Category Archives: india

Back in the days when I’d newly discovered the Internet and email, I used to “publish” a newsletter called “The best of Tidsy Bitsy stuff on the Internet” – swell name, isn’t it? Basically what I did was to compile whatever I found interesting on the Internet that week, do a copy-paste job and send it out to everyone I knew (who) had an email address. Ya, it wasn’t exactly “opt-in”, though as it grew popular (read as I got hold of more email addresses) I put in an “opt-out” option, if I remember correctly. Anyways, this post is something like that – a few stories that caught my eyes during the past few days.

This article over at CNET has upset Google so much that no one from Google will be talking to CNET for a year – literally! A case of truth hurts? The jury is still out on that one – remind me to do a write-up on that someday, I have a few things in my head, waiting to come out. Sticking with CNET you can get almost three billion dollars worth of lessons for free.

You’ll like this for sure, especially you Raman. A WiFi hotspot covering 600 square miles in Oregon, USA with speeds that would put most wired connections to shame.

Now one up for India. An English boy will fly to Delhi, India for a spine operation because the queue in hospitals in UK is longer than the ones outside ration shops in India. I guess he’ll save some money as well. Outsourcing goes medical anyone?

Sticking with the UK, the Guardian has an interesting article on Rising, the forthcoming Hindi film. Don’t care much about the guy or the movie, but the article is worth a read.

Talking about movies, saw Saher the night it was released and it’s what I would call an honest movie – really liked it. And yes Mayank, it’s based in the late 90s instead of 2004 because the plot required cell-phones to be introduced mid-way through the movie and not be ubiquotous throughout. Hope that satisifies your query. I agree the director could have paid more attention to detail and ensure that the “errors” you point out shouldn’t have crept in, but that would have been unnecessary effort in my opinion. He wasn’t making a periodical that he needed to go out of his way to ensure that kind of consistencies – a Bisleri bottle in the times of Akbar would have been a staggering mistake alright, but the new packaging, Honda City or CNG Buses being shown to exist just a few years back aren’t reasons enough to crucify the director. It’s a small oversight – I guess he wasn’t counting on too many Virgos with their attention to detail (to borrow your own words) on watching the movie 😉

And one last thing – how good was the test match at Edgbaston! Greatest test match I have ever seen for sure.

PS – Alcohol after a six weeks break is just like having it for the first time – for the first couple of swigs atleast.

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I realize now how much she’s just like the others, cold and distant, and many people are like that, women for sure, they’re like a union.

Everyone’s always highlighting things that don’t work here in India, so I thought for a change let’s talk about something that does, and quite well at that.

Train enquiry allows you to track movement of trains in “real time”. Well, it’s not exactly up-to-the-minute information on the trains but it does give you the (exact) time of departure and the (expected) time of arrival at all major stations along the route of a(ny) train that is currently running. The information is updated every 30-60 mins, so you can get a fair idea of the current position of the train. And it’s pretty accurate too – I can vouch for that!

I’m not sure if too many people know about this but it’s pretty cool to see Indian Railways provide this information online. If they can put this information on a map and have data for multiple trains, I know atleast one person who might drop in to their site just to watch all those trains go by… he he. We seem to have this idea of our railways being stuck in the 19th century, despite all the changes they’ve made recently like the online reservation system (which has been a huge hit). But let’s give some credit where it’s due.

So check the site next time before you leave your house to pickup someone from the station – it might save you the trouble of waiting a couple of hours at the station.