Archive for the 'places to go' Category
After 7 days of continous tiresome night shift at office, found the escape route to Bangalore, with Balaji on saturday, morning by Shadabti. Balaji and Umesh were heading up for some bar camp conference. Escaped to meet Sarayu who happens to be my senior at college and a very good friend. I was there at the garden city for not more than 2 days. Here I am sharing my observations of the garden city.
1. The Forum
is the best place to burn fat. Only for your wallet. Was surprised to see kids wielding cards and spending like adults.
2. Is it Lal Bagh or Lovers’ Bagh? Lovers were showing their divinity of love in public as early as nine in the morning. 
Do they ever find time for break fast? Doubt it. 
No moral policing? huh?
3. Found that Bangalore has the most number of immigrants. More people speak tamil, hindi, malayalam than Kannada. A lot of my friends have warned me on how Tamils are treated badly and have told me stories to substantiate it. Wanted to test and so deliberately asked a few people for directions in tamil. None of them gave me a cold stare. They either gave me directions in Kannda or hindi. Even a few tamils I spotted were reluctant to give out directons in Tamil. Why is it so?
4. None of the buses have directions in English. 
People are forced to take autos. Fortunately, the auto rickshaw fares are cheaper when compared to Chennai. One does not bargain for fares as the driver turns the meter on for any distance. Also noticed that the driver’s license was enlarged and stuck up in every auto. A good way to track down culprits. 
5. Umesh was joking that every street has a Wipro as every street in Chennai has a tea shop. True! I found either a IT company or a pub or a maill. And the most ubiquitous shop I found in Bangalore is the pizza hut. Sarayu told me that a lot of women don’t cook on weekends. Buying power has increased and the cooking power has decreased. Thanks to the IT boom.
6. ICICI ATMs had atleast 100 people in queue for most of the day. May be I went on the first week of the month. when enquired, it is common for most part of the month.
7. Climate was good. Did not feel the heat much.
8. Traffic is heavy and dangerous. Synonymous with any Indian metro’s traffic.
My final observation
Every place has its own pluses and minuses and so is Bangalore.
P.S. :- Bangalore is changed to Bengalooru. Will be there be change in the term Bangalored ? If so, it will sound more of Telugu than Kannda.
Bengaloorudu
.
Last week, I was in kerala for a colleague’s wedding. It was my first visit to the coconut paradise. I was gob-smacked by the scenic beauty of the state. After the marriage in Palghat, I and Sabaree (my colleague) headed to Ottapalam. Ottapalam is a small town with great views of the nature. After visiting Sabaree’s relatives there, we headed down to Guruvayur. On our way, I asked, our driver-cum-guide, Mr.Velayudham (aka) Aiyaapan
to stop the car to attend nature’s call number one. I was running towards the bush and there Sabaree spotted the yellow snake. 
It is called by the name “manja saara” in tamil. It was around 6ft in length and golden in colour. forgetting the urgency to pee, I clicked the scene with my Konica Minolta film SLR. I was 3-4 ft from her. It was truly the biggest snake I have ever seen in my entire life.
This incident reminds me a couple of things people always say when they speak about snakes.
“paambu padam edukkum”. In my case, I took the picture of the snake.
“paamba partha onnukku vandhudum”. whereas, “naan onnukku adikkum pothu paamba paarthen”.
The highlight was when Velayudham asked me to pee somewhere inside the bush as the snake was sitting comfortably outside. I never wanted to gamble and forgot my venture of peeing in the woods.
I thought I could write up a user guide for booking tickets online in Satyam cinemas Chennai. The easy steps are listed below.
- Open up Satyam cinemas’ online booking site.
- Select number of tickets, day, the name of the movie and the price according to the class.
- click book tickets
- Login with the member account if you have one. If not you can create one in a few steps.
- After logging in, use your credit card to purchase the tickets.
- Note down the order number or print out the order page.
- You are done with the online booking part. As a matter of fact, Satyam charges Rs.5 extra for tickets booked online. When comparing to the hassles of booking tickets by standing in a queue, that too in Chennai’s heat, it should not be a issue.
- On the day of the show, you can collect the tickets from the theatre half an hour before the show timings. There is a separate section for internet booking tickets.
Happy booking!
People who have been to chennai or ones who hail from Chennai will be familiar about Satyam Cinemas. A couple of months ago, I thought of going out to a movie with my college buddies. And the apparent choice of the cinema was Satyama and the movie was Rang de Basanti. When I looked in deccan chronicle for the show schedules, the ad about the online ticket booking caught my attention. Logged into Satyam Cinemas’ online booking site. I was in for a surprise with a invalid security certificate warning me. I was still in a dilemma about the site’s security features. Anyway, it thought to take the gamble and booked 6 tickets online. The next hurdle I faced while booking was using a credit card. They don’t accept debit cards. Pretty weird! When I enquired about the same to one of their executives over phone, they said that their policy accepts only credit card bookings. What a great policy?????????
I somehow managed to book the tickets through a ICICI credit card. Thanks to my colleague. Good that Satyam charges Rs.5 extra for tickets booked online. The equation goes this way, for a booking of 6 tickets which cost Rs.110 each, you pay Rs.30 extra. Cool! when compared to the hassles of going to the cinema and standing in the queue for long hours. The ticket confirmation receipt can be printed and the tickets are to collected 30 minutes before the show. It was a very good and a novel experience to me. Outcome was that we enjoyed the movie well with our booked tickets in hand already!
P.S.:-
Certain things are there for Satyam to work on their website .They are
- The expired security certificate
- Site is built in Flash. It degrades the usability features. And it does not work with ad-block feature turned on in mozilla.
- Acceptance of debit cards as a mode of payment.
