Buying Household consumer durable items

Recently went through a barrage of consumer durable purchases after a long study in internet and discussion with friends. Setting up a house in Bangalore after marriage can be a long drawn process. And few of my friends were asking me about it. so thought that i will instead write a blog on it .

Washing Machine
Things which are needed

• Top loaded: This helps if u do not want to unnecessarily bent and it has very few maintenance problem. On the other hand front loaded is better for cloths but has leaking problem after 3-4 years.
  
• Fully automatic: It helps a lot in the time involved with washing. Just drop the clothes and need not bother till it intimates you of finishing the washing.
• Steel tub: This is more durable and can even pour hot water.
• 6+L is more than enough.
  

Refrigerator
Things which needs to be taken care

• Double door for non-vegetarians
• Go for one with an integrated but automatic de-frost.
  
• More than 200L as you will always run out of space in fridge.

Television
Things to take care

• May be one can go for 29" as the difference is very minimal w.r.t 21"
• Go for korean brand as it gives value for money.

Microwave
Can be avoided unless you plan to cook once a week and heat it for the next one week!!
If buying

• Support for convection and grill in addition to microwave can be useful for all the non-veggies
• But then ensure you make cake and grilled chicken regularly!!
• LG could be a good choice. They have good support which respond in less than 24 hrs.
  

Grinder
Buy an Ultra more than 2L grinder. This comes with a 5 year warranty. No need to buy the extra accessories. Good and quality product.

Mixie
Buy sumeet mixie if you get it as it still seems to have much fan followers. I got a Philip "super silent" mixie which is decent. It though have the problem of tumbling down as the center of gravity is not properly designed. Another problem seems to be the smallest jar cover is not so tight and in case grinding involves lot of water you can find a spray around your house!!

Buying Cot
Buy 5" x 6.5" cot at a minimum. Buy from shivajinagar as this can be 1500 cheaper than the one from the shop near you. Same goes with the sofa as there is a considerable cost difference between the local vendor and the shivajinagar vendors.

Transferring BSNL landline and Internet connection

One other ordeal i went through recently was to transfer my landline and dataone connection to a new address. It took almost a month to get that done. So as with other blogs in this section let me reduce the work for others!!




The following is the procedure for doing it

• Apply in a plain paper for transfer mentioning your phone number and the present and the shifting address. Also mention that you need to transfer the broadand also in case you have one. No shortcuts here and one needs to find the nearest customer center (your local excahnge also would not do) to apply.
• Once you applied to track the request you need to contact the local exchange at the shifted place. Also note that your earlier number may change to a new number.
  
• You need to be there between 10AM-5PM on working day or Saturday and then request the local linesman to come on that time and day. This believe me is an ordeal which one would not like to go through multiple times in life.
• After the landline is transfered then another 3-4 working days is needed before your broadband also gets shifted.
  
• Here you just need to switch on and see if your DSL is working. No change in login/password happens.

Hope all those looking for phone transfer get it done faster than me.

Buying a mobile

I have seen many people buying mobile so carelessly. I saw a family spending close to Rs 16K on a new HTC mobile with just few words from the seller. He had come for iPhone and the retailer convinced him in less than 5 minutes that HTC is better. Let me put down things you should look in mobile if you are buying in 16K-30K range.

1. WiFi capability : This is mandatory. Now most places support WiFi and would be handy for all data related applications like browsing, chatting, SkypeCalls. Dont even buy a mobile which does not support WiFi

2. Bluetooth: This is mandatory if you have to sync your outlook calender w.r.t. the mobile calender. This would handy in case of transfer of data from one mobile to another or to a computer.

3. 3G support: 3G is going to be there in India very soon. if you are goign to use it or not. it is better to invest on it. In India 3G spectrum has not been decided. Ensure yor mobile support as many band as it could. Most likely in India it would be in 1800 (GSM) spectrum and may be TDD mode.

4. GPS: Good add-on in a city like bangalore where a road gets blocked with no notice and you are asked to take a diversion. If you are lost get out of the vehicle and search. This needs support of GPRS or 3G.

5. J2ME: Mandatory software feature which allows you to install Fring (allows you to chat in skype, gtalk, yahoo and MSN). there is a whole suite of application based on J2ME for oft used google applications.

