At the Restaurant - Windows of World

Windows of Wold is located at Cyber Towers at Madhapur. It is run by Yatri Nivas of AP Tourism Corporation - I know because my credit card bill says so.

Most of the people visiting this place are employees of offices working out of Cyber Towers, the first building at the Hitec City area of Hyderabad. If you are an outsider trying to visit this place you have to take a pass from the security of the Cyber Towers and give your vehicle at the valet parking.Weekends it sports a deserted look as the offices are closed, but weekdays it becomes a bit difficult to get a place to sit - but only sometimes.

They serve both veg and non veg. Their buffet is a big draw in the day time. It costs Rs. 168 per head including taxes. During the day times they also serve the Indian meals but I am not sure how much that cost. They have a bar as well, for all those who had a long day at the office and want to chill a bit. I never saw the night buffet but I guess they have that as well, it costs a bit less than the day buffet.

Reliance Broadcom Wimax: A Review

In the last week of March I asked the Reliance Broadband to change the plan from 150Kbps to 300Kbps as the difference in the price is just 250 bucks while the speed is double. The rate plan change took nearly 15 days.

I first tested the speed with the Mumbai server which gave me 295 Kbps download speed and 867 Kbps upload speed, which does not seep right.


Then I tested with the Singapore server. The test with the Singapore server my opinion gives a more accurate speed.

Now a days I download nearly 3 movies a day, a 700 mb file in every 6-7 hrs, which is causing an overkill of the number of movies as I am not able to watch most of them.

My BSNL Telephone Connection

On the 2nd April while I was going for a meeting I came across two BSNL technicians working in my colony. I asked them if they could help me me with the long awaited telephone connection. They were very eager to help me out, and came to my place to check the status. They told me that they could give the connection only if they bring a line from the previous lane of row houses, which is what I always wanted. They had to bring the necessary cable to give the connection and said will cost me 1500 bucks. As I was desperate to have the connection and never had the word "bargain" in my dictionary, asked them to go ahead.

I promised to give them a call the over the weekend but never found the time to do so. So they came calling me on the 4th and I gave them a thousand bucks and said will give the rest when I get the connection. Later I came to know that my neighbor paid only 500 bucks to get the work done and he said that he had to pay less because he had applied six months before me.

They then disappeared over the next few days so I gave them a call 9th and they said they had to reactivate my connection as BSNL had closed the case. Anyway they came and gave the connection on the 11th and informed me that the phone connection will go live that evening or the next morning, which never happened.

I being always lazy to do anything, did not even bother to call them and ask why the telephone was not working but one of the technicians gave me a visit to see if all is working. I was not available at home so they left a message on a piece of paper. I called them the next morning and fixed appointment for the 19th. The BSNL technician was promptly came today and fixed it. Actually the telephone connection did go live as they said but the internal wiring in my house was not properly connected. The jack where the telephone instrument cable is fixed was not wired.

So this is how I got my BSNL telephone connection.

At the Restaurant - Ohiri's Banjara

This is the Ohiri's Banjara, the Chinese portion of it which is on the 2nd floor

This sword, as we were told is an original one. I don't know from where they got it, but looked like a Japanese Samurai one, as I have seen in the movies.

They have a good collection of bonsai trees, which is again a Japanese art of miniature trees. So much for the Chinese restaurant!

By the way they have prominently displayed; larger than the trees themselves; "Do Not Touch" boards. Who touches these trees anyway.

Food was good, but a moderately expensive as is the case with all the Ohiri's. We billed of apporx 2.5K for 5 people. Oh! well we also boozed moderately that is a pint a head. It was the first time that we cousins boozed in front of my sis; who practically terrorises all of us when it comes to boozing. A lot of beens were spilled that day with one of my cousin describing some of the fuss I had created in the past. Thanks so much bro.

All in all it was good place to go and we enjoyed thoroughly, as it was one of the rare occasions where all of the us the earning members of our generation were together made it a day. I must thank my new(old) car that I flicked from dad. I have put nearly a months salary in it already to make it run without giving me troubles and its been behaving itself lately.

