Visit to Bannerghatta National Park

After a hiatus of two years I am back to my blog. It's first of January 2014 and to start with I would like to wish all the visitors of my blog a wonderful new year. To celebrate the start of this year I planned to visit Bannerghatta National park along with my wife. For the people who are not party lovers and prefer to enjoy themselves by being in a calmer surrounding, a zoo or a national park is an apt choice to spend their time. Since I can unquestionably put myself into that category of people, when my wife suggested Bannerghatta National Park's name for spending the first day of the New Year, there was hardly any disagreement and the plan was set in no time.

Bannerghatta Biological Park is towards the southern side of Bangalore and owing to its huge landmass you find it almost at the tip of the city. Nevertheless connectivity to the place is excellent, you can reach the park from any part of the city with minimal guidance and hardships, barring those related to traffic. To reach the park first thing one needs to do is to reach Gopalan Innovation Mall, Bannerghatta road. From outer ring road we took the bus numbered 500C to reach this place. One can find many private and BMTC buses calling for the National park. Since I knew that Bus number 365 directly goes to the park I waited patiently for this bus to arrive and got to board it soon. Frequency of this bus is quite good and one should not have to wait for more than 12-15 minutes to board it at Gopalan Innovation Mall.  Under normal traffic conditions it takes around 30-45 minutes to reach the park. Whats good about taking BMTC buses is that they have a bus stand right at the park entrance and you get down quite close to the park entry. If you are using this mode of transport to reach the park its advisable to take a daily bus pass as it would save both your money and time in buying tickets during to-and-fro journey.

Once you get down at the park, head straight to the ticket counter to purchase tickets for Safari, the Zoo and Butterfly park. It’s a combined ticket but option exists to buy tickets only for one or more of them. Since the queue to reach the ticket counter is usually quite long – and the length can be really intimidating at times – almost everyone takes tickets for all of them at once. There are many small food kiosks in close proximity and one can have variety of items after buying the tickets and before going for safari. The place is well managed and you would find a glimpse of this at every step. Once you enter into the park you might find another long queue and might have to wait for approximately 15-20 minutes before getting into the mini-bus for safari. The entire stretch is divided into separate areas for different animals – Bear, Lion, Tiger and White Tiger.  Surprisingly even in an open area you find these animals roaming quite close to the roads and thus get a good view of them. The good part is, it feels exciting to see herds of so many lions and tigers roaming together; the bad part is, it gets over in a short span of 30 to 40 minutes. The mini bus drops you close to the Butterfly park, which you can visit before going for the zoo ( I missed visiting this park and hence cannot give any details about it). Next, head towards the zoo. It’s a regular zoo quite similar to the ones you find at any other place. I did not find anything worth mentioning about this part of the park. The park closes at 5:00 PM and you may have to plan accordingly. Once done with the Zoo, you can shop for souvenirs, have snacks or roam around as per your choice. For return journey you can come back to the bus stop and take Bus number 365 or E4 to return to different parts of the city.

So what’s good about the park?  First of all its well connected with the main city. Pickup and drop is extremely convenient with high frequency buses running right till the doorsteps of the park. It’s well maintained and has good number of small kiosks for refreshment and light shopping. Karnataka government is known to commercialize and exploit its resource to the max and you can witness it quite clearly. The facilities are better and so are the ticket charges. I think many other states need to learn from Karnataka when it comes to promoting tourism and making money out of it.

What’s not so good about the park? First of all, the crowd can swell significantly during weekends or holidays. This can make you wait for longer than expected while going for Safari. The zoo is an average one.

So this was my review and opinion about Bannerghatta Biological Park, Bangalore. Hope you enjoyed reading through it.

Innovation and Commercialization

Recently in one of the classroom sessions, we had a wonderful discussion on innovation vs. commercialization of technology. By its virtue of being an MBA classroom, it's more than obvious which one of the two was called to be more important than the other, hence no points in guessing it. The interesting parts were the aspects of commercialization that we came to know during the enriching discussion in the classroom. At the end of the discussion our take away from the session was that innovation without commercialization is like a diamond in a coal mine - hidden beneath the black coal with good intrinsic value but much more potential value. Once the diamond is dug out, polished and put in the market, it’s worth much more than the intrinsic value. In this small piece of writing I would throw some light on the aspects of commercialization that makes it possible.

By innovation we mean a new product satisfying the needs of people not yet being satisfied by any other existing products in the market. Now this is not an easy task and, by its very nature, takes huge amount of time, money and effort. In fact there are hundreds and thousands of such attempts going parallel in and around the world by many people. The total dollar bill incurred by companies indulging in such research activities sometimes runs into millions. But only a very small percentage of such research initiatives result into a successful end product. Once the innovation fructifies and the end result is successful, commercialization is the only way to recover all the investments made during the initial R&D phase. A company may not be ready to invest in any innovation if they are unsure about recovery of their initial expenditure. Commercialization thus works as a booster to innovation.

