A nice place to eat out!!

Hello Everyone!!!

I am so sorry for absconding from the scene for such a long period. But the good news is I am back (hopefully)!!!

Well, the otherday I went to this nice place called "Zaika" (probably a urdu word meaning flavour / taste), a very nice restaurant inside the newly opened "Pal Heights" mal. Of course, it is a bit expensive in usual Bhubaneswar standards. But believe me, you would love to disagree after you have one dinner there with family. Also they allowed me to take some snaps as well.

Very nice place, cozy and pretty well designed as well. The food quality is also good and they would like to serve you a drink candidly of course.

If possible just go there and enjoy one evening with family!!!

Bio-fuel to replace "fuel" (food!!) for Mankind

In a quite ironic development, a report prepared by one of the biggest financial institutions blames the (great) US and EU for pushing up the food prices alarmingly - and their contribution to the rise is almost 75%.

Guess what? The culprit is the "bio-fuel" which has become far more lucrative a "crop" compared to real food grains in these areas and what the great US have to say - increase in demand in India and China is pushing the food prices and for our information, bio-fuel thing contributes only 3% to this rise.

OK, accepted. We are poor, deprived and un-deserving lot for good food. But who has blamed these two parts of the world for pushing the food prices - "The World Bank" - the global bank (funded primarily by the US again). For further details check the news from "The Guardian" - the famous UK (!!???) news agency at the following link.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

One can also refer to this news from CNET which also provides a report by some of the food manufacturers.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9984444-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

It seems that for us the less deserving lot, bio-fuel is going to fuel us lesser mankind and guess what.... it looks very much like another middle east rising and only this time in the west.

So how many of us are going to survive on bio-fuel??

The eternal search

Hello everybody...

Well, this is a bit off track, but a very valuable experience though...
I started looking for a house for myself at my new place and I realised how difficult the options can be.

I suddenly was having so many questions to answer before I decide and so many people to consult. It is like nothing ever before, where I had so many variables and dependencies.... I was really amazed.

How complicated can such simple things be at times ??

Keep in touch??

Apologies...

My sincere apologies for the delay. Well, at my new place, I am not able to access the net and somehow, my EVDO is also not working. But I have found this small place nearby to my hotel, where I am able to jot down some scattered thoughts.

The only problem is with the working hours and they are a bit odd in general. But I will try my best
to keep in touch.

One good thing that I find at my new place.... I get to see the not so good side (but of course, vital) side of our lifeline...the supply and demand chain and the need to keep moving at any cost...

The fight is still on...

Please keep in touch.

A new beginning...

I got transferred today from my place of work.

So, it's going to be a whole new beginning and a new territory for me. I hope to be able to live up to my own expectations. I have realized it hard enough that trying to live up to other's expectations can be so futile sometimes and can also be so costly. I learned a lot from my small experience in my last job and I had the luxury of traveling across the state. It actually gave me the opportunity to go around, meet people and yet, there is so much to know ... learn...., I guess that goes on.

I owe so much to my old place of work and I guess, I have been able to give even the smallest of the return for all that I have got. Yes, I am certainly going to miss the place that I lived for almost 9 years and I know it very well that there won't be a better place for me. But....

I guess, I can thank each and everyone there for everything. 

Lets' see what the new day has for me in store.....

Raja Festival

It's been raining for last three days here and it's ruining the holidays. "Raja" is one of the most awaited festivals in Orissa, dedicated to womanhood. But I guess, the weather is just playing foul this time. For some and specifically me, it brings a lot of relief in terms of rising temperatures.

One finds beautiful girls all dressed up sing songs while enjoying "Doli" and the tradition is as old as we all are.

This festival is also famous for "Pithas" (rice cakes) which are prepared in abundance as the ladies in households are allowed to enjoy the holidays. 

So what all kinds of "Pithas" are you having this time??

USE BSNL EVDO Card with Mac OS X

People who have a Macs in India are really troubled with the newly introduced EVDO cards from BSNL. These cards are manufactured by one pathetic ZTE company from China and they do not even provide drivers for other OSes except Windows. 

Anyway, good news is that we can use it with Mac OS X also, as I have found out from some blogs. So this is not an original discovery or invention by me.

There are two ways of doing that - 1. using PL 2303 Drivers and doing some tweaking with the OS X Kernel etc etc. and

2. the easier way is to do it the way I am describing now.

NOTE:

If you have installed the pl2303 drivers, then remove them before you proceed.

A. Removal Code: (Run in Terminal)

~$ sudo -s

bash-3.2# kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext/

bash-3.2# rm -r /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext/

bash-3.2# rm -r /Library/Receipts/osx-pl2303.pkg/

Reboot the System.
  

Setting up the EVDO Card 

1. Download this file from mediafire.

Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dgnemnmw3mm



 2. Extract to your root partition, which is usually Macintosh HD. Execute these command in the terminal.

~$ sudo -s

bash-3.2# cd /

bash-3.2# ls

 3. You should see the Install folder here.

bash-3.2# cd Install

bash-3.2# sh Install.sh

4. Reboot.

5. Open Network preferences, you should be able to see ZTE CDMA Tech as one the connections. Enter your BSNL (this usually 165 and password is 165) number and select Vendor (for hardware) as “Novatel” and Model as “CDMA” from advanced tab. The script is for ZTE AC8700 modems with hardware id 0c56:6000. The numbers 24576 and 1478 in the script correspond to the above id. You would have to change it if you have a different hardware id.

