I have lived in 5 cities for more than a month in each city. I have availed mobile services from every single major mobile service provider in India. And I with that kind of experience behind me I can confidently say that the Hutch/Vodafone service in Mumbai is the absolute worst of all of them. Even the second worst is much much much better than Vodafone Mumbai.
I stay in the Borivali area. Voice quality is very poor. Calls get dropped on an average once every call. Often my cell is unreachable. Often due to network congestion I have to try multiple times to dial out to somebody. People call me, they get message X but actual event Y has happened, for e.g. they get a ringing tone and I do not get any call or missed call.
Now I am totally fed up. For me the mobile is very critical in keeping touch with family, friends and for work. I have decided to ditch Vodafone (and my friends say Airtel is equally bad) and go in for a Tata Indicom mobile. My roommate Punit has a Tata Indicom phone and it is very good in terms of reliability and voice quality. Subscription plans (calling tariffs) are identical among ALL service providers so the differentiator has to be the actual mobile service, ease of paying bill, promptness in solving problems etc.
This post is for anybody planning to take a Vodafone connection in Mumbai. My advice - DO NOT.
I saw the movie Laaga Chunari Mein Daag a couple of days back at InOrbit with my parents. It had been a long time since we had seen a movie together.
I liked LCMD. It has received a lot of bad reviews, the movie hall was also only half full and my expectations were pretty low. But the movie surprised me by having a decent (albeit predictable and old) story, a very good cast and some very solid acting. I think it is a “should see”.
Rani Mukherji’s acting was very good, Konkona Sen Sharma’s appears fresh and bubbly (as her character demands) and Anupam Kher and Jaya Bachchan both play their roles to near perfection. I could actually feel what they were going through. Kunal Kapoor did not have much to do but suits his role and so does Abhishek Bachchan. I think the excellent acting is what holds the movie together. A lesser cast might have not made the movie so watchable.
I found the movie to be lacking only in a couple of places. Badki’s (Rani Mukherji’s character) transformation from a village belle to a high-society “escort” girl is wrapped up in 60 seconds. Too short and does not really convey the doubts and anguish that she would have experienced. The ending is also a bit anti-climatic. Movies like this should have endings that keep the viewer on tenterhooks and keep them guessing till the last moment, after all in drama movies the entire movie is a buildup for the ending. The ending is too sugar-coated and short and does not do justice to the movie.
Movie critic Maitland McDonagh described the movie as “breaks no new ground but is solidly entertaining”. I think that describes the movie quite well.
I do not know what it is about popcorn that makes me forget my manners and makes me a total hog. When I see a bowl of popcorn, my mind goes into some special mode where it’s only aim in life is to eat as much popcorn as possible. I actually grab handfuls of the stuff and stuff it into my mouth as if I have been hungry since many days. I keep on stuffing my mouth till the popcorn runs out. It is only a few minutes later when I am feeling very uncomfortable that I realize that I have overeater… can you believe that? I need to control my desires. Sheesh.
…from 25 year old Varun Next post will be by the Varun who is a year older. I am having Garfield-like feelings about my birthday. More about that later.
My parents and grandmother had planned to come down to Mumbai a couple of weeks back and stay with my brother and me for a few days. However weather at that time was quite unpleasant (continuous rains) and I too fell ill. So they postponed their trip and moved the plans to this weekend.
They arrived in the morning. I have planned lots of things for a couple of days (Mumbai darshan, malls, dinners, lunches, shopping, meeting friends), a trip to Belapur to see my brother’s place and some time at my room resting and talking. They seem pretty satisfied with the cleanliness of my rooms so that is one goal scored My place is always neat but then parents always have different benchmarks. My Amuma (grandmother in Malayalam) poured the sugar from a plastic cover into the jar containing rice and that has been the only mishap till now They are coping admirably with my limited amenities, they always do actually. Amuma and Mom are full of questions (How can you trust the Bai? Where do you keep the valuables? Why are there no curtains in your room) and Dad is observing everything silently. Unfortunately Vineet’s schedule does not permit him to join us… I am missing him
I am taking them to InOrbit in some time. We are also going for a movie in the evening. I am taking them to a nice restaurant for dinner. Tomorrow I have hired a cab to take them to the 5-6 typical Mumbai landmarks. Friends are coming to my place in the evening. All in all I am going to have a nice weekend. Will keep you updated.