During production, money needs to be spent in the form of operating expense. The production cost might be exorbitantly high, resulting in high market price, keeping consumers stay away from buying it. Adequate commercialization and higher penetration of the product makes it possible to gain economies of scale thus reducing the price and making the product more affordable to masses. Electricity and Mobile charges in India are prefect examples of diminishing cost of production due to economies of scale.

Innovation is a continuous process. Innovation in a product never ends with a single breakthrough. But for a product to evolve through continuous innovation, it is very important to put it in the hands of the consumers. Unless more and more people use it, give their feedback and suggest ways to improve the product, it may not realise its full potential in catering to the needs of the people. Look at the evolution of mobile operating system Android from Google. Because of it being open source and the freedom for consumers to add newer features to it, today's Android is much better than its initial version. This has been made possible by nothing but commercialization of Android OS.

Then there are unexpected benefits to the product from other products and vice-versa, due to commercialization and larger availability of the product to the masses. When two groups of scientists working separately on two completely different products joined hands together, the camera pill was invented. This pill made it possible for doctors to see through the entire length of the small intestine, notwithstanding its convoluted and complex structure inside the body. This became successful only when two separate groups - one working on Missile technology and the other on medical technology - came together. History is replete with such examples where a technology was benefited due to the fact that other one came out of closet and made itself available to the people at large. Had there been no commercialization of one, the world would never have been benefited by the synergy of the combined product, which many a times is much more valuable that either of them used separately.

As a conclusion I would like to state that innovators and scientists are important for the society, but at the same time we cannot ignore the importance of marketers who commercialise the innovation and help it realise its full potential as a much higher carat diamond.

Truth of Pakistan from the mouth of a Pakistani

Today I came across a link on Youtube. It is a news report shown on a pakistani channel about Pakistan itself. Quite extensive and an eye opener for all Pakistanis. Watch it till the end to see how they have gradually started realizing the deep-shit they have dug themselves into.

Horror Story while Traveling with Indian Railways.

The other day when I was traveling from my Jamshedpur to New Delhi, I went through a very bad experience with Indian Railways. The train was scheduled to arrive at the Jamshedpur Stattion at 11:15 PM. Accordingly I was there at around 9:30 PM. The train, Orrisa Sampark Kranti, starts from BBSR and is considered to be a good train, Sampark Kranti that is. But when I enquired about its arrival in Jamshedpur, to my horror it was running 7 hrs late and was expected to reach Jamshedpur at 6:15 in the morning. The point worth mentioning is that it was 9:00 o'clock in the night and the train was going to come the next day morning. Hence any one who was to board that train had to wait the entire night. I was aghast to hear this. Since I had come to Jamshedpur from another town and I had no other place to stay at Jamshedpur, I was only left with the option of spending my night in the waiting room. Thankfully the AC in the waiting room was working and I could somehow manage to get through the night before taking the train to Delhi the next morning.

But I did not know that the horror story was not over and had just begun. When I enquired about the train running so late from the attendents in the train, I came to know that this was very common for this train and it was actually early on that day. Because of the problems posed by Maoists in WB and Jharkhand border area, trains are not run during the night. Agreed, after all living is more important that reaching your destination in time. But then once the train has crossed that dangerous zone, it is expected that it would run properly and would try to take the travellers to their destination in an appropriate duration of time. But here I was ! Sitting in the train, which seemed to be the most ignored train of the route. It stopped at every Tom Dick and Harry station and was crossed by every possible passanger and freight trains, though the scheduled stops were Kanpur and then Delhi!

This condition is acceptable if the train is delayed due to the unavoidable problems like Maoists etc, but what was the logic behind delaying it when everything was perfectly alright for it to run ? It was quite frustrating to see that we were stopped at enumerable number of stations during the journey from Jamshedpur to New delhi resulting in a delay of more than 12 hours of our arrival at Delhi. Due to this I had to suffer some major losses in terms of my work on that day. I am sure there would be many more people in the same train having the same fate as that of mine. All of them would have missed important work they might have, some of them might have missed their flight for onward journey etc.

Now I would like to know who is going to compensate the losses people sufferred due to callous attitude of railways ? Isn't there any accountability from the Railways on this ? Is it so that the time of passengers sitting in the train has no importance at all ? Are they completely on the mercy of Railways once they get into a train ? Is there any provision for such things ? Can we ask for any compensation from the Railways for this ?

Main aur meri Social Networking ki tanhayi..

