas. After useless brainstorming I just ordered Masala dosa, Krishna and Sivaram ordered Idly Fry and Puri, just to minimize risk by diversifying. But in actual all three were not upto the mark. Then after getting suggestion from Kedar in second round I ordered for Misal Pav, a flagship product in many hotels of Maharastra. Takeaways from the breakfast activity, always have the flagship in an eatout.

Kashid Beach
After breakfast we took a bus to our final destination, Kashid Beach . The plan was to find an accommodation right next to the beach. But against our wishes the surroundings of the beach were deserted, I mean there were no concrete structures. Our accommodation hunting campaign ended after waking a km from the beach. After checking into the lodge we had light snacks and headed towards the beach skipping the lunch. Majority of the boys got into the beach immediately but I chose laze for a while on hammocks in front of one of snacks shop in the beach simultaneously enjoying scenic beauty of the beach.

Later when sunshine crossed its peak I decided to get into the water to enjoy the waves. But the water was hopelessly saline. I just spend an hour in waters and cameback to rest on the hammock. When the time was 5.30 pm, I got ready with my camera to capture sunset at the beach. In between we were regularly having solo-n-group photo session. After the sunset I handed the camera to Balaji and accompanied Puneet for a casual beach jog. It was an amazing experience on a nice, clean beach in dusk time. Later we were back to Lodge in order fresh up and desalt our bodies. Since we had decided to return by 12 midnight bus, we utilised buffer time to have dinner in a relaxed manner and also had ample time to play teen-patti.

Return journey
Just half an hour before the arrival of the bus, Sivaram came up with his theory that we won't be able get seats! As many people will be returning back to Mumbai after Holi vacation. The bus arrived at 12 midnight on dot and Sivaram was bang on with his theory. As the next bus was at 5 am in morning we decided to board the bus without any second thoughts. The bus was so crowded that we didn't had any room to stand. Initial part of the journey for half an hour I just stood on the footboard. Later we got standing at normal positions but no signs of getting seats. We made ourselves mentally and physically prepared to stand entire journey. To keep ourselves awake we engaged in some tit-bit discussion like 'As a manager what's the learning from this' etc. Even when we doze for a while, the jerky ride used to break our minimal sleep.

Finally we were back to Mumbai at 4 am and got down at Dadar. Then we decided to take first local train from Dadar station to Andheri, expected the train to be empty. But in contrast to our wishes the platform was fully crowded with people. We managed to get into one of compartment of the first train and again encountering a standing journey we got down at Andheri. We were back to hostel at 5 am concluding the memorable Alibagh trip.

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