Android Android Android!! i hear and read about it more often now than before.
I am engaged in counselling of students who complete their class 12(PUC in karnataka). I counsel them in selecting the colleges and the streams in which they want to pursue their higher education. I usually counsel people from my home town Sindhanur. Sindhanur is a small town famous for many things but not technology. People use their mobiles and passionate about features it provides but not the technology behind it.
I had one of the acquaintance whom i had counselled during his selection of undergraduate course. That acquaintance turned into friendship and we often meet up during our regular tea in evening. One day i told him about android overtaking blackberry and iphone as per the latest news(if it is to be beleived). He asked me "What is Android?" My response was grrrrrrrrrrr......i said "what the heck?" I see students enrolled in undergraduation courses devote so much time in their studies that they hardly find time to get themselves engaged in developing passion for anything related to science,technology,arts or whatever. This much time is required because they(me too did the same) need to study so many varied topics in 4 years.
PS: I had written above lines in Oct'2010 and did not publish. Publishing it now, happy that one of my beliefs came true that Android will overtake Blackberry and iPhone. It is also entirely possible that i might have got this idea by reading it in some article or heard from someone or it could be my thought after the collection of all knowledge around me back then. I was using Nokia 5800 then :)
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Riyadh 2.0, Saudi Arabia
Dear All,
I am in Saudi Arabia since June 2023 for a job, second time in my career. First time it was way back in 2014. I had come then with a pre-determined goal, fulfilled it and went back to India. This time too i have come with a pre-determined set of goals with little flexibility. Insha Allah they will be fulfilled. Thought of writing blogs again to capture my experiences and thoughts while i am here. Some of these i am writing for myself and some of them for anyone who is close to me and know my nature. These writings are not for any specific purposes other than penning down my thoughts.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Raichur & NCR Summer
Raichur is a little known city in Vast India but is well known in Karnataka,one of the most economically developed state in India. Raichur is famous for couple of things like it's No 1 Tractor selling point in India,Thermal plant and vast irrigated paddy fields.
Raichur is also notorious for it's hot climate. 38-40 degrees is common in Raichur while in the southern cities of karnataka enjoyed favourable summer with temperatures not exceeding 36. When i came to Gurgaon in Jan end it was the most favoured time with winter getting over. I was told then that it's very difficult to cope with Sun here during May-June. Being from Raichur, i thought it's not a big deal. Sun touched 40-42 degrees in summer here. I believed extra 2-3 degrees is not that difficult to cope up, but was proved wrong. There is a huge diff between these 2 places apart from the temp difference. The heat waves here will make going out or walking in the sun extremely difficult, it's like standing in front of huge fire. I stayed and staying all the times indoors during these times. I really admire people who work in the hot sun over here, they have adapted very well here.
I am just waiting to finish my project and go back to Bangalore where all seasons are pleasant and enjoyable.
Raichur is also notorious for it's hot climate. 38-40 degrees is common in Raichur while in the southern cities of karnataka enjoyed favourable summer with temperatures not exceeding 36. When i came to Gurgaon in Jan end it was the most favoured time with winter getting over. I was told then that it's very difficult to cope with Sun here during May-June. Being from Raichur, i thought it's not a big deal. Sun touched 40-42 degrees in summer here. I believed extra 2-3 degrees is not that difficult to cope up, but was proved wrong. There is a huge diff between these 2 places apart from the temp difference. The heat waves here will make going out or walking in the sun extremely difficult, it's like standing in front of huge fire. I stayed and staying all the times indoors during these times. I really admire people who work in the hot sun over here, they have adapted very well here.
I am just waiting to finish my project and go back to Bangalore where all seasons are pleasant and enjoyable.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Pursuit of TEA which tastes like tea
Tea is an addiction or could be used for de-addiction from something which is not good. We all have numerous cups of tea everyday some for reason and many without any reason. It's a good drink during social meets and is an all time all season all age all gender:) and many alls drink.
Many might not be aware that Tea was first discovered by Chinese and made hugely popular by British all over the world.I still here stories from my grand parents when and how they had first experience of tea. During their times it was a good gossip since in rural areas only some privileged people had the honour of having tea at max twice a day. As time progressed,economic conditions of people improved and society became more liberal in every sense & tea became a major drink all over india.
Enough of history of tea, this blog is to vent out my frustration for not getting a tea which tastes like a tea in Gurgaon's outskirts. Today is sunday and it's 4PM and i didn't had proper tea so far.Delhi, Gurgaon is famous for eateries but for tea i don't think it's famous for and probably become unfamous for if some more people like me start writing these kind of blogs.
