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Chennai Tweet-up
Yes atlast after missing the first tweet-up which was held sometime back, I was able to attend this one. Let me list the people who attended the tweet-up. They are:
I was in a fix there whether to write everyone’s real names or not but then I thought twitter handles are way better. I was thinking of putting everyone’s display pictures but decided against that too since I didn’t want to put people’s picture without their permission. So anyways back to the tweetup, sadly I was the last to arrive. I felt kind of dumb about the fact that I didn’t know where Mocha was even though it was near my college and the fact that I am a college dude. The only one I could even remotely recognize was Sathya because of all the pictures that I have seen of his in twitter. As soon as I reached the first thing everyone started commenting was how different I look from my display picture. Narayanan said that I don’t look like a rowdy type guy and neither am I tall (:P cant help that) at least that is what he and others thought after looking at my picture and the real me. When everyone started talking about themselves I didn’t even tell what course I was doing. LOL didn’t find it interesting enough. Balaji really gave us some cool information on what he was working on. I really felt good that labsji was there as Sathya had put it, “ we was honoured he was there with us”. Then Palani talked about himself and actually kept it a bit short. When Ashish’s turn came everyone’s ears were up since everyone wanted to know what happened to his blog and he gave a quite big explaination on what went wrong. We only came to know later how much he earned by blogging and that had all of us in a shock. Perhaps the most interesting introduction was of Narayanan, sounded more or less like some cool CEOs climbing the ranks story where he started out working with MBA guys even before finishing his college. His life story was quite fun to listen to. Then it was Sathya’s chance and we came to know how he ended up at 3i. Then Gayathri talked about what she worked on and where she worked. She works with coding and stuff and Narayanan who was on phone just came to make sure he heard that right (Don’t know why :P).
Narayanan ordered Pasta with white sauce and Pasta with red sauce also something called Vertigo which was a huge piece of chocolate cake or something. Balaji ordered a tropical smoothie, Gayathri ordered hot chocolate and I ordered black forest shake which tasted funny but was still good. We all dug into pasta and Vertigo except Balaji who refrained from eating solid food(I forgot to ask why, my bad). As Narayanan had said the Vertigo was simply brilliant. We then talked about music, musical instruments, @cruisemaniac and @daaku, India TV, Aaj Tak, Bomb Blasts,my ICICI probs and some more stuff. Meanwhile Sathya installed Twittai on Gayathri’s phone and we advised Narayanan to opt for Xperia X1 rather than HTC G1(Android Phone). One funny thing was after ordering her hot chocolate half an hour before me she got it at least 10 minutes after I got mine, which was bad. Palani was the first to leave since he had to go somewhere else for dinner. The second to leave was Balaji. Funny thing was all of us stood up when he was going, guess respect comes from within for some people without knowing. Guess when we heard how much Ashish earned from his blog sent us in a shocked state, everyone was keen to know what he did for it. He was talking something cool that I didn’t listen to properly. As Gayathri had to leave by 11:00 pm train to Bangalore, we finished the tweetup at around 10:00 pm. We walked out Narayanan helped Gayathri get a auto-rickshaw. That reminds me we even discussed about the auto-rickshaw fares and how they charge people here. Then Ashish left in a auto-rickshaw. After that Sathya and Narayanan went together on Narayanan’s bike. Then I walked to Sterling road to catch a auto-rickshaw.
Well that definitely wrapped the whole tweetup. Sorry for the bad image just doodled it in 1 minute.
iPhone 3G Indian price
Yes after a long wait the pricing for iPhone 3G in India has been out. Its officially going to Rs. 31,000 for 8GB version and Rs36,000 or Rs. 37,000 for 16GB. So I guess all those people waiting for iPhone for Rs. 8,000 should start saving a hell lot of money now because its not going to be enough. I was thinking that it might be around Rs. 24,000 or something but I am not shocked by this figure at all. If I am correct Deep had said this might be the price some days back on twitter which had made me ready for the impact. So iPhone is competing with Nokia E90,HTC P 3650 (Cruise), HTC TYTN II, O2 XDA Atom Exec, BlackBerry 8820 and Nokia N93. All of these phones are high end phones and nearly all are business phones except Nokia N93 which means iPhone has been placed as a luxury item and nothing else. That means its only for those people whose bank balance is bigger than their bank itself, thats how normally Apple products are priced anyways. Not that I am bashing iPhone or anything but the price is exorbitantly high for a phone like iPhone. Lets hope they will reduce the price sometime in far away future.