6. Good calender with synchronisation capability.

7. Decent camera: 3.1 MP is the best you need for the standard photograph size.

8. Usability: Important but at what cost/feature tradeoff is a user choice.

9. Misc: Audio player (MP3, WMV), Video player (MP4), FM radio (At least i think it is useless with the cumbersome headset connection to be used)

Hope who ever spend such high sum in mobile at least spend it for features which may be useful for him in future.

Carrot at 80!!

This is something unbelievable. A kg of carrot in Bangalore now costs Rs 80/-. I used to buy it for Rs 20/- around 6 months back. Our inflation is falling but price of vegetable has quadrupled. Is there a "Vegetable bubble" building up in Bangalore like the housing bubble!!

I thought let me start tracking the price. Let me put down the list of prices of vegetable and some behind the mind intuitions and myths one have on where to buy vegetable? (The prices mentioned below are for the month of Oct 2008 and are for a Kg)

Big Onion - Rs 28/-
Carrot - Rs 37/- (Smart), Rs 80/- (Small time vendor one week later)
Yam - Rs 14/-
Beans - Rs 35/-
Tomato - Rs 28/-
lady's Finger - Rs 23/-
Potato - Rs 10-12/-
Cauliflower - Rs 15/-
Beetroot - Rs 20/-

I found the small shop owner consistently costly than organized retailers like spencers and Smart. I found the road side vegetable hawkers slightly costlier than small shop vegetable owners. At least i had always believed that supply chain efficiency etc is a myth and the road side vendors are always cheaper. Sometimes some intuitions are completely wrong which i accept with humility coming from some background of mathematics where much more intuitions turn wrong!!

April 2009: A fast forward and now carrot is at Rs 10/-, Cabbage at Rs 10/-, Beans at Rs 25/-. How can you avoid such huge variances?

Eureka Forbes Vacuum Cleaner

I was gifted a Vacuum cleaner from Devi International Jayanagar. The model was trendy xeon (steel). They gave a large set of accessories. I found that two of the accessories mentioned are missing. Multi-purpose brush and upholstry cleaner. When i mentioned to Devi International they asked me to come with the entire accessory set to see what is missing. I did the same and they then searched for these item in another accessory set. We found that it is missing in that also. Then i called up Eureka Forbes agent in Bangalore through Devi International. They told they will deliver it. After multiple effort i got one piece now, the multipurpose brush. So whoever is planning to buy this check these two items. if it is missing dont buy it as the multi-purpose brush is at least very much needed.

Changing default folder in google desktop

One can change the default location is google desktop by following this procedure. but the catch is after that there is no further indexing. Only old indexed information is available trough GD search. Hope google fixes it up?

The world of chutney

Chutney or chamandhi which is the side dish for Idli, Dosa etc brings a taste difference to the otherwise daily routine of Idli or Dosa. I thought let me collate the various forms of chutney prepared at home. All the names used down are coll names we use at home.

"Pachha" Chutney or thenga chutney
- Grated coconut, 2-3 green chilli and salt to taste grinded together

Orange chutney
- Grated coconut, 2-3 red chilli, small onion and salt to taste grinded together

Ulli chamndhi
- Small onion, 2-3 green chilli and salt to taste grinded together

Malakku chamandhi
- Small onion, 2-3 red chilli and salt to taste grinded together

Brown chamandhi
- Fry Small onion, 2-3 red chilli in small amount of oil. Add salt to taste and grind together

Thakkali chamandhi
- Fry tomoto and 2-3 red chilli in small amount of oil. Add salt to taste and grind together.

Thakkali ulli chamandhi
- Grind tomoto, onion, red chilli and salt to taste. Then boil it till it become red.

chukuppu Thenga chutney
- Grind coconut with fried red chilli (in small amount of oil) and salt to taste.

Thakkali coconut chutney
- Grind coconut with fried tomato and red chilli. After that boil it for some time on medium fire.

Olympus C 770 UZ

When i bought this i never knew that it is going to last just one year. It looked as though the camera was designed to last just one year, as the problems crept one month after the warranty period. The two problems were:

• I cannot switch off the camera!! It is always in playback mode on switching off. I need to take out the battery to prevent draining off
  
• Zoom does not work. We hear the motor moving but no change in Zoom.

