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?