So this Breakfast Ride happened with no real plan in place. All of those times when we planned, it never worked out. Ironic, I know. I also know what you are thinking – asia hi hota hai hamesha (it happens always)! My good friends from my workplace, Vishnu and Karan just randomly called me up for an idea they wanted to go through with me to check viability.
And so after that discussion, we just said to each other – lets go for a (more…)
This is the second post about Yeti, my Royal Enfield Himalayan.
I have been enjoying my rides to work these days, as I ride astride this beast in Yeti. The bike has been to SC twice in this period. First for the mandatory 500 kms service, where Oil was changed. There were few initial niggles (more…)
This is a continued post about my Tata Hexa Experience, thanks to IndiBlogger. I spoke… err… wrote about how immensely important it was for me to meet and converse with the people who were behind this project. Most of the automotive channels like magazines and websites will not be speaking about that – or for that matter, I don’t know if they cared. Here on, then, let’s talk about the car.
The Hexa is an improved effort from Tata Motors, who have been going through a rough patch (more…)
Tata Hexa is being readied for the launch, and I am among a lucky few who got to see it, feel it and experience it first. It has been more than a year since Hexa made it to Geneva Motor show. And it is now time, for its grand reveal.
As usual with any IndiBlogger meet, I am among the last who get on the bandwagon. But this time, I had to be there. Tata Hexa is the reason. With its launch just around the corner, Tata Hexa has been one of the eagerly awaited vehicle – the wait wearing thin on some as well who could not wait for it anymore. Of all bloggers, only top 60 bloggers were invited to be present at this event, and that made me feel privileged.
The event was organized from 22rd and 23th of October, at Hyderabad by IndiBlogger and Tata Motors. The location was Novotel Hyderabad Airport Hotel, just 3 kms away. Half of the hotel area was dressed up with Hexa promotion art and design, which did ooze a lot of elegance. It has been 7 years since my first meet with IndiBlogger, and in essence I am already a veteran there. Many new faces did not know me, but oldies did. Friends in Sanjay Thampy, Ankit Jain helped me through the wave of newbies.
Yeti is what I named him. Many preferred to call it a goat, a Himalayan Goat. But for me, it never looked like one. It always looked like the beast. Untamed, but well mannered and imposing. It has been an agonizing three and half months of a wait, to be honest. Waiting time for my beast was killing me. My friends who knew about this decision kept on asking me on the status, adding salt to the burn. On 16th of Aug., 2016 he arrived. I got to see first glimpse of Royal Enfield Himalayan, reserved in my name at the show room. (more…)
As a kid, I remember seeing the ISI mark advertisements promoting the new standards. The government was very much active in propagating it, and soon even manufacturers started adding it to their adverts. It soon became the standard it intended out to be, thanks to the push from the Government to make it mandatory for everyone to comply with it.
In last two years, I had purchased a few electrical goods that didn’t do great but had the ISI mark on it intact. But I do know for sure that its quality was compromised by the components used to make them. I thought to myself whether I should buy ISI marked goods solely because it is marked ISI, or look at other standards.
(more…)
A new restaurant has opened in our area (and calls itself a dhabha) with a lot of bling on the outside. There are too many fancy lighting, larger parking space and well-dressed waiters. A recipe for success? Well, it calls itself a Dhabha, but appears as if it is at the five-star level!
I am talking about Aangan, the shiny new restaurant that opened on the Kalyan-Shil highway near Katai toll plaza. Took my wife and the toddler there today for a Sunday brunch, and came back unimpressed. I had been looking for a chance to go in and have some food, just so that I can try them out and see how good they are. All the bling translates to food or is it just another fad!
The ambiance is designed to be lovely and looks premium. I am vegetarian, so that kind of limits my choices of food. And for all you know, this restaurant may be serving excellent non-vegetarian menu, so you will not find me writing about it here.
As soon as we took our place, I saw flies all over and had a tough time keeping them away from the food we were eating. Surprisingly, the waiters were far too less interested in doing anything about them. Though they were friendly, I did not find anything else wrong with them.
I got honestly concerned for my two-year-old, who was with us. We were too late to look for another place and decided to dive in and order the food.
We scanned through the menu and everything there was quintessentially Indian. Of course, they call themselves a dhabha and hence the list. It is a trend these days. Tell a youth about having food at a dhabha, and they sure are excited. This excitement though is shortlived – this is nothing like dhabha. It is a decent restaurant set up, which appears to be likable.
We had ordered Manchaow soup, Dal Khichdi (for the toddler and by hence for us too), a buttermilk and a sweet salt lime soda.
Though Machaow soup could have been better, Dal Khichdi, on the other hand, tasted just like Steam rice and usual Dal that I mixed on my table. I question my own choices of food I ordered at that stage. Buttermilk too, a basic drink, tasted weird. Sweet+Salt lime soda that I ordered was not stirred enough and ended up wasting about a quarter of it after it tuned utterly saline.
The quality of the food was strictly okay but not as good, not very good, not excellent, not fantastic, not impressive! I mean, you can eat it and earn yourself a Ph.D. in expressions. Throughout the brunch, due to so many things going around, I did not feel like taking any pictures.
So I moved into my new house about 4 months ago, and I have not got a TV yet for my home. It has been those four months where I did feel missing the TV around the house, and it absence has definitely helped me use my laptop more. Err.., that is not why I didn’t get the TV yet but then again, I do miss it.