Then i went to Deen Dayal repair center in CMH road Double road junction in Indiranagar Bangalore. They are supposed to be the best camera repair center in Bangalore. After one month i got back the camera and they told me that the entire switch circuit had to be replaced. It costed me Rs 3100/- ($78).

So not even a "Made in Japan" tag and a reputed company like Olympus can maintain quality. So any dump camera would do.

Now i have another problem with this model the charger does not seem to work. I need to see where i can buy it in Bangalore. I saw the price of a new one at Rs12k+.

Filing income tax return online

Following is the procedure to file the IT returns online in India and for FREE. The only advantage of filing online for those who do not have a digital signature (One can buy digital signature which costs around Rs 5000/- per year, a very costly proposition for individuals like us.) is that you get 30 days breather to file the final form even if you are filing on the last day and can avoid the queue completely.

1. Fill the form as mentioned in the Income tax website.
2. Download the excel sheet fill in the details from your form 16. You may need to register for the first time.
   
3. In case you do not know the assessing officer in Bangalore, check here
   
4. Validate the sheet and generate the xml file.
   
5. Upload it to the website.
   
6. You can print the ITR-V form (a duplicate which will be sealed and returned to you) and mail it by postal address to Income Tax Department – CPC, Post Bag No - 1, Electronic City Post Office, Bangalore - 560100, Karnataka, ” BY ORDINARY POST ONLY within 30 days.

There are also tax return preparers (TRPs) who prepare the form for around Rs 150/-, submit it to the ITO and get you an acknowledgement. For those who are in south of Bangalore that would be a easier and cheaper option.

Online flight check in

If you are traveling by Indian (Air India) and if you want to save time at the airport, do a iCheck-in. For this you have to do the following:

• Fill in the origin, PNR No (Indian ref No) and Last Name at iCheck-in site
• This does not work in Firefox 2.0/3.0, so use Internet Explorer.
• Follow the process and you can select the seat and finally it will provide you a boarding card sheet which could be printed out.
• In case you do not have a printer you are dead as it does not allow you to save.
• So ensure that your printer is working fine before you start on this process.
• In case you end up with no print, you can still take your ticket to the airport boarding pass counter and request them to print the ticket.
• At the airport you can directly walk to the security area and get the boarding pass stamped. You need to get security stamp at BOTH the customer as well as agent copy.
• In case you have a check-in baggage this is of not much use as you still have to go the booking counter.

There is a similar procedure for kingfisher in their website.

So cut down your wait at airport especially now in Bangalore where it takes 1.5-2hrs to reach the airport.

Making Tea

Over the years i have tried simplifying the process of tea making and seeing which suits the best. I am speaking of Indian black tea and that suits "my" taste. Few of the "findings":

1. Boil water and add black tea leaves (One scooped teaspoon per glass) and boil for one minute. I prefer Kannan Devan Tea leaves compared to Red labels and other brands. Teabags are really bad.
   
2. Filter out the tea concentrate and add hot milk. Do NOT use milk powder as it tastes bad.
   
3. Hot milk should NOT be boiled in milk cooker as it tastes bad. It should be boiled till it is about to guzzle out of your vessel.
   
4. Add sugar to taste.
5. Properly mix the milk and tea concentrate by pouring from one vessel to another (Not mixing with spoon) multiple number of times. Ensure that it does not get cold.
   

I never knew that any small change in this process affect the taste so much. Let me know your on experience with tea making.

Transferring gas connection

In case you have a connection in you home town (A) you can transfer it to any other place (B). For this you have to do the following:

1. Close the connection in the original place and ask them to mention to the place you want it to be transferred (i.e. "B"). For example, in case you want to transfer to any gas agency in Bangalore, you have to get the transfer certificate issued with the caption as "transferred to Bangalore".
2. You would have to return the the original valve at "A". Also you need to carry the initial deposit information bill.
3. Bring that letter and submit at "B". The person on whose name the cylinder is there has to come in person. You should also carry a proof of residence in this person's name. Rent agreement or BSNL Telephone bill would do.