My Office Building - Cyber Towers

New job, new office, new pictures.

This place is a concrete jungle.

New Hyderabad Airport at Samshabad

I have been visiting the new airport in Hyderabad quite a few times over the last few days. This is a picture early morning sometime back.

The new airport is named "Rajive Gandhi International Airport" which is in my opinion is a very sad thing to do, since it is in Andhra Pradesh, it should have been in named after one of the local persons rather than a non-local person. However since the present provincial government is that of Congress Party, the current Chief Minister muscled his way to name it after Rajive Gandhi. Come to think of it, Rajive Gandhi never even ruled a full term, at least they could have named after P V Narashimha Rao, who not only completed a full term in the office but also spearheaded the opening up of the economy and which in a way lead to a private company to actually build an airport.

This is the first private airport to come up in India, and has been successfully operated over last few days. The other private airport to come-up is the Bangalore airport which has hit turbulence and not yet operational.

This airport is quite a distance from the town and they are trying to build an elevated expressway to the airport to ease the congestion. The new expressway will take some time to come up and expected to completed by June 2008; I doubt that though. But the thing that I don't understand is why they need and expressway now when the road leading to the new airport is mostly 4 lane national highway for the part they are building the elevated expressway and is fairly capable enough to take on the increased traffic; rather they should have concentrated on building better roads in the town itself.

Anyway as I said it is a far away from the town and most often it takes the similar duration for most people to reach their destination as it takes to reach the airport.

I have not yet flew from this airport but what I learn is it is super fast to get out of it once you land here and seemed very small in size for a new airport,

Reliance Broadcom Wimax: My First Impressions

Today the guys from the RCom came and installed the system.

I have subscribed speed of 150 Kbps, and I am getting better speed than that at 2 speed tests on speedtest.net clocking 176 Kbps and 205 Kbps, but the upload speeds are pathetic with around 6 Kbps both the times and in a current test 1 KBps. On the torrent uploading it is not crossing 3 KBps. I also ran uTorrent and got nearly 16 KBps (it's the big B) on average download speeds, with the Gmail IMAP folders updating in the background. I guess I have to file a complaint for the upload speeds because I am not been able to update the mandatory My Profile page, and change the password as that page is not getting updated at all.

Following is the 3rd test:

Another problem is the PoE needs UPS backup, every time it switches off it takes nearly 5-20 min to get back to normal and start working. And I was told that the PoE (Power over Ethernet) is very sensitive to voltage fluctuations. That means you really don't get instant internet as in the case of bsnl where it used to take much less time.

They installed a reception antenna facing towards the reliance mobile towers and a PoE thingy. The engineer said the installed instruments cost 15K but I think he was bluffing. Line of sight to the reliance towers is a must it seems else the connection speed reduce drastically. Fortunately I got one.

One small irritant is the "User Workspace" window that needs always needs to be open else the connection drops.

BSNL Customer Care

I went to the BSNL office to subscribe a new fixed wired telephone connection so that I can subscribe their very fast Broad Band Internet service. However I was surprised to find this customer service motto of BSNL by Mahatma Gandhi. What is even more funny was the ladies behind the desk were least bothered about the customers present there and their primary goal of the day was to plan for the party that they were going the next day. The lady who took my form took a leisurely 1 hour before she processed it.

By the way even after 5 months I am still awaiting for the connection to come.

Indian Hokey: Died in Santiago Chilie March 9, 2008

Hockey was introduced to India by the Brits as the case with many other games. Indians took to the game and did very well in the Olympics. India won 6 consecutive Gold Medals in Olympics form 1928 Amsterdam to 1956 Melbourne. In 1960 Rome Olympics India had to be satisfied with a Silver Medal, losing to Pakistan in the Finals. India bounces back to win Gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. India defeats Pakistan in the Finals taking revenge of the ‘60 loss. Since then Gold Medal eluded India till 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. India won the Bronze Medals in 68 and 72. But the worst was 76 where we finished 7th. But 1980 was redemption time where we got the Gold once again after 16 years. This time India face Spain in the Finals. Since 1980 however India had lost the appetite for the Hokey as Indian become Cricket crazy after winning the 1983 Cricket world cup, and in 2008 India fails to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

