Oh God! More Sunlight, Please.

It is now almost two months since I'm in Scotland. It is really strange experience to have such short days. For past one month, when I start for work in morning, it is dark (well almost dark, you can not spot Sun) and when you leave from work, it is again dark. Yesterday we had lunch out of office and it was looking so different to come out of office when there is still day light left. Unfortunately, I'm still not used to the solar-schedule of Scotland :(.

So I started wondering that how long it is going to continue like this. I stumbled upon this link which tells days will continue to go shorter till 21st December this year (2008) which will be shortest day of year. Well, not that bad, only few more days. At least now I know when things will start improving soon and I'll know tomorrow I'll get more sunlight than today.

Traffic (non)sense in Bangalore

I guess, traffic conditions at Bangalore are on the top of "Most Bothering Things in Blr" for every one in Bangalore. What I feel, to a great extent, we ourselves are responsible for this. If you spend few days observing how people (including yourself) drive on road, you will find it natural what is causing a bad road experience. At a high level, these are two broad categories for road experience

• Infrastructural Issues (potholes, narrow road, missing traffic signal etc.)
• Traffic Sense of ppl

First one is practically out of our control, unless you plan to take out a *Morcha* against government. What I feel that second one is bigger issue and causes more damage to our road experience. On the other hand, this is the factor which we can control (and for that matter no one else can do). Most common ill-road-practices are ...

• High Beam - C'mon boss. You don't need High Beams in Bangalore city. Roads are pretty well lit. Many a times I don't even turn on full light, I just use the minimal light and turn on the lights only when I feel road lights are not on or are not enough. If low beam lights are not working then better get your lights checked. bikes/cars are designed in such a way that you should not need high bean on citi roads. High beam looks harmless but it causes a lot of fatigue to the personal who is followed by a vehicle having high beam on. Please avoid. It is not needed. 
• Un-necessary honking - This one U don't don't don't don't need at all. 99% of time, for sure you don't need to use horns. I feel you can avoid rest 0.5% as well. Look at the honks when signal turns on green. Dude, no one likes to stay on the road. If there is a delay for few seconds please tolerate. Every one is in hurry to reach home.
• Jumping Signals (or Not-respecting Rules): This one is really ironic. Bangalore city has got good number of educated ppl (after all it is hitech city, silicon valley of India) and good number of cab drivers. Interestingly, there is no difference in behavior of both groups. No one likes to respect Signals, Rules and above all, fellow riders on road. Looks like every one has decided that he will be last person to obey the rules. Let others do it, I'll follow. This is not going to work this way. Simply a non-convergent solution. Use common sense, Sir.
• low-tolerance of drivers: This is a cyclic problem. A vicious circle. Bad traffic experience causes low tolerance and low tolerance cause you to behave in a way which again causes bad experience for others. Give it a thought.

These are just some of my experiences and observations. I'm sure there is more to it. But I feel, it is a simpler problem to solve if every one (or say a good % of us) behave responsibly. Read this interesting article "Indians Are Privately Smart and Publicly Dumb".

Google Chrome is good

Chrome got lot of things better than other browsers. I'm not perticularly talking in terms of Technical details but the end user facing features. Some of the features go like this...

- Lots of viewing space. I really like this. Feels like you are working in a full screen mode.

- It imported almost everything from Firefox. Even the short cuts.

- Address bar suggestion is good. What I missed in Firefox was hints/suggestion for shortcut words which I have created. Chrome suggests that also. 

- It knows what I search. After using for few days in office where I was working with bugzilla, I noticed that it has put search box for bugzilla also. That is impressive.

- Memory footprint is low (though multiplies with every new tab).

- Dynamic status bar (for hovering over links, showing progress etc.) gives you more space for viewing the page.

Over all looks like a no-nonsense browser. I reallly like it. I'm sure it has lot more things to offer.