Petrol pump review

Beware of crooks in Bangalore petrol pump. In case you are filling the petrol ensure that you look in the meter right through the procedure when your tank is filled up. What they do is the following:

In case you ask to fill for Rs 500/-, they stop filling after 100 telling that they did not hear you properly and without resetting the meter fill to another Rs 400/- which effectively means they have only filled for Rs 400/- now they will tell you that you have been filled with full 500 rupees of petrol. I have experienced this two times and always in smaller pumps. so which pump is good and bad. I will add to the list as and when i fill up from different pumps:

Good
------------

1. City service station, JP Nagar 2nd Phase on outer ring road

Bad
------------

1. Indian oil pump at the outer ring road and Mysore road junction.
2. IBP pump near the silk board toward the BTM layout side somewhat opposite to silk board.

Please add the pumps you know into the list and let us drive them out of business and keep only the good ones.

imint HPCL vouchers

When you want to redeem your imint points, please understand that the voucher is not redeemed at all HPCL pumps where you see i-mint symbol. The symbol it seems only denote that you can accumulate points but not redeem it. So now i got a imint HPCL petrol voucher and i just cannot fill the petrol. So before redeeming your points for petrol check if the nearby pump do provide you petrol for this voucher.

Low volume audio

If your audio quality is low and you can barely hear the audio there is a fix.

1. Download and install VLC player, if you do not have one.
2. Play the audio and increase the volume using CTRL + Up Arrow.
3. This can take the volume all the way to 400%.

Enjoy the feeblest of audios.

Dataone telephone bills

When i was going through my list of telephone numbers, i could see many of the calls were never made by me. I called up the bsnl center to flag it. But all they could offer is asking us to lock the phone. For this one has to do the procedure mentioned here. Also do change the password (at least the broadband password) from the BSNL website. Please note that if you change the password at this place you would need to do the same thing in DSL modem also at your house. The change of password in the website is not instantaneous and would require the user to continue using the old password till the time bsnl blocks you off. Once you cant login, you need to change the modem password to the new one.

This small measures can reduce your unnecessary BSNL Dataone bills.

J P Nagar 15th Cross Route

The image above is the way to traverse JP Nagar 15th cross junction, which is dug up for a flyover project. Follow the arrows as they indicate one way.
Image from Google Earth

Infosys and transfer

It seems Infosys has a corporate policy which prefer married girls in their transfer policy especially when dealing with fresh recruits. For this one need to have the married certificate AND marriage photo which has to be submitted at the time of joining. So get both of this in case you are a fresher about to join Infy.

National Skill Registry (NSR) procedure

As most of the companies now insist on NSR registration. i know for sure of Infosys for freshers.
So what does it involve? The following is the process in case you are in Bangalore:

• Fill the form available at this place online. You would need your passport, mark sheets at the time of filling this form. Also fill it using internet explorer as with Firefox i ended up in trouble.
• It is better to pay by credit card or pay in person at POS center.
  
• Once you fill the form you would have to take the printout of the acknowledgment form.
• Stick the photograph and sign with a BLACK ink.
• Take this form to nearest POS center. In Bangalore there is one near Lalbagh. This is on the one way from Hudson Circle to Lalbagh(Lalbagh Main Road) and near the Bajaj showroom. So do not come near Lalbagh and search for it. Hit the Hudson circle to lalbagh road somewhere before Garuda Maruti showroom and then proceed to this place.
• They will ask for your passport (in case this is your ID proof. Better to use this.) and then take fingerprint of all your fingers. Once they upload it, you will get an intimation in less than 24hrs in your email mentioned.
• This will have your IT-PIN and the printout would do for your company joining purpose. You are supposed to get a card in due course delivered at your permanent address.

Hope this simplifies life for many Freshers who usually get intimated about this procedure only one week prior to joining. If you are an Infosys (i dont know about other companies) Fresher, better do this during your free time now.

Big Bazaar - AVOID Buying!!

If you plan to buy something like fridge, AC or dining table avoid Big Bazaar even if they are giving big discount. They never deliver on time, deliver things which are damaged and then ask you to run from pillar to post to get the damaged thing replaced. Let me share my experience.

