Neeraj Garg's Ramblings

Nice painting. No, this is not something I painted. But I did finance the artist :)

I am getting this one. This might actually help me get up

Tyrant alarm clock dials your contacts if you refuse to wake - Engadget

Just kidding..no need to change your phone number,

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Yet.

Sony Rolly (2GB, white) MP3 player reviews - CNET Reviews

This is cool!

Just came back from a two week trip to India. Typically, I would have gone for three weeks during Nov/Dec timeframe. This time was an unexpected trip, though for a good occasion, i.e. wedding of my sister in law.

Every time I go to India, I notice more and more changes, and mostly positive for India.

Currency

First change for me was that I only got INR 38.4 for a USD. Last time I had gotten INR 44. So, my savings are losing value, if I were to ever decide to go back :(.

Thing that did not change was the clerk that did the exchange still tried to cheat me, by giving me 38.4 instead of 38.8 as was prominently written as the price!. So next time you do money exchange in India, do use your calculator.

Transport

Pollution level in Delhi has definitely gone down with all public transport (bus, taxi, auto rickshaw) switching to CNG. I always used to have sore throat while I was living in India (prior to 1997), and got sore throat every time I visited India. This time, I didn't.

Delhi finally has a metro and it has been a great success. It is run efficiently, clean and people are visibly proud of it. Minimum price is INR 6 which is about 0.15 USD. Even after taking purchasing power of Rs/$ into account, it is about less than $1.50 equivalent which is pretty good, given that the main ingredient gasoline, does not become cheaper in India.

Lots of new roads are being constructed. Finally Delhi has toll roads, and many roads are now signal free. Of course, I saw lot lot lot more cars now than earlier. All the people I know now drive a car. 10 year back, only about 20% did. While this shows prosperity, it is definitely causing problems as Delhi neither have roads or the parking facilities to handle so many cars.

I mostly took auto rickshaw. I did not even try asking any auto-rickshaw driver to accept the meter fare. Most of them quoted price which was probably 30% to 50% higher than official fare. However, it was not worth my time to haggle. They probably cheated me Rs. 20 on every trip. While it pinched, when paying in Rs, I reminded myself that it is only 0.5 USD and I have paid more than 3000$ to have this trip. So, it was not worth losing my mind over fifty cents.

Sometimes, I rented a taxi. While the transport was okay and some of them had reasonably new cars, the interior cleanliness left a lot to be desired. I was kind of surprised by that. My default expectation in India is that private property is clean and well taken care of, while the public property languishes. I was surprised that taxi drivers were not maintaining their cars well. Again, prices here reasonable, when I convert in $, about 20$ for half a day (driver/gas included)

On bus transport

Bus transport is still mostly the same. Blueline buses killed more than 50 people last year. This year they have already killed more than 15, I hear. Main problem is intense competition amongst bus drivers, many of them bid for the right to run the bus for a single day from the owner. Their only motivation is to make the most money THAT particular day. Second reason is, of course, is corruption. A very large number of bus drivers, do not even know the basic traffic rules (as per Delhi Govt own special drive test), but have managed to get the driving license. Police does not enforce the traffic laws either. Instead of getting ticket, buses pay weekly/monthly bribe to traffic policemen at each intersection. There was a recent expose by press that captured more than 180 policemen taking bribes. Finally, even the honest policemen are not able to do much as buses are owned by people with political backing.

Retail

Retail is changing face in Delhi. First thing you will notice is the glitzy glamorous malls that have come over all over Delhi. These malls can easily compare to any US mall in terms of glamour and carry international brands. Unfortunately, prices of goods is also comparable to US. Not a good thing, if you make 1/3rd of US salary even as a professional and much less if your job is not in demand. I actually did not visit any mall this year. Why go to malls in India? I have seen plenty in US.

Second change is retail chains. Previously all shops were individually owned. Now many chains are coming up. I saw Reliance Fresh, Subhiksha, Big Apple, Next and a few more chains within a half mile of my house. I don't think all of them will survive. It is a good change, though will be very challenging for small shop keepers for a long time. Face of Delhi will change as many of smaller shop keepers are forced to close shops.

Finally, marketing has changed. Previously, the most I would see is a sale with percent discount. Now, I see all kind of weird stuff, buy 1 get 1 free, 50 + 49% discount, and these offers are heavily advertised.

Cricket

Cricket is the national sports of India. Not officially. Officially hockey is the national sport. However, very few people actually care about that. Cricket is what India plays. Finally, cricket is being organized in India not by "regional teams" controlled by babus, but on the same style as NFL in US, where private individual own team and bid for top players. This will definitely commercialize it more. There were articles in the newspaper, why some of the cricketers got higher bids, cause they have longer hair, which made them more appealing for advertisers! I call this Anna Kournikova effect :). However, this should help root out corruption and nepotism. After all, a private owner can't afford to have a sub-standard player on his team.

Food:

Surprisingly raw food prices have not risen much. However, there is very wide range in prices in restaurants. A road side kiosk will get you a meal in 10 Rs, a reasonable old style restaurant will get you a meal in 50 Rs and a new style e.g. restaurant with A/C will easily cost you Rs. 150. This is not in a five star hotel.

Living in the US has reduced my immunity to food borne illness, so I did not dine out much and stayed with new style restaurant when I did.

Entertainment:

TV definitely was a big disappointment to me. I only saw two kind of programs, Indian rip off of US reality shows (American Idol etc.) or family soap opera. Reality shows were actually more watchable than family based soap opera to me, while I don't watch any reality shows in US. Problem I had with family soap opera was

·          Substandard acting: It all looked fake to me

·          Very unrealistic story line: In almost all of them, some of he family members are evil and scheming/plotting/poisoning and others are pure and good. There are no grey characters, there are no dilemmas. Just pure evil and saintly good.

·          Exaggerated Drama: Almost every 3^rd scene will have some dramatic sound, with lights flashing on the character face and the same scene repeated 3 times to show the shock. This was really disconcerting.

On the embarrassing side, while I detested these exaggerated dramas, I have to admit that I did become engaged in the story line and probably would have started watching them.

On the positive side, I like the fact that content is local (even if sub-standard or plagiarized) and they are not just re-serving foreign content in India.

Salaries

Salaries have definitely gone up in India for professionals. And, to my surprise, hottest sector is not IT. It is real estate, where people are expecting 25% raise in the real estate sector.

 Overall it was a good trip.

Just happened to find out that the first patent application that I filed long long long time back was actually approved in March 2006. No one told me!  I just happened to find about it accidentally

Here is the official link Method and system for automatically interpreting computer system performance measurements.

Maybe I will order a patent plaque. 

Neeraj