Update(19th August 2008): So, atlast it has been confirmed that iPhone is after all priced at Rs. 31,000 for 8GB and Rs 36,100 for 16GB by Vodafone. Here is a snippet from their official press release which can be read here.
The iPhone 3G is available in 8GB and 16GB at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively. And as you have already pre-registered with us, you can get it before others do. All you need to do is drop in at a select Vodafone Store between August 14 and 19 and confirm your booking by paying Rs 10000 through cash or credit card. Don’t forget to show the iPhone booking SMS, which you would have received from us, when you visit the Vodafone Store to make the deposit.
There is even some information about the different plans that can be chosen for the postpaid connection with iPhone. Here is the link
Big Dreams Little Tokyo
I was just going through some movies when I stumbled upon a movie called, “Big Dreams Little Tokyo”. It’s a movie released in 2006 which is directed and written by David Boyle. When I saw the title and read the synopsis a bit, I thought why not just get it and watch it since I am a fan of Japanese culture and language it would be fun to watch Japanese culture through an outsiders perspective. I never realised that the movie would be so good.
Are Advertorials Ethical
Advertorials are not exactly a latest trend they have been there for a really long time now. Advertorial portmanteau of the words advertisement and editorial. But there is nothing editorial about these advertorials. These advertorials are biased and are not objective based which is what a newspaper or a magazine should contain. These are normally a review of some product or some new place or shop which is given in the newspaper in form of a article, but they are totally biased and make sure that it gives you a good impression and make you buy the product or avail the service. I find this cheating the code of honour of journalism. I thought journalism meant being truthful and not giving biased opinion on any topic. Aren’t journalists supposed to be the watchdogs of a democratic country. I know these ideals are old and outdated but the utter lack of these peinciples is evident from these advertorials.I find it quite appalling that no one actually bothers to tell people that these are paid advertisements and not genuine reviews. I have seen many paid reviews online on many blogs and nearly 90% of them had it clearly stated below that they were paid reviews which made it clear that if it was biased, it was because of being paid. But in newspapers these paid reviews are written with so much realism that you believe them to be true and not just some paid advertisement. I find it morally wrong on part of the journalists who have indulged in such practice but unfortunately all the newspapers and magazines nowadays follow this kind of paid advertisement schemes. I am not sure if this is a question of morality or integrity or of anything but I do believe that it is wrong.
Near Future Buying List
Recently many bloggers have been writing about the stuff that they were planning to buy. So I thought why not I also write about stuff that I want to buy, planning to buy or wish to buy soon. I came up with some stuff that I would like to have in these 2 years. But beware my choices are a bit weird and it’s just that I cant help the fact that I like weird stuff. So here goes my list:
Oil prices and fun
Well it’s no big news that oil prices are on the rise. I guess it might even reach $200 per barrel soon if the price band suggestion is not implemented. This all is the technical gibberish which holds importance for us but is just not what we care about.
To tell the truth what I care about is how much I have to pay for any kind of public transport which includes buses, taxis and autorickshaws(according to Indian context). Main problem anyone would face would be with autorickshaws in India. Take my case for example, I used to pay around Rs. 30 to go to the Bus Depot(CMBT) from my house in an auto. That was about a month or so ago. Suddenly some days ago when I wanted to go there, I was being charged Rs. 50. I actually thought it was just this one guy trying to get more money but I realised that every single auto driver was charging the same price. The truth is that, the place is barely 3-4 kms from my house and I really don’t think 1 litre of petrol would be wasted for 3-4 kms even if its an auto. This shows how these people are having fun with the increase in petrol price.
When you talk about fuel prices you really can’t miss the rising inflation in India. Its like the latest hot topic. Wherever I turn to people are talking about how that inflation in India might actually cross 20% if the fuel prices don’t go down. Many things that are not related to fuel directly or even indirectly are increasing price giving a boost to the inflation. So my fellow Indians be ready to pay through your nose for anything and everything.
Photo of a autorickshaw