As already mentioned i am working on a client location on outskirts of gurgaon and far away from Delhi as well. There are over dozen tea stalls outside office. Over a period of 2 months i tried tea in all these tea stalls and found every stall has the same kind of tea as if they all have same secret formula for making tea as some soft drink has. I tried in office canteen, it's the same. There is no proper ratio of milk and water, God knows whether they put water in milk or milk in water for making tea. It feels strange that this ratio is same or almost same in all the stalls!
Secondly, everyone doubts whether people over here are sweet or not but it's guaranteed that, all are Sweet people when it comes to tea. Yes, probably sugar is less expensive here or they might be getting some discount for sugar so there is always surplus sugar in all the stalls(needless to mention as they all share same formula).
There are hardly few people who takes tea on a particluar time but i am not in that category and fall in other category of people who drink whenever they like whether it's 40 degrees or just before any meals. But you got to be punctual here if you want to have tea with only 2 negatives what i mentioned above. Otherwise get ready for the darker version of tea which was made hours before and will taste like hot water. You might also end up having tea at some miser's stall who thinks when the colour of mixture of water and milk changes, tea is ready so that he can save some Gas. At one point you will be confused whether its a tea or horlicks in milk which you are looking at.
In 2 months I tried tea in many places like connought place, near india gate, in agra, on the way to agra, jama masjid ,iffco chowk etc. Probably many might not know these names of places but the point here is in 2 months i had proper tea only twice: first on the way to agra in a restuarant named "Maharaja" It was very expensive restuarant where our driver took us thinking we are big spenders, looking at the menu me and my whole team sticked to one common item and that was without surprise "Masala Tea". It costed us 60 bucks+taxes:). Well, but we were not aware it was worth spending that much as the tea was awesomely awesome and i could have paid twice to have such tea. If i ever go to Agra on my own transport i will surely stop by to have tea there.secondly, i had tea which was tea with malai and was like tea in all sense near Jama masjid, Delhi. The tea and Malai reminded me of the numerous tea's i had in shivajinagar, blore(one of the best tea spots in blore). The narrow road where the tea stall was present was similar to that of shivajinagar.
Please leave me as comments if any of you know good tea stalls in blore or in DLF phase 2 city or Delhi.Till then my pursuit for TEA which tastes like tea continues.
Got to go now, it's Teatime!everytime!
Many might not be aware that Tea was first discovered by Chinese and made hugely popular by British all over the world.I still here stories from my grand parents when and how they had first experience of tea. During their times it was a good gossip since in rural areas only some privileged people had the honour of having tea at max twice a day. As time progressed,economic conditions of people improved and society became more liberal in every sense & tea became a major drink all over india.
Enough of history of tea, this blog is to vent out my frustration for not getting a tea which tastes like a tea in Gurgaon's outskirts. Today is sunday and it's 4PM and i didn't had proper tea so far.Delhi, Gurgaon is famous for eateries but for tea i don't think it's famous for and probably become unfamous for if some more people like me start writing these kind of blogs.
As already mentioned i am working on a client location on outskirts of gurgaon and far away from Delhi as well. There are over dozen tea stalls outside office. Over a period of 2 months i tried tea in all these tea stalls and found every stall has the same kind of tea as if they all have same secret formula for making tea as some soft drink has. I tried in office canteen, it's the same. There is no proper ratio of milk and water, God knows whether they put water in milk or milk in water for making tea. It feels strange that this ratio is same or almost same in all the stalls!
Secondly, everyone doubts whether people over here are sweet or not but it's guaranteed that, all are Sweet people when it comes to tea. Yes, probably sugar is less expensive here or they might be getting some discount for sugar so there is always surplus sugar in all the stalls(needless to mention as they all share same formula).
There are hardly few people who takes tea on a particluar time but i am not in that category and fall in other category of people who drink whenever they like whether it's 40 degrees or just before any meals. But you got to be punctual here if you want to have tea with only 2 negatives what i mentioned above. Otherwise get ready for the darker version of tea which was made hours before and will taste like hot water. You might also end up having tea at some miser's stall who thinks when the colour of mixture of water and milk changes, tea is ready so that he can save some Gas. At one point you will be confused whether its a tea or horlicks in milk which you are looking at.