I really loved the new Idea Ad starring Abhishek Bachchan! Check it out on YouTube below. Simple, memorable, ties in with the central “Idea” theme and you like watching it again and again.
I came to Mumbai from Delhi to join a new project a little more than an year ago.
It was an exciting move for me. I was going to lead the team. I was moving much closer to home. I was going to the city so central to the Indian mindset, the home of Bollywood, the financial capital of India and the city nickname the city of dreams. I was also moving closer to many of my friends… I had lots of friends in Mumbai and Mumbai is also closer to Bangalore where my brother lived. Read the rest of this entry »
Aah… weekends. Usually my favourite part of the week. Went to sleep very late last night. Was playing around with the blog and reading stuff.
Also started reading a book called Programming the Universe authored by Seth Lloyd. Lately I have been rereading some of my favourite stuff, Harry Potter, Asimov books, Sherlock Holmes etc. Too much of fiction actually. So this time when I walked into a bookstore I decided to get something I usually would not get. Picked up this book at random, read a random page and liked the quantum-mechanical thingamajig the author was talking about, so bought it. Read a few pages and seems interesting. The initial pages in such books are always easy and interesting. It is later that the fun starts… I have still not complete reading A Brief History of Time. Hopefully this book will be easier to finish.
Have lots of errands to run over the weekend. Parents are coming for 4 days next weekend so I have to get the house in order. Nothing big, my rooms are usually in good shape. But have to do some cleaning, call the plumber, call the electrician, order for a new gas cylinder and so on and so forth. I also have to plan how to take them around in Mumbai. I just hope the weather stays pleasant, that it does not rain and it does not get too hot.
It is 4:00 AM and I am feeling quite sleepy so I will keep this short.
IMPORTANT - Update your feed URLs to the ones mentioned in the footer of the blog.
When I started blogging I had ample free time on my hands. The free time has been steadily decreasing over the months. I love Drupal. It is one of the best web applications I have ever seen. However Drupal is a full-fledged CMS and to use it for an individual blog like mine I had to put in significant effort in taming it. I also had to spend some time at regular intervals upgrading the various modules especially security releases. All this is a bit cumbersome in Drupal, though well worth the effort if you need Drupal’s power. I simply did not have so much time and it always bothered me that my blog was being powered by insecure software. This often prevented me from blogging itself since I would try to put off the blogging till I upgraded the software and that would never happen.
After much hemming and hawing I decided to move to WordPress. Why WordPress? Well… I did not do a whole lot of research, the only other serious contenders being blogger.com and wordpress.com. WordPress seemed simple and powerful enough to me and it is also used by a lot of popular bloggers. It has a very good collection of templates (themes) and also seems to have all the plugins that a blog decides. So without further ado I moved to WordPress.
I also managed to migrate most of the content (posts and comments) from Drupal to WordPress. Alex’s post and script saved me lot of time. The script is not up-to-date and required some tweaks. I could not manage to move the categories and tags and I had to categorize and tag each post manually in my WordPress setup. I will try to include the details in another post.
This theme is WordPress’ default theme. I have checked out a few other good themes and install one of them in the near future. There will of course be a few broken things here and there but I have decided to go with what I have rather than a “big bang” approach. Till then let me know in the comments what you think about the move. Over and out!
Next post will be by the Varun who is a year older. I am having Garfield-like feelings about my birthday. More about that later.
My place is always neat but then parents always have different benchmarks. My Amuma (grandmother in 
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