I had bought a dining table worth Rs 10K/- (you have to pay this before hand) from Big Bazaar Jayanagar 9th Block around two months ago. They told that they will deliver in a three days time. They delivered after a week or so after consistent prodding and warnings. And what i got was a damaged piece (Not sure if they even have any good piece) with two torn chairs (were made of leather). I am now calling each week and waiting for replacement. I hear the same story.."We do not have replacement material in the warehouse.. will get it the Sunday from Bombay.. will replace next Monday or Tuesday.." This is my 8th week.. Now i am thinking of moving legally.

Also I bought two bed sheet from here. One has already worn out and another had a small piece of third rate cloth stitched to it. So from outside it was looking great but once you spread it, it looks horrible.

But for all those guys who are planning to buy anything (other than off the shelf branded brush paste etc) please avoid buying from this place.

Dataone Home 500C - Free 2AM to 8AM

There has been many canard on this aspect w.r.t. BSNL broadband connection. Quite a few number of people told me that this is applicable only if you login during the 2AM to 8 AM interval (But beware of one thing, BSNL clock is arbitrary and it 2AM does ot match well with the normal clock time. So if you do not take care of this in case of download you may end up with a big bill!!). But nothing like that is seen in the bill. Now one even get a separate bill of free Vs Paid details from the BSNL website.

I have found that on an average an employed person (in private sector!!) consumes just 200-300MB per month in the paid section. This is assuming that all the download are restricted to 8PM to 8AM and to Saturdays and Sundays. Also, this is purely dependent on how one uses it. I never use youtube streaming and other heavy bandwidth thing during the "paid" 8AM to 2 AM period and restrict it to 630AM to 8AM time frame. So even if you are consuming lot more it is well below 1.5GB limit in case of Home 500C.

Hence enjoy broadband at Rs 140/- through use of Home 500C (removing the phone rental and free calls) a tag above the Home 125 plan of BSNL. Also i had heard a talk which compared the quality of connection specifically to international location and found that it is best with BSNL dataone compared to other broadband DSL connections.

Applying PAN card online

There are multiple mechanism to do so. But the easiest one is the online application. For this you have to do the following:

• Fill the form given in NSDL
• Before filling the form ensure that you have your proof of identity and proof of residence. Best one of course is a passport which would serve both the purpose. (This also have to be finally submitted along with the photograph and acknowledgment form.)
  
• Your recent passport photograph (3.5cm x 2.5cm)
• Mode of payment: better one is a credit card as cheque has to be drawn from HDFC and DD is a painstaking one (For the convenience of the credit card you will pay an additional Rs 5/-)
• Fill the online form and get the acknowledgment form. Print it and fix the photo, sign with BLACK ink pen and send it to the mentioned address in next 15 days.

I remember the initial pain i took to apply for myself, as time is ticking by, processes are getting simpler. Enjoy one more e-governance initiative.

Repair center JP Nagar Bangalore

Few place of use near JP Nagar for repair

Mixer : 080-26592450 behind Apex Bank beside the HPCL city station petrol pump. You can also buy a new mixie bowl from this place.
TV, Radio : near Hopcom center opposite to HPCL city station petrol pump
Prestige: near food world in opp to RV dental college 11th main road Jayanagar 9th block

BSNL GPRS/WAP setup for prepaid

I recently tried setting up the BSNL WAP connection. This is free for excel prepaid and is charged 2 paise for every KB of download. Configuration details for south India (working in Bangalore):

• Setting Name: BSNL GPRS
• homepage: http:/localhost/home.wml
• Session mode: Permanent
  
• Connection security: off
• Data Bearer: GPRS
• GPRS access point: WAPSOUTH.CELLONE.IN
• IP Address: 10.31.54.2
• Authentication Type: Normal
• Login Type : Automatic
• User Name: ppp
• Password: ppp123

This changes based on the model of the mobile unit. But you can fill these details in the appropriate column. After that you can connect using services>Home.

Making Puttu- things that can go wrong.

Puttu (Steamed Cake) is a Kerala delicacy made out of rice flour. This is made using a special cylindrical vessel which is kept over the pressure cooker. Few aspects which needs to be taken care:

• The rice powder you buy from stalls in Karnataka cannot be used for it. It is rice powder and for Puttu you have o buy Puttu powder itself.
  
• If water is more in the flour then it can explode (Never tried it myself!!)
• It just take <>
• Use prestige pressure cooker rather than Hawkins (The one with top lid being closed after putting the lid inside the bottom section), as latter does not allow steam to flow properly.