In 2 months I tried tea in many places like connought place, near india gate, in agra, on the way to agra, jama masjid ,iffco chowk etc. Probably many might not know these names of places but the point here is in 2 months i had proper tea only twice: first on the way to agra in a restuarant named "Maharaja" It was very expensive restuarant where our driver took us thinking we are big spenders, looking at the menu me and my whole team sticked to one common item and that was without surprise "Masala Tea". It costed us 60 bucks+taxes:). Well, but we were not aware it was worth spending that much as the tea was awesomely awesome and i could have paid twice to have such tea. If i ever go to Agra on my own transport i will surely stop by to have tea there.secondly, i had tea which was tea with malai and was like tea in all sense near Jama masjid, Delhi. The tea and Malai reminded me of the numerous tea's i had in shivajinagar, blore(one of the best tea spots in blore). The narrow road where the tea stall was present was similar to that of shivajinagar.
Please leave me as comments if any of you know good tea stalls in blore or in DLF phase 2 city or Delhi.Till then my pursuit for TEA which tastes like tea continues.
Got to go now, it's Teatime!everytime!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Connecting to Internet in new PG.
I shifted to a different PG from company provided guest house. The first thing I wanted to ensure was internet connectivity in the new PG.I had a wifi connectivity in guest house. I thought of having the same in PG but I was told that getting a wifi from airtel was a tedious process as it requires address proofs and it will take 1-2 weeks to get it. Airtel has very good GPRS offers these days. So I took a new airtel connection here which is yet to be activated. So I am still using my Karnataka airtel number for calls and internet access.
Well after unpacking my things I switched on my lappi and tried to access internet through nokia PC suite and found an error that my remote access connection service is stopped. To increase my laptop speed I had stopped some services which I felt I can stop.I just opened services windows and tried to start it but it had dependent services which were stopped(to increase speed of laptop). If I could have explored the services window properly I could have started the service in 2 mins. But I first thought to google the solution for this. Since I had no internet access, I called up my friend and told about this error and asked him to see the possible solution for this error. He was trying from his end and meanwhile I uninstalled nokia pc suite and installed it again thinking it would resolve my problem even though this was not at all required.
Later I googled out the solution and it turned out to be very simple. On checking the properties of the service there was a tab listing all the dependent services, I just started them and Bingo! My service started. I thought of accessing the net. But since I reinstalled nokia pc suite and for some reason my laptop was throwing another issue “USB connected in non compatible code”. I guess the uninstallation screwed some compatible drivers for my phone.
I needed to download these drivers in my laptop but I can’t connect my phone to laptop. Then I tried a new thing, I used Bluetooth to connect my computer to internet via phone and downloaded the drivers. Then I tried connecting to my phone to laptop and it finally worked. So i could post my blogs again.
So that was an action packed 3 hours for me, what I learnt was don’t do unnecessary things to solve any given problem and if we explore all options on anything on computer we can resolve our computer issues in less time than googling it out and wasting time. Third thing is even if we go in the wrong direction don’t be disheartened as it will help in exploring new solutions and learning new things. I learnt to connect to internet via Bluetooth in above episode.
So moral of the story is “all izz well”.
Well after unpacking my things I switched on my lappi and tried to access internet through nokia PC suite and found an error that my remote access connection service is stopped. To increase my laptop speed I had stopped some services which I felt I can stop.I just opened services windows and tried to start it but it had dependent services which were stopped(to increase speed of laptop). If I could have explored the services window properly I could have started the service in 2 mins. But I first thought to google the solution for this. Since I had no internet access, I called up my friend and told about this error and asked him to see the possible solution for this error. He was trying from his end and meanwhile I uninstalled nokia pc suite and installed it again thinking it would resolve my problem even though this was not at all required.
Later I googled out the solution and it turned out to be very simple. On checking the properties of the service there was a tab listing all the dependent services, I just started them and Bingo! My service started. I thought of accessing the net. But since I reinstalled nokia pc suite and for some reason my laptop was throwing another issue “USB connected in non compatible code”. I guess the uninstallation screwed some compatible drivers for my phone.
I needed to download these drivers in my laptop but I can’t connect my phone to laptop. Then I tried a new thing, I used Bluetooth to connect my computer to internet via phone and downloaded the drivers. Then I tried connecting to my phone to laptop and it finally worked. So i could post my blogs again.
So that was an action packed 3 hours for me, what I learnt was don’t do unnecessary things to solve any given problem and if we explore all options on anything on computer we can resolve our computer issues in less time than googling it out and wasting time. Third thing is even if we go in the wrong direction don’t be disheartened as it will help in exploring new solutions and learning new things. I learnt to connect to internet via Bluetooth in above episode.