6. Connect and surf!  

By the way, I am getting 1190 kbps download speed with my EVDO. How much you people are getting?

Who are these people ?

1 Warren Buffett, US, $62.0

2  Carlos Slim Helu & family, Mexico, $60.0 
3  William Gates III, US, $58.0 
4  Lakshmi Mittal, India, $45.0  
5  Mukesh Ambani, India, $43.0  
6  Anil Ambani, India, $42.0  
7  Ingvar Kamprad & family, Sweden, $31.0  
8  KP Singh, India, $30.0  
9  Oleg Deripaska, Russia, $28.0  
10  Karl Albrecht, Germany, $27.0  
11  Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong, $26.5  
12  Sheldon Adelson, US, $26.0  
13  Bernard Arnault, France, $25.5  
14  Lawrence Ellison, US, $25.0  
15  Roman Abramovich, Russia, $23.5  
16  Theo Albrecht, Germany, $23.0  
17  Liliane Bettencourt, France, $22.9  
18  Alexei Mordashov, Russia, $21.2  
19  Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, Saudi Arabia, $21.0  
20  Mikhail Fridman, Russia, $20.8  

And Guess who are these people??  Well very simple, they are the richest people in the world as published by some organisation.

Now I heard someone saying envy........

Does it matter how much you earn or does it matter how much you can earn??

And what do you do with whatever you earn?

The cost of independence

We are (at least I was) all thrilled about the price drop of iPhones last evening. And I was really excited till I had a long discussion with an old friend who shares somewhat equal views.

Look at Apple this way, they do not want to earn a bad name for selling a very expensive phone and thereby loosing critical market share. So how would they do it? They reduce the cost of the phone (as they did it) and they earn their share through the Telecom companies (and add to this the declaration made by Mr. Jobs that they are going to roll out in 70 countries in coming few months). In simple words, the price drop ensures that the iPhone is never going to be a "free phone". This also indicates that they already have signed contracts with those Telecom companies who are creating the field to suck the customers off their valuable money on behalf of Apple. 

Nobody looses except the Customers. Well, I hear the views like "You got to pay the price if you want it". Very fair. Thank you for reminding.

How much are you going to spill out for the luxury of having the iPhone and your right to independence together???

It is not bad to flatter yourself sometimes!

Oh Boy, I was so right ....

I was really happy to see my pain ending as the WWDC started off. But believe me at the end of the Keynote address, I was more unhappy than happy. HAPPY (in capitals) because I get to buy one iPhone for almost half the price now and sad because there is nothing more than this one for one common man like me. I expected (and wrote of course) that "....a host of hardware and software...." are going to be available to us but, I guess, the waiting never ends happily as always.

But how many of you are going to buy one iPhone (for $199) when it becomes available in India, probably in late September or October???

Dipankar

Lord Jagannath's Besas

My friend Buboo wants me to post Lord Jagannath's Besas.

Sometime ago, there was a large exhibition (Utsav) on Lord Jagannatha with the intention of educating people about the Lord. The organisers had put their very noble and innovative effort in displaying many Besas (i.e. in different dresses / occasions) of Lord. I had the fortune of snapping the besas and I have put them up in Picasa Web Albums. 

Have you seen them all and more importantly, do you realise the significance of these Besas?? 

http://picasaweb.google.com/dipankarsahu/BesaOfLordJagannatha

The most painful job!!!

I have been waiting for the Apple WWDC webcast since this morning and nothing much seems to be happening on the sites. I realised something now... waiting can be so painful, especially when you really want things to happen. FYI, a certain Mr. Steve Jobs is all set to release a host of hardware and software today i.e. 9th June 2008. Most significant among them is the much anticipated new version iPhone with 3G capabilities (and hopefully an affordable, read cheaper, one). 

Aren't we all waiting for that godly thing to be in our hands????

Sambit's Father passed away

One of our dearest friend, Sambit's father passed away on friday evening. On saturday moring, we went to Puri, Swargadwar, for the cremation. We stayed there till about 12 o'clock and then we came back. Even if I did not want to, I still could not resist to ask myself -- why all this fuss, when life ends like this. 

This is something that happens everytime you go to such places, I guess.

Have you ever been to a cremation ground and stayed there??

Dipankar

One Nice Place in Kalahandi

I had been to "Thuamul Rampur", a place in Kalahandi last month. It is a great place and even in peak summer, it was really cool. Just that we do not get to know such places. You have to drive around 80 km.s from Bhawani Patna (district headquarter) to reach there and that through one "Karlapata Sanctuary". Really pleasant weather there.

We also had a brief encounter with some local people there. I was really surprised to know that commercialisation has not reached that place to that level. We also had a visit to a place called Rani Pahad (i.e. queen's peak) and then we went to a waterfall. We walked about 2 km.s after driving about 20 kms. Life, it seemed, has stopped there.

Dipankar

Welcome to My Blog!!!

Hello all,

I had thought of this and finally started with my first ever post. Let this be a journey into the future with lessons from the past.

I welcome you all one again.

Dipankar