Now if you figure out that the puttu effort is a failure, you can do the following, make KozhiKatta:

• Add right amount of water and make a mix which looks somewhat similar to Chappatti Dough.
• Add grated coconut and mix properly. (Coconut is luckily there from the initial puttu effort failure :) )
  
• Add some oil while mixing the dough
• Make small balls and steam it over idilli thattu.

Please understand that it will NOT taste like original KozhiKatta as this is made of raw rice rather than boiled rice and we do not do any Kindal process. But it is good enough to douse the hunger!!

I got motivated to write this blog as this has happened with many of my friends and not just with me. Hope at least u do not go hungry even if you do not have the original Puttu in front of you.

Getting Marriage Certificate

Recently i went through the process of getting a marriage certificate. This require the following details to be provided at the corporation office (The corporation office/ Village Panchayat under whose jurisdiction the marriage happened), and for this bride and groom has to go in person and has to be done within 15 days of the marriage (In case 15 days are over, procedures are little more difficult)

• Form filled in duplicate (This can be obtained from the respective Corporation/Panchayat Office)
  
• Date of Birth (Preferably Class X certificate) - Attested true copy
• Original Wedding Invitation letter
  
• A letter written in local language addressed to secretary to please issue a married certificate. This letter should clearly mention your parent details, marriage hall details and date of marriage.
• A letter from the marriage hall or the temple at which the function was held.
  
• Rs 100/- (Additional amount in case copy of married certificate required)
• Two witnesses (Should not be a direct relative but should be one who have attended your marriage)

Give the filled form with other details as requested at the respective department in corporation/panchayat office. They will ask you to get a signature from the secretary (If he is not around you just have to wait) in a filled up form. After that you pay the money in the cash counter and get a receipt which you give back to the department where you gave the form initially. they will then inform you to come and collect the married certificate in less than a week.

The actual collection of the married certificate need not require the bride/groom to go in person and can be collected by any person who goes with the receipt.

visa credit card and firefox

Many e-commerce sites in India i have noticed does not work properly with firefox. So whenever you think you would have to do any credit card transaction use Internet Explorer. With Firefox it may take you all the way till confirmation and then you figure out that you did not get the service but your money is debited.

Though i am an ardent supporter of Firefox, better be safe as i think i had issues with bookmyshow because of this complication.

This is now solved within firefox browser by using the IE Tab add-on which allows you to change the rendering from firefox to IE7 and back by just clicking the icon in the status bar.

Online ticket booking to Kerala

There are two online mechanism to book tickets in bus. One is the karnataka transport corporation and another called redbus. The former starts 10 days in advance and the latter is provided by a private agency.

KSRTC

1. Login to the site
2. Register in case of new users
3. Use Internet explorer as the payment gateway using firefox seems to have some problem.
4. This allows you to select the seat and allow e-ticket for which you need either PAN card, Driver License, Voter's ID card.
5. The site is not the best and is far behing the irctc train booking. So prepare yourself for multiple attempts before you get your tickets!!

Redbus

1. Use the link to get onto the site
2. You can get bus tickets to anywhere in India.
   

Flying abroad from India- Things to take care

If you are traveling abroad to any location outside India, please ensure that you carry the following:

• Passport- See if it ECNR stamped. If not get it done
• Ensure that the passport is not expiring in next one year. This is a requirement especially in case of Visa on Arrival (VoA)
• Get Visa stamped unless it is place like Thailand and Bali where it is VoA
• See if the Visa stamped is valid for the day of stay
• Ensure that you have all the transit visa in place, if it is not a direct flight. This is needed especially when you transit route is through Europe. Check this with your travel agent.
  
• In case of VoA, carry passport size photos, some place may require it. carry the one with white background.
• Insurance letter- This is a must and should be valid for the period of stay. This covers against some disease when you are abroad, loss of passport and baggage.
• Tickets- It should be the normal tickets. Avoid e-tickets and see you have the return ticket also issued.
• keep a copy of passport in other baggage as a precaution.
• Carry Forex money in dollars.

Enjoy the trip abroad!!

Broadband connection- Go wireless!!

