Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal: Why? Why? Why?

Before I saw the movie, I had read somewhere that this movie is somewhat like Chak De. My God!!! Who the hell did even think of making this comparison. Its like comparing Brazil’s and India’s football teams. Yes, you guessed it right… this is not even worth a comparison. The direction was seriously not up to the mark. And the movie dragged a bit in the second half.

When I went in to see Chak De, I thought that I would not like the movie as it was about hockey and I am no big fan of hockey. In fact, I have not seen even one hockey match completely. But the movie script, direction, and SRK made the movie such a fun that I never felt that I was watching a movie based on hockey. So when I went on to watch Goal, I unfortunately had a similar pre-notion in my mind. And as compared to hockey, I love football much more. But this movie was so badly directed that I felt that I would have rather watched some pakaau football clubs playing rather than watching this piece of shit. Yeah, in this movie, except for Boman Irani, nothing else was up to the mark. Arshad Warsi, John Abraham, Bipasha, everyone could have done a better acting (I agree that the director did not give them a platform for giving a memorable performance… but still!!!)

Even the final match that they showed was also so predictable. All the matches were more of a filler than being the actual part of the movie. And even if the team won the last match, the feel that the team has been transformed from an ever-losing team to becoming the champions was never felt. And that was where the movie lacked punch. Even a person who knows nothing about football can make that out.

Well I would suggest that if you don’t have anything else to do and don’t have literally anything to do and have a lot of money to waste, then go watch the movie. Otherwise its not worth a ticket of multiplexes.

MTNL woes!

MTNL may seem like a techno-freak company when you see its plans and schemes. And I am totally satisfied that it is one of the premier broadband provider in India. However, when it comes to the employees being involved, this techie company turns into a government-like babu company. I recently experienced this feeling yet again and it was déjà vu for me.

I was using the 590NU plan. This plan had a bandwidth of 256 kbps and midnight 12 to 8 AM unlimited downloads. And MTNL came up with a mouth-watering offer where the same "night unlimited" concept prevailed, and along with that you get a speed of "upto" 2 MBPS instead of 256 kbps. All this at a meager additional cost of Rs.250 per month. As soon as I came to know about this scheme, I browsed through the forums to check if you actually get 2 MBPS bandwidth at night. The result - yes! the bandwidth remained untouched at night. This meant that I would be "theoretically" able to download around 5.4 GB every night. And I wouldn't mind even if I get half of the theoretic possibility to reality.

I called up their call center and registered for the tariff plan migration to the new 849NU scheme. This was on 21st July, 2007. They said that as it was near the month end, they would migrate me to the new plan by 1st August. It made sense, as I will not have to pay the new charges (additional 250 bucks) for just using it for 10 days. I readily agreed. The next day, I got a call from them on my cell (they took my cell number for security reasons during registration) and confirmed that the new plan will be applicable from 1st August. I was IMPRESSED!

When I thought that things might have changed in MTNL, I was kicked back to reality when my plan was not migrated to 849NU by the end of the day on 1st August. I called up the call center again and an aunty responded saying "ho jayegaa". Now when that ho jayegaa will materialize, even she did not know. I repeatedly called up the call center twice a day on 2nd and 3rd August and finally I got a reply saying that the Work Order has been sent to Malad Exchange (the nearest telephone exchange) and it will be done soon. I felt a sense of relief, but somewhere in the corner of my heart, I knew there is something fishy!

Fourth of August, Saturday - it is weekly off for me, and I decided to go to the exchange myself and check the status of the so called "work order". I met my Area Engineer - Mr. Pandey and he told me that broadband was not under him and I had to meet Mr. Mishra in 3rd floor. I went to Mr. Mishra and he told me that execution of plan change was under Mr. Rane in the ground floor. I met Mr. Rane and he said that there are many pending work orders and that my plan would be migrated "soon". I felt this nothing less than a minister's promise. Luckily, I met one of my dad's friend who works in MTNL and he said that Mrs. Jadhav is the person who actually does that migration on the computer. So I went to Mrs. Jadhav.

When I went to her, she asked me my telephone number. When I recited it, she said that my work order has not yet come. I was clueless! Back to square one again! Then she said that as I have come all the way to the exchange, I can register a fresh request for change of plan at the customer helpdesk and the work order will be generated immediately. Some Mrs. Dixit was the person in the helpdesk who would help me.

I went to the helpdesk and gave a written application for the plan change. Initially she said that this plan change was not possible. I said that MTNL is "advertising" for this plan change. Then she agreed and accepted my request. And finally the work order was generated. I went to that Mrs Jadhav again and told the new work order number. She said that the scheme would change by afternoon. I came home happily thinking that I can download lots in the night.