So moral of the story is “all izz well”.
Monday, February 1, 2010
First weekend in Delhi
Weekend was approaching and i had two plans one to shift to a new PG and to roam around Delhi. I had been hearing about a lot of people in northern side of India. I had a first experience of it on this weekend. I was told by one of my friends of lucknow(in UP) that people might misguide you here when you ask them way. Well it was 6 years back when he told me that and I experienced what he told then, now. I was with my colleague in Connaught place of Delhi and we had seen in map Jantar mantar was very near to that place. We asked a passer by how to reach there, well he guided me how to reach there. Following his guidelines I was wondering if we are lost because the distance between 2 places was hardly 200m and we were walking for almost 25 mins. On returning we just tried some other route and reached back to our original place in just 10 min!
Jantar mantar(Yantra Mantra) is an observatory for movements of sun,moon etc in Delhi and was built on some great mathematical precision. It’s also shown in BBC’s documentary “The story of maths”. I don’t want to detail the maths behind it here, you can Google it out. Well the place is not exciting unless you know some facts of the place which I was aware of luckily. The good thing about it was, it was well maintained.We did the routine task of taking photos at different places. I am not much interested in taking pictures. I feel very strange when I see people simply clicking pictures at historical or other important places as if they have visited the place to have a nice background for them:).
Well what I really enjoyed this weekend was the first travel experience in Delhi Metro. Every person moving inside the station was thoroughly checked. I felt like I was in a different country for a while. The stations were vey tidy and so were trains, I guess people respected the fact that they are travelling in one of the best train services. Let me brief how the system works.
You need to take a token before entering the gates, the token is a kind of smart token when swiped open the gates. Once you enter the gates, go to the platform from where you need to take the train. Maps and ofcourse people(not always) will help you in this. Once you get down from the train at your destination station, you should move towards exit gates and the gates will open once you drop your token into the box attached to the exit gates. Well, the system is smart enough to handle travelers who think of cheating by taking a token to a particular location and moving further. Don’t try that.
We came back by cab by 8PM. Well that was an interesting day and came the hectic day of Sunday when we shifted from our company provided guest house to our PG. Though our PG is very near to guest house, it was a hectic task of loading and unloading your whole luggage on the same day. I believe many of you might have experienced all of this.
Well, thanks for your patience.
Jantar mantar(Yantra Mantra) is an observatory for movements of sun,moon etc in Delhi and was built on some great mathematical precision. It’s also shown in BBC’s documentary “The story of maths”. I don’t want to detail the maths behind it here, you can Google it out. Well the place is not exciting unless you know some facts of the place which I was aware of luckily. The good thing about it was, it was well maintained.We did the routine task of taking photos at different places. I am not much interested in taking pictures. I feel very strange when I see people simply clicking pictures at historical or other important places as if they have visited the place to have a nice background for them:).
Well what I really enjoyed this weekend was the first travel experience in Delhi Metro. Every person moving inside the station was thoroughly checked. I felt like I was in a different country for a while. The stations were vey tidy and so were trains, I guess people respected the fact that they are travelling in one of the best train services. Let me brief how the system works.
You need to take a token before entering the gates, the token is a kind of smart token when swiped open the gates. Once you enter the gates, go to the platform from where you need to take the train. Maps and ofcourse people(not always) will help you in this. Once you get down from the train at your destination station, you should move towards exit gates and the gates will open once you drop your token into the box attached to the exit gates. Well, the system is smart enough to handle travelers who think of cheating by taking a token to a particular location and moving further. Don’t try that.
We came back by cab by 8PM. Well that was an interesting day and came the hectic day of Sunday when we shifted from our company provided guest house to our PG. Though our PG is very near to guest house, it was a hectic task of loading and unloading your whole luggage on the same day. I believe many of you might have experienced all of this.
Well, thanks for your patience.
Monday, January 25, 2010
24 hrs in Gurgaon
Now i have spent more than 24 hours in Delhi, Gurgaon to be specific and i have innumerous thoughts to pen down. One of my important observation here is "The carz". More than 60% of the carz had one thing in common and i will be observing this phenomenon for next couple of days until i get usual with that. This observation what i made was not indifferent to brand,price, type of people who is riding the car. Well, it's nothing but the injury, yes i see more cars
damaged than clean cars on roads. I saw honda city,innumerous indicas,Omnis,santro etc, name any popular brand of india, i see it on delhi roads with damage. I was wondering who could be doing wrong for the poor carz whether it is rash drivng of all or some or the roads are too narrow to escape this torture for them. i realy am very cautious on roads while dealing with these poor yet dangerous machinez.