Recently i came across the charges for WiMaX (this is similar to the WiFi but can give higher bandwidth) from VSNL. It is 1124 per month for postpaid (if you pay 4 months charges in advance). This compares well with 900 per month for dataone unlimited plan. Buy a WiMax terminal and connect it to the WiFi hub, u will not have the local loop cut and service quality can improve. Also this is the launch price and will drop with time.

I heard similar prices from Reliance also is available. So before taking your dataone or Airtel broadband see if you really need DSL based fixed connection. But remember one thing that the WiMaX is still a shared medium and there can be drop in the data rate as the number of customer increases.

Paying DataOne Bills Online

One problem i had was how to pay the BSNL bills. And i dont like any solution other than the one which is online. So here are my findings after i tried different options.

There are two options:

• ICICI Bank account: If you have a ICICI account. You can use the bill pay facility for paying your bills. First time you have to register with your Customer ID and phone number. The bill from the following month will then pop up in the bill pay section which can be payed off as normal fund transfer option.
• Credit card: register yourself with your telephone bill @ http://www.bangaloretelecom.com/. Once You have registered it will show the bills which are yet to be paid. Click on the "pay" option and then you can use your credit card to pay the bill.
  

So now enjoy paying BSNL dataone bills from the comfort of the house. this at least works in Bangalore. Please check if it works in other places.

Port forwarding in BSNL Dataone

Port forwarding is mandatory to get good download speed with torrent. Let me explain the process of setting up.

1. Go to the "speed guide" under options in the bit torrent client.
2. Click on "test if port forwarded properly"
3. If it is OK it will say so else it will give a link to configuring it.
4. In case u have a UTStarCom Type IV connection. Follow the below process
5. Type http://192.168.1.1/ in the location bar and it will ask for login and password.
6. Once logged in. Go to "Advanced set up->NAT"
7. click "add" and then type some name say "torrent" in custom server bar.
8. Check your IP address of your computer. It will be 192.168.1.x, where x not equal to 1 if DHCP is configured.
9.in the port start and end column copy and paste the info about "current port" given in speed guide section (2).
10. Keep the same nos for both internal and external port start and end. Save it.
11. Then go to "settings" section below "advanced setup" and do a "save/reboot"

Now check the speed test and see if the port forwarding is fine. If not, you have not followed the steps properly try again :)

Firefox Simplified Search through keywords

This is one among the top feature i like in Firefox. (As i don't use other browsers i am not aware they also have). So let me explain how we do it and how it can be really useful.

Go to any search page. Say google, then on the search bar, right click and then click on "add a keyword to the search".. Add say a alphabet "g" and save. Now all you have to do whenever you need to search is use Ctrl+T (on a separate tab) or Ctrl+L (on the same window) and type "g Firefox" to search all about firefox.

This can be done for your favorite bookmarks also. In the bookmark, right click on say Economic Times and go to the properties. Here again you will find a keyword where you can mention say "eco". So next time you need to go to economic times all you have to do is use Ctrl+T (on a separate tab) or Ctrl+L (on the same window) and type "eco".

Enjoy a mouse free firefox use :)

How to change DataOne plan?

This is one of the most tricky thing. I had heard how simple it is to change the plan in Bharti Airtel. You get your plan changed in a day or two. But it is quite a tedious one in BSNL. You have to give a written request to the exchange from which you have taken your broadband connection!! I was thinking i will move to Home 500C or Home 500C+ scheme. But now i have to see when i can go to the exchange and do this tedious process. Also, once you give a request the change become effective from 1st of the next month. So plan to get a Home 500C on the day of applying itself.

Why Home 500C?
- You need not pay Rs 180/- as the telephone rental
- 175/- free calls compared to 50 in Home 500 scheme
- so effectively you get your broadband for 500- (180+175-50)=Rs 175/- cheaper than the Home 250 plan and if you are doing normal browsing 1.5GB limit is more than enough. but do your torrent downloads at night. And no gtalk/yahoo messenger talk daily.

I finally went and changed my plan to Home 500C. All you have to do is walk to your nearest BSNL local exchange and write in a white paper to commercial officer and submit it there. I was initially told that i had to submit this in the customer care center but i luckily asked a second person in the exchange and he told me that it indeed has to be submitted in the local exchange. So i submitted there and now one week after the submission i have moved to Home 500C plan

Bikes, Bangalore and Backpain

It is not that they have alphabet "B" common among them. Recently among my friend (and long back with me also), back pain issue is quite common. My analysis of my different acts on a regular day made me to conclude that bike is the culprit.