The scheme was changed by evening. But it was just on their website. I was still having a bandwidth of 256 kbps. I waited till 9PM on Saturday night. But alas, nothing happened! Then I decided to trouble the call center again. This time it was an uncle who attended the call. It took me 15 minutes to make the uncle understand that my scheme has been changed but the bandwidth is still the good ol' 256 kbps! And finally he decided to take the complaint and said that he would inform the concerned people in the Server Room and they would change the speed by the next day (Sunday).

It was Sunday afternoon - 1 PM and the speed was still the same. I called up again and this time a different person took the call. He took my complaint and said that this can happen only on Monday as there was no one at the Server Room to update the speed. I knew that it would not happen on Monday also. So just as a backup, I gave another call on Monday morning and they accepted a fresh request again :)

And after this entire struggle, on Monday evening, the speed was updated to 2 mbps. And I was able to download stuff and a mind-blowing 210 kbps speed!

Anyways, all's well that ends well!

Clash of the Titans – Rains v/s BMC

Today, the 30^th day of June, 2007, Mumbai witnessed a classic match. It was a real game which involved a highly ineffectual municipal corporation and the fury of the nature. Although the result was more or less predictable, the Rain Gods beat the BMC’s pre-monsoon preparations by leaps and bounds. The rains brought Mumbai off the track. None of the improvements that the BMC had claimed to have done as a part of monsoon preparedness completely backfired. Nothing seemed to work in BMC’s favor.

In addition to this, the Rain Gods had another advantage – the high tide. There was a high tide till 2pm. This meant that the city’s sewage system, which is supposed to be moderately efficient in draining the water to the Arabian Sea, was hapless. The rain water had no place to go and thus what were affected were the low-lying areas of the city. Areas like Milan and Malad subways, Marol, Kurla, Kalina, etc were submerged. It was nostalgic. It was scary! It was just 704 days back (26^th July, 2005) that these areas witnessed one of nature’s most fiery attack on the island city. What more? The conditions were similar – continuous rains, high tide! It was only getting dangerous. To add fuel to the fire, there was an indefinite auto-rickshaw strike. But luckily, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, R.R.Patil intervened and requested to delay the strike till Monday. The union leader agreed. But as many auto-drivers were not willing to put their vehicles at a potential risk of breakdown, very few of them took their vehicles out.

The only relief that Mumbaikars had is that it was a Saturday. Many multinationals had an official off. The offices which are working on Saturday, allowed its employees to stay back at home. So, there was a relatively less commotion and confusion as compared to 26/7. And as the rains started early, 95% of the people did not leave their homes.

The problem that Mumbai faced today is not a new one. It has been happening since the last few years. It is bound to happen for many more years. In spite of BMC spending crores of rupees in improving the drainage system and making arrangements for getting the water out of the low-lying areas, things won’t change overnight. This is because it is not BMC’s inefficiency – it the ill-designed layout of the city. It vociferates the lack of planning while building a city. You never see a flooded street in the town-side. The roads and the structures that the British built 100 years ago are better-planned than the ones built by their desi counterparts even today. Buildings are built over marshy lands and over mangroves. Trees are cut, seas are pushed back, creeks are blocked… the result is what you see of the suburbs of Mumbai. One small rain and the roads are flooded, railway tracks are flooded, and homes are flooded.

I do not see any easy, cake-walk solution to this mega-problem. It may require something like re-structuring of the entire city (which is next to impossible). Or maybe something else. Its upon the genius engineers to think. Till then, every year, year after year, Mumbai will see this match – The Clash of the Titans!

Main Aur Mere Cell Phones!

I have been using non-Nokia phones since the last two years. The last Nokia phone I used was Nokia 6220. That one was loaded with all features like Camera (VGA), Infrared and FM. It was too much for a phone in 2004. As technology grows, the customer is benefited with advanced features for a nominal price. I used 6220 for a year or so and then my brand loyalty towards Nokia ended as I saw Sony Ericsson’s K700i. This phone was another low-price phone bundled with loads of features. This one included Bluetooth and sound quality that made it stand apart when compared to 6220. I bought K700i for 11,000 bucks. It was a good deal as I sold my 6220 to a friend for 6k. Then after using K700i for a year and screwing up its joystick after playing the inbuilt tennis game, I managed to sell it for Rs. 5000. Then I bought the costliest cell I ever did, O2 Atom – for a bind-boggling 34000 rupees!!! And an additional 1GB memory card for Rs. 1500. In all, the cell cost me 30000 (after selling K700i).