What went wrong?
Indian Hockey teams debacle of in the 1976 Montreal Olympics where it finished 7th was attributed the lack of experience on the newly introduced astro-turf. We were kings of the ground but Hockey takes a new avatar on astro-turf. While the lacked experience on playing on the new truf, which hindered the ability of Indian Hockey internationally. We lost momentum in nurturing talent at the grass root level due to lack of infrastructure meanwhile people lost interest in the game as a consequence of poor performance.

Another reason could be attributed to the lack of preference and coverage by Media and general public. Hokey never got the print space that Cricket got and the fact is Indians favor Cricket over Hockey. The reason why Hockey is regarded as the national game is due to its incredible showing in the Olympics. To date the only gold medals India ever got in Olympics are in Hockey.

Many people blame the management of Hockey in India for the poor showing. Indian Hokey Federation has been under the supervision of erstwhile Super Cop KPS Gill since 1994. It has been reported in the media quoting IHF President : “We do not have an instant coffee machine that you can get results instantly. It takes time to regain your position. We have put the process in place and the results will take some time.” Makes many wonder how many more days one needs, to brew coffee?

Tiger: Big Cat's Days are Numbered

Lion was the National Animal of India till it got independence, since it was part of the Royal Coat of arms for England. That’s why it can still be found on the Reserve Bank of India’s Logo which was incorporated in pre-independent India. After independence of India the new National Animal was Tiger. The logic behind the change was, Lions were only found in some parts of India like Gujarat while Tiger was found in many states.

Tiger is the means of transport for goddess Durga as well as Lord Ayyappa. Whereas Lord Shiva can be seen wearing cloths made of Tiger skin presumably to suggest that he is beyond ne mortal world. Tiger is revered in the Chinese and Tibetan civilizations.

They say cat has Nine lives, but when it comes to Tiger the Big Cat of India, even the single life is not guaranteed.

National Animal of 5 different countries apart from India, Tiger population has come dwindled from nearly 100 thousand (nearly 40K in India) early in the 20th century to just about 5 – 7 thousand in wild currently. Half of the wild tiger population was estimated to be in India. However per the latest Tiger Census recently released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority put the Tiger number at 1,411 down from 3,642 per the 2002 survey. As per WPSI ‘s tiger poaching statistics 832 tigers have been killed since 1944 to 2007 in India.

The main reason for the decline is the $12 billion illegal wildlife products industry. China, Japan and other South East Asian counties keep demanding Tiger products at any cost and India is the largest contributor to the trade. In the international markets Tiger can fetch upto $50,000, the skin alone fetches nearly $15,000 while the bones cost nearly $4000 per kilogram – while the investment in the poaching each tiger is about Rs. 1 Lakh.

Another reason is the never ending encroachment of humans into the Tiger habitat. Take for example the latest news of a Tigress straying into a village in Sunderbans on Feb 18. Thousands of villagers chased her almost killing her.

Government of India had initiated the Project Tiger in 1973 with the main objective of ensuring viable population of Tigers in India. In 2006 Project Tiger was replaced with National Tiger Conservation Authority .Currently the program is spread over 27 Tiger Reserves covering an area of 37761 sq. Km. The tiger population under the Project Tiger shows that Tiger population has increase from 1638 in 1972 to 3773 in 2002. However the latest census indicating the rapid decline in the Tiger population compared to the previous census suggests some kind of artificial inflation of the numbers earlier.

Government of India has enacted the “Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972” with the object of poaching and illegal trade in wildlife in India. As per the Act offences pertaining to hunting of endangered species like Tigers is liable for imprisonment of 3-7 years and fine upto Rs. 10-25K. Since Inception however only 16 persons have been convicted of killing tiger.

References:
Project Tiger
Wildlife Protection Society of India
Wikipedia
Big Cat Rescue