That idiot box is being missed by my wife has been turning this thought around of avoiding TV for some weeks now, especially with my wife wishing to catch up the ongoing T20 after coming home. As I spoke to a colleague today, realized that her child has learned a lot from watching youtube.com and TV also kind of rekindled the thought to get one. The decision is still not been made, but mostly I would give in.
And the reason why I would give in has nothing to do with what others are saying. It has to do with what I am missing out on. If you remember one of my previous posts on the idiot box was about my craze for wild life, travelling and science channels, I have been missing watching them as well. The idiot box, after all is not idiot if the one watching on the other end is thoughtful enough. Not having TV around also means that I am missing out on learning something new from this medium. Watching such channels was never frowned up on by my family unless it was becoming a daily affair and made them miss their regular shows.
The idiot box, after all is not idiot if the one watching on the other end is thoughtful enough.
And one of the things that I want my daughter to do is to pick up these good habits that I have. Like reading when she grows up or never to stop learning – the two of my activities that has held me in good stead. The third one could be blogging, but she is still too young to do that just yet and I would let her decide if she wanted to do it.
What do you think about your idiot box at home? Have you ever thought of getting disconnected from it?
For those who love the Windows Phone and Windows 8/10, getting the right apps has always been a challenge – thanks in part to Google, who refused to budge. This includes many famous services like Snapchat, Quora etc., who have so far not divulged into the Windows ecosystem yet. So far as Snapchat CEO stating they will never develop for Windows.
The Facebook and Instagram (MSFT has stake in both of them via 26 million shares in FB) apps are not as slick as the ones found on Google and Apple. That bit may not go well with a lot, but the apps at least are very usable.
Well, this rant is directed towards Magzter. I have been a customer of Magzter since long, even upgraded to their Gold Membership. It is a compelling product. My primary reading device is a 4 year old iPad 2 which has been in a great shape. I do like Apple, but not as much as my Windows Phone and PC. The Metro UI got me hooked, and Google’s pathetic attitude of late (being the Evil, Microsoft once was) made me a hater. Buying into a Samsung Galaxy Note I with Android on top was the last nail in the coffin, with this acquisition lasting only 6 months for a flagship.
Everyone knows Android sucks on devices with less than 3GB RAM and an top processor but still would cling on to it – it is too difficult to explain my love for Windows too, so lets leave it at that.
I do understand the semantics of having multiple platform support, including that of the costs – but there are so many developers who are ready to help for 1/4 of the cost it would otherwise take Magzter to build an app at first place. So why not? You will have at least 3% more people to tap into and based on what we have seen, Windows 10’s adoption rate has been pretty good – so the universal app way should get the overall market share for Windows go up as well.
So, hopes are intact for now. Just sent them another email, checking if they are indeed developing something for Windows 10. This story will be updated based on their response.
Bajaj Boxer is a name that you casually associate with something that is rugged, but not to Indian taste while it is powerful but never a success. But I was intrigued when I first saw the pictures of Bajaj Boxer 150 Café Racer.
Remember we saw the Hero Splendor Pro Classic Café Racer in the 2014 Auto Expo, which was also launched in the market to a lukewarm response. This was not where it all started though. The beautiful Continental GT from Royal Enfield was where it all started and suddenly everyone in India started to Bing! (siuya, scroogle) about Café Racers.
Then today I was looking around the net for the new Pulsar RS200, I came across this surprise. A Boxer 150 Café Racer! The first look at it and I said “wow” I didn’t know that. (more…)
Well to those who know me, I am an Windows Phone fan, so much so that my entire family now has windows phone (I bought them). But off late, I am unhappy about a few things that I need to voice it out.
Windows Phone 8 showed immense promise to the world, with its Metro UI and 8.1 just enhanced it. But since then, Microsoft has been pretty much playing catch up with iOS and Google’s Android. Last it was known, Android had pretty much of 80% market share which is rather impressive if you also know that it is the newest software platform here. iOS, when launched, was based on Mac OS X and Microsoft always made its mobile OS and had often positioned it as the Business Phone. But Microsoft being the most experienced has had not been able to transform it all to this new OS.
The Apps of the Ecosystem (more…)
The last time I sat in an Ambassador was in October 2009, after which I never had an opportunity. I am sure all of you already know of Ambassador as the grandpa of the cars.
Hindustan Motors recently announced that they are stopping production of this iconic car. Of course this created a flood of emotions, nostalgic reactions and everything. But one thing that hardly ever came out was anyone saying “Please dont!”.
I am being critical here, of course. Everyone agreed or rather accepted to was Amby had aged and it needed to go down the memory lane because only rare few (most among them them were for Taxi’s in Kolkata and Kerala, ironically states with common political tastes and labor unrests) were even buying it. (more…)
The news floated around last year (2012) when FIA conceived the idea of a racing series based on Formula 1, albeit with Electric engines. It spread to soon and many firms got immediate interest in setting up a team for themselves.
And one thing I personally loved of this development was there was an Indian team among them.
Mahindra Racing has been putting a commendable effort into the Moto3 series since 2011 and were the top 3 team. With their Indian bike business not starting off on the right note, Mahindra started to get involved in high-tech motorcycle races to get their R&D prowess in-house.
They also have a distinction of being the only Indian motorcycle manufacturer providing their vehicles to other racing teams. Like the Renaults and Ferrari’s of F1. For me, that definitely sounds volumes of how much Mahindra is dedicated to prove itself as a global manufacturer. (more…)