This is the age of social Networking. Facebook, Orkut, Twitter... all these have become part of everyone's lives. There was a time when we used to log into our email inbox to see if there is a new message for us. But it has changed now. Now mostly we login to Facebook, Orkut or Twitter.

OK, so to keep myself abreast of the changing tide, even I have created an account on some of these popular sites. And since then I have become one of the victims of this networking syndrome. It has become less Networking and more Not-Working for me. Here is a typical day of mine with my networking account.

I switch on my computer, and the first thing I do is log into my social networking account to check if any of my friends has something to say to me. But instead, what I get to see is who has become the next Mafia and who has got which girl as his next girlfriend in the fortune cookie, who has raised how many hens/dogs, who is planning to watch what movie tonight, who is planning to bunk classes today etc etc.

Oh boy, I scroll down further to see if there is something for me in the entire page which I thought was my profile. Com’on, there has to be something for me. This is my page after all. I am sure I logged in with my username and password, the username, for which I had to fight with this site for almost 20 minutes. It accepted a username after rejecting it uncountable number of times for being already present in this world of 6.5 billion people. By the way the other day I read in the newspaper that people have started creating social networking profiles for their pets as well. Now you can imagine how difficult creating a new user is going to be in coming days. Alas!! So now that I am sure that I have logged in with my own username, can't I expect something for myself anywhere in the entire page. But, I have scrolled almost half way down the page without getting any success.

Scroll down a bit more and I find that one of my friend has decided to cook food tonight for herself for the first time in her life. Such a big achievement for her and such a great event for the whole world!!! She has declared to the world about it and is now flooded by the good luck, best wishes comments from her friends and not-so-friends from all over the world. As if she is going to attack Pakistan single handedly to revenge 26/11 Mumbai Attacks. Not sure if her friends think she needs more luck for cooking food. I am sure none of our soldiers would be getting so many good luck wishes before they go to the frontiers. Sigh!! Sab neworking sites ki mahima hai …..

Ok, next someone has decided to abuse one of his friends and is being returned with even better quality stuff. And all of us, their really lucky friends, are being mute spectators of the exchange. Wow, never expected this to see in my own profile page.

Then there are people who put their status messages as if it's their moral obligation to let the whole world know what is going in their lives. Take this. Going to dine…, had worst dinner ever…, going to sleep…, going to dream…., going to .... Come on, give me a break yaar !!!!!! I admit that I made a mistake by being a friend of yours. Does that make you happy now ???

I almost reach at the end of the page. Till now my own page has sucked a good 10 to 20 ml blood of mine by giving me all possible craps which I never wanted to see. AND VOILA, here is the biggest news for me at the end...

There is a link shared by someone which has news about a Twitter-oholic who was caught in the fire, which ultimately burned an entire building in Kolkata and killed around 50 people, but was tweeting instead of saving his own, or better others', life. The guy was such a Twitter freak that he decided to tweet about the fire in the building even before, may be, calling the fire fighters and saving someone's life. Not sure what happened to the guy later but I really wonder if Twitter would have ever thought of having such a fan of itself who loves it more than his own life. Owners of this site should make this guy brand ambassador of Twitter for showing so much love towards them.

So this is the networking mahima I have to live with these days. Alas, there will be one day when I would see something for myself on the page which I call my own profile page.

Free up phone memory in Nokia 5800

I own a Nokia 5800 phone. Recently I had some problems with its memory. The Phone memory, C drive, was left with only 40K space. I was not able to install any application into my phone because of this problem. It was clear to me that I had to free up some memory from the C drive. But I was wondering where the heck all the memory has gone ? I always copy any video or Audio file to E drive, the Card memory, 8 GB in size, huge by any phone memory standards. No file I ever copied in C drive. Then where had the memory gone ?
I searched for a solution on the internet. There were many solutions like formatting the drive, remove files from C to E and so on. But none of them suited me, as I did not want to format my phone and had no known large file which I could move from C to E.

Later I found the solution in my bluetooth file transfers. In a phone, all the files which we transfer using bluetooth are saved in C drive, even if you later save them at some other location, it is not removed from C. Thus all those files were present twice in my phone. One in C, when they were transferred through bluetooth, and other in E, where I actually saved them later. So to free up the memory from C, I opened my inbox, sorted the messages by file type, and deleted all the bluetooth file transfers. And whoops, I had almost 60 MB of free space in C.

Hope someone in the same boat is helped by this post.

Movie Review: 3 Idiots

If you ask me to describe this movie in one word, I have this to say; "WOW". It's a movie which would keep your mind engrossed long after you have left the theater. It's a movie which comes in the league of Munna Bhai MBBS, RDB, Lagaan etc. Now you can imagine how much I liked it to shower it with such eulogies. It’s a definite watch for every moviegoer. These three hours could be the most entertaining experience in your memory. Yes, it's a complete three hours movie, and yet you do not get to know even a bit how time goes by. And, let me tell you, this movie is NOT a direct pick from 'Five Point Someone'. It's very different.