Bikes now a days come with awesome power and not not awesome shock absorber. And in Bangalore with the weird traffic, applying excessive brakes is quite common. This puts excessive pressure on the back. I think this as the key culprit as whoever had similar issue with back i suggested to minimize/avoid the use of bike and all of them recovered pretty well.

So if you are a new entrant into the club, just stop driving the bike, get some ayurvedic treatment. I did it at Kottakkal Ayurveda Hospital near Ashoka pillar, Jayanagar. This is opposite to the e-zone on the jayanagar BDA complex ashoka pillar road. Take complete rest during the time you have pain. Once you are done with the pain (takes around a week or two with medication) stop using bikes and do some yoga exercise which allows the muscle around the back to get sturdier. Do not do heavy Gym exercises. Also dont neglect it as it can get really painful and can turn into a slip disc issue which needs surgery.

The tale of three movies

Last week i had a chance to see three quite different movies. One was a Malayalam, another Japanese (with English subtitle), and third English. The first from a well known Malayalam director, the second one was by a world renowned director and the last from a "unreal" director (Has an animation director)!!

First one was Mayukham, directed by Hariharan, was a dumb squib. This can be a guide to "how not to make a movie". It was so engrossing story that i didn't even care to see the climax. Hackneyed plot with some slight twist cannot make a nice movie. This though amply proved again and again by the viewers somehow is not percolating into the director and producer community. But on the positive side, it is not as worse as many other Malayalam movie hitting the screens around that time.

Second one was "Finding Nemo". It is a story of a small "comic" fish who is lost because he did not give a heeding to the advice of his father not to go into deep sea. A valiant effort by its father finally allow (through a series of mind boggling animation and with lot of imbibed subtle values like friendship etc) finding that missing kid called Nemo. A must see and hats up to the producer Walt Disney for spending good amount of money on animation. This showed that movie without real character can be as good as a the contemporary non-animated movies.

Third one was a classic. Set in old Japan, it is a story of a percieved idiot called tram idiot who wakes up in the morning and rides his illusionary tram from morning till the night with the tram hum denoted by this kid as "Dodeskudan" (and that is the name of the movie). Made by world renowned director Akkira Kurasowa, it shows movie can be better than the written counterpart. This story is similar to "The idiot" novel by F. Dostovsky which itself is a classic, and Kurosowa has went ahead and brought more life to the protagonist than at least my imagination. The world around tram idiot makes you think that the "tram idiot" is the only sane person in that society!! At least he is happy and creates no problems for the rest of humanity.

Recommendation: If one gets a chance see the last two, and if one is really interested in becoming a director, know the pitfalls, so see the first to know how NOT to make a movie.

bookmyshow and free movie tickets

This is one among the top shot mistakes i have ever done. The concept was nice, economics was great (1 ticket free with every booked ticket for platinum card and 1 ticket free with every two ticket for a gold card), and so took the plunge and booked the ticket.

I was trying for a ticket in PVR, not just for me but for 9 people. After the discounts, it came to shade above 900. I tried the first time, it took me till the final phase of registration with even my card details given. and then it just does not respond. I frantically call the bookmyshow customer care. they responded and told me that the transaction is not done and you can try it again. I checked my credit card status online also. It showed no transaction.

Went ahead did the whole procedure again. Again it failed after my credit card details were given. Then i left it and we all ditched going for the movie. Then when i was going through my credit care statement the next day, got a real bad shock. Rs 1800 is debited from my account to bookmyshow. I call their representative. He maintains that no transaction is made. I called ICICI, they were mentioning the transaction was made!!

Now what?? i booked a compliant through mail to both ICICI and bookmyshow helpdesk. ICICI send me a note that they have tagged these transactions as "disputed" and i will get back the money in 60 days!!.. each time i send a mail to bookmyshow guys they tell they are working with the bank to refund my amount.. The key question: who has my money??

still waiting for the money.. hoping at least in 60 days i will get back the money.. so beware of free offers and dont take the first leap.. learned a hard way :(

I finally got back the money :)