One more thing which drew my attention, rather i was trying to feel the place and making my attention towards strange things which i can note it down was the trees of delhi. First of all they are very sparse unlike bangalore where you can see green from any part of city. Here the green trees have almost lost or in the evolutionary phase of changing their green colours to yet to be decided(by mankind) colours. I am talking about the dust and pollution of Delhi. Somtimes i get confused during day whether it is fog or a combination of smoke and dust. I have stopped worrying about pollution long back.Surprised! No i am not a careless man on this earth, rather i strongly believe in almighty who has created this whole universe also has the power of destruction and he knows very well what kind of complex creature human is. I beleive man cant destroy world by pollution because he will exhaust resources of pollution before he can possibly
pollute the world to end. Almighty is all knowing and he has made only so much resources available to man which should not endanger himself.We can argue that man is capable of destroying 6 earths with the nuclear power available with him. But Almighty have set the mind of people in such a way that no one is gonna use it, out of fear among themselves. Ex: our cold war super powers.
Well i am going in a different direction, let me get back to my office, my client is a BPO company and i am here as a technical consultant to setup some system for my client. Well all these years i was in an IT industry environment. i had heard about the coolness and stress of a BPO job.This was the first time i was actually working in between and along with these people. As i was entering the office i was thoroughly checked displaying the stringent security measures of these days specially in a BPO company that too in national capital. As i was walking towards my other colleague i could see people busy with their monitors,some are talking loudly, some are playing songs loudly, more than allowable limits in my company, some are singing loudly. I didn't feel anything odd but if these people walk in a similar way in my company they will definitely feel odd as they can't play and sing songs so loudly!
Later i explored office with finally having a cup of tea in cafeteria eavesdropping people's talk about the sealing of borders of delhi as tomorrow is Republic Day. Every one was planning to Delhi to avoid that extra checks by security guards near delhi borders. Well after that my work started with installation issues and mails.
I am looking forward for today morning to listen to Dr.Manmohan Singh on the occasion of Republic Day.
Jai Hind.
Yusuf
damaged than clean cars on roads. I saw honda city,innumerous indicas,Omnis,santro etc, name any popular brand of india, i see it on delhi roads with damage. I was wondering who could be doing wrong for the poor carz whether it is rash drivng of all or some or the roads are too narrow to escape this torture for them. i realy am very cautious on roads while dealing with these poor yet dangerous machinez.
One more thing which drew my attention, rather i was trying to feel the place and making my attention towards strange things which i can note it down was the trees of delhi. First of all they are very sparse unlike bangalore where you can see green from any part of city. Here the green trees have almost lost or in the evolutionary phase of changing their green colours to yet to be decided(by mankind) colours. I am talking about the dust and pollution of Delhi. Somtimes i get confused during day whether it is fog or a combination of smoke and dust. I have stopped worrying about pollution long back.Surprised! No i am not a careless man on this earth, rather i strongly believe in almighty who has created this whole universe also has the power of destruction and he knows very well what kind of complex creature human is. I beleive man cant destroy world by pollution because he will exhaust resources of pollution before he can possibly
pollute the world to end. Almighty is all knowing and he has made only so much resources available to man which should not endanger himself.We can argue that man is capable of destroying 6 earths with the nuclear power available with him. But Almighty have set the mind of people in such a way that no one is gonna use it, out of fear among themselves. Ex: our cold war super powers.
Well i am going in a different direction, let me get back to my office, my client is a BPO company and i am here as a technical consultant to setup some system for my client. Well all these years i was in an IT industry environment. i had heard about the coolness and stress of a BPO job.This was the first time i was actually working in between and along with these people. As i was entering the office i was thoroughly checked displaying the stringent security measures of these days specially in a BPO company that too in national capital. As i was walking towards my other colleague i could see people busy with their monitors,some are talking loudly, some are playing songs loudly, more than allowable limits in my company, some are singing loudly. I didn't feel anything odd but if these people walk in a similar way in my company they will definitely feel odd as they can't play and sing songs so loudly!
Later i explored office with finally having a cup of tea in cafeteria eavesdropping people's talk about the sealing of borders of delhi as tomorrow is Republic Day. Every one was planning to Delhi to avoid that extra checks by security guards near delhi borders. Well after that my work started with installation issues and mails.
I am looking forward for today morning to listen to Dr.Manmohan Singh on the occasion of Republic Day.
Jai Hind.
Yusuf
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