Again as O2 reached its first birthday, I decided to give it a retirement. I have not yet sold it, but bought the Nokia N73 Music Edition. This one is an iPod cum DigiCam cum cell phone packed in one! I was amazed when I first heard the sound quality of its MP3 player. Then I took the first snap and it was simply brilliant. Its clarity was by far better than O2’s clarity (which had a 2 mp camera). The looks are also very professional and the operation is pretty simple (for someone who already has used Nokia).

As this is a Music Edition Phone, it came with a 2GB Memory Card. And the memory card had 100 Hindi songs preloaded. But those songs were locked and it had to be unlocked with some scratch card which was supposed to be supplied with the phone, but I never got it! Then I called up Nokia’s customer support twice and they sent me around 479 SMS. And all the songs were unlocked J.

Overall, I am more than happy to be a proud owner of the Knight of N-Series – N73 Music Edition!

Emails Touch Infinity

I remember the day when I created my first hotmail account with a 2 megabyte capacity. And it took me almost 6 months to fill it to its capacity. And then I realized that the (then) biggest search engine also provides an email service with 4 MB space. I promptly shifted my email address to Yahoo. And it seemed like "and everyone lived happily ever after...".

Then came the mastermind plan from Google. This time, the biggest and the best search engine in the world comes up with its email service that offers 1000 MB of email space. It was back in 2004 and at that time, among the free email service providers, Yahoo was leading with 4 MB. And Google comes up with GMail with a whooping 250 times more than the other competitors. And then it started a new revolution!!!

India's Rediff was prompt and soon increased the capacity to 1024MB. Yahoo responded with a 100 MB upgrade. Although Yahoo had 100 MB, which is 10 times less than what GMail had, the advantage that Yahoo had was that GMail was not open for public. It was through "invitation only". And it took almost a couple of years for most of the users to get a GMail account. And by that time, Yahoo had upgraded to 1GB.

During this rat-race, Microsoft also was upgrading its HoTMaiL simultaneously. When Yahoo upgraded to 100 MB, Hotmail upgraded to 25MB, and then when Yahoo upgraded to 1GB, Hotmail leaped ahead with 2GB!!! And in response to all this, Gmail increased the capacity to 2GB and also offered an "ever-increasing" storage space counter.

Then during early March 2007, Rediffmail broke all barriers and upgraded all its email account with UNLIMITED EMAIL SPACE. It was only a dream that users would get unlimited storage space. And then Yahoo also came up with a similar plan. Today, Yahoo has announced that on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, it would upgrade the storage space to unlimited space.

Now what needs to be seen is how Gmail and Hotmail react to this announcement and whether they also are ready to touch infinity!!!

My New Technology Interests

Its almost two months since I made my last post. Actually I was too busy with my personal stuff. And I could not manage to take out a couple of minutes (I know, its too bad!) to blog...!

Since the advent of 2007, I have come across couple of software that I find extremely handy. These software are free and they come in good use in our day-to-day activities. And some are good enough that you can "just keep it" type. So here goes my list:

PC World:

I had been to Kerala in the first week of Jan. While coming back, I bought the PC World magazine. Although my expectations of the magazine were not too high, I bought it because I preferred it over the 125 bucks Digit and Chip. And there was an amazing offer in it. An offer to "try" PC World for 90 days. You gotta pay Rs. 1500 and subscribe for 15 months (actually its 12 months and 3 months free!). If after 3 months, you feel that the magazine is not worth it and you are actually wasting your hard-earned money, you can ask for a refund and you will get (they claim) a 100% refund. Not a bad deal.. huh!!! And..... I have gone for it.

Warning: I never received my first month subscription. When I contacted PC World, they said that the book was delivered to some lady called Laxmi. And interestingly, there is no lady called Laxmi in our entire building. But after lots of to-and-fro of mails, they sent me another copy of the magazine. That's what makes customers happy :)

AutoPatcher:

AutoPatcher is a very nice tool that I found in the magazine. It is a 300+ MB application that installs all the latest updates in from the great Microsoft Corporation in your PC. This essentially means that I get a comprehensive pack of updates at the end of every month and I need not waste (or rather utilize ;) ) my precious bandwidth for downloading the updates. Moreover, it installs additional software like Windows Defender, Tweak UI, etc, which are pretty useful.

Active Web Reader:

Another utility I found in the PC World DVD. Its a good RSS Reader. Its quite a useful tool for someone like me who is a frequent visitor to RSS-enabled sites like Google News and Yahoo Answers.


Well... these are some additions to the software that I use. As and when I find new ones, I will update my blog. Till then.... Sayonara... Shabbha Khair... Good Bye... And Take Good Care Of Yourself!!!