Story: Rancho (Aamir Khan), Farhan (Madhvan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) are friends in an engineering college. After their graduation Rancho has gone somewhere and is no longer in touch with them. The story starts with Farhan getting a call about the whereabouts of Rancho. And the two friends start their journey to meet their old friend. The story goes back in the past and in the flashback college days start. Rancho has a completely different approach in life towards studies and engineering. He feels that gaining knowledge is more important than getting good marks in the exams. He loves machines and engineering, though hates his Director, nick named Virus, played by Bomen Irani. Right on the first day of college, when others are being ragged by the seniors, Rancho shows that how a simple fact that salt water is good conductor of electricity can be used for practical purposes and teaches the senior a lesson when he tries to pee on Rancho's door. The very next day he asks the Director a question which leaves him dumb founded and other students, including his room-mates Madhvan and Raju, impressed. Daggers are drawn between Rancho and Virus and thus starts the battle between the two. The story goes on showing how the students are being taught only the rote knowledge and how the pressure to get the maximum marks in the exams forces one of the students to commit suicide. Rancho blames the Director for his suicide and tells him that it was not a suicide but a murder. The battle intensifies. Virus tries again and again to prove that he is right in his way of teaching the students and Rancho proves him wrong every time. In the mean time he meets Kareena kapoor in a wedding ceremony and makes good fun of her fiance. In extremely hilarious ways he proves to her that the guy is nothing but a price tag, thinking and speaking only about the price, attached to each and every thing he wears or gifts. The story goes on with the ups and downs in the lives of Farhan and Raju. It also turns out that Rancho is the son of a millionaire but Raju and Farhan are from poor families, shouldering the burden of their whole family and parents. Amidst all these Virus challenges them that none of them can get a job from the college, in case it happens he would sacrifice his moustache. Once while making fun of Virus by peeing in the letter box at his door, Raju is caught red handed by virus and is threatened to be rusticated from the college unless he accepts that Rancho is behind all the incident. Not being able to decide between the two options, Raju tries to commit suicide by jumping off the window from Virus' room. He survives but goes in coma with one leg broken. Rancho and Farhan do their best to bring him back to life, including all the funny, though not much sensitive, ways.

So what happens to them? Are the idiots able to fulfill the dreams of their parents? Are they able to win the heart of Virus? Is Virus able to save his moustache? Watch the movie to know all these and to have much more fun, which I don't have words to express here. I am sure you would like it.


About the Director: (of the movie, ofcourse, not the college, Virus :)
Raj Kumar Hirani is a master story teller. He is the man who knows where to step on the gas and where to apply brakes while telling the story. When things start turning too sentimental, he throws a whiff of comedy to lighten up the situation. This movie is a manifestation of his directorial skill, which he has already shown in the movies like Munnabhai series. This movie is a perfect execution of a simple story. I tell you nothing can be more perfect. He has made sure that the movie never drags itself in its three hours span. If you have enjoyed Munnabhai, you are going to love this as well, I bet.
I was expecting it to be the story of 'Five Point Someone' but it's not. There are similarities between the characters in the movie and in the book, and also some part of the story, but he has changed it in such a way that even if you have read the book hundreds of times, you remain bound to the movie, and to the seat as well.

The Cast:
Oh, the cast. The other day I saw a banner in India Sri Lanka Cricket match. It said "When God wanted to play cricket, Sachin Tendulkar was born." The same applies to Aamir Khan. When God wanted to Act, Aamir was born. He is such a genius. Playing a 22 year old when you are 44, is not a small feat. But he has pulled it off so well, that no one can complain. The fact that he was in a completely different get up and looks in his immediate last movie, Ghajini, makes me admire him even more. Sharman Joshi and Madhvan have supported him superbly. At some places, I felt that Madhvan was not a good choice for playing the role of a college student because of his bulges and paunch, but rest was fine. Bomen Irani, the perennial choice of Raj Kumar Hirani to play the role of a Dean/Professor, is fantabulous as always. But I would say he had done a better job in Munnabhai. Kareena kapoor has acted good, how I wish she looked good at least once in the movie. I would better not talk about her. Then there is Chatur, funny name with funny accent and equally funny role. Rest all the actors have done justice to their roles.

Cons of the movie:
At some places you may feel like it becomes too dramatic and theatrical. Like the birth of Mona's child. But it's a movie, being released from Bollywood, for Indian masses, so, there is no other choice. :)

Overall the movie is a wonderful package which you would love for sure, and would love it even more if you have graduated from an engineering college.