Day out at Innovative Filmcity, Bangalore

Every morning in weekend, my family faces a very interesting and recurring problem - "What to do this weekend?". It is a very genuine and serious problem. If you are not a "roam-and-shop-at-mall" kind of person then Bangalore has very little to offer for spending your time on weekends. Another problem linked to this is when I get some visitor from another city. Problem compounds if visitor is from some metro and is really as bored with Malls as you are. I guess Innovative film city offers some respite from this problem. After thinking for few weekends, we finally decided to pay a visit to this much awaited and sounds-to-be-interesting place. I'm sharing my experiences for the first visit.



Innovative filmcity is located on Mysore Road, decently out of Bangalore but not that far that distance becomes a deciding factor. I have to go from Sarjapur road and it took us around 2 hrs to reach filmcity. But the delay was largely because of diversions due to construction on roads. It'd have lot faster (prbably in 1hr) if we had taken the NICE from Bannerghatta Road. Though NICE road has its own share of problems of un-constructed stretch. If it is raining/had rained recently, don't take NICE. You might get stuck.

Filmcity opens at 11 AM and we reached at around 2 PM. Weather was good, sunny and little warm. Parking is still un-organized. There is no designated parking area. You need to park outside, along with the boundary. Since as of now not many visitors are there so Parking is not an issue.

One good thing is that entry fee is very low. If you decide not to take any package, then entry fees is only Rs. 50 (full ticket for children above 3 yrs). Interestingly still camera charges are Rs. 100 and Video camera Rs. 200 which I felt are on little higher side. There were maps available on the ticket counter which clearly marked what is available and what is coming soon. From the map it looks as if it is a very huge park. It is big but not as big as I imagined.

Now it was time to enter THE park. Entrance is beautifully designed and clearly indicates that interesting things wait inside. It looks royal, nicely crafted. As soon as you cross the entrance, you enter the Main Street which has the theam of old European architecture.

We were hungry so decided to directly head for Food Court which was on the other side of the park. On the way we could see lots of attractions and could see that many are still under construction. Food court doesn't have lot of things to offer. Since outside food is not allowed, so there is no other option as well. You have South Indian, Rajasthani, Sandwiches, Chinese, drinks etc. McDonald had a board saing.."Coming Soon". I guess things should improve over time. Anyways, we quickly finished the lunch and started marking attractions which we wanted to cover first. Since we had kids with us so we directly headed for Dino Park and Cartoon City. On the way we could see boards for Haunted Mansion,  Miniature City which were not yet ready but seemed promising.

Dino Park and Fossil Museum are attached but we decided to take only Dino Park. It is designed like a jungle which lots of moving Dinos which description for each one. It really gives good feel of jungle (though some dions looks more artificial than others). It is like a small walk with Dinos making growling sound. There is a small movie theater also which keeps showing a movie about Dinos.

Next was cartoon City. It is a nice open area which some rides. Attached to this is Aqua Kingdom which we decided not to take because of kids and lack of time. In cartoon city, i couldn't spot many cartoons after from the one built at the entrance. There was a guy who was making carricatures for Rs 30. Leading from Cartoon City was Velocity (the gocarting).

There are small snacks-coffee joints at all the places like Cafe Coffee day, chamosa, pop corn, drinks ect. Also, I could spot small shops selling souvenirs in a small but beautiful wooden shops. It was adding to the beauty of the place. 

It was time for Reply's Believe it or Not. It was a good collection of stuff. Well, some are very good, some are good and quite a bit are not so good but you can spend a lot of time here. Even if you just pass by it can take easily 45 mins. It is definitely worth visiting.

By the time we came out of Repley's, it was raining heavily so we thought to spend some time in Funplex. Funplex is a place for video game lovers (bikes, cars, cycles, shooting, boating, tanks, helicoptors etc.) but unfortunately that days most of the things were not working. So we couldn't try anything. Another attraction was 4D movie. 4D is 3D + 1D of effects from chair (jerks, movements, air and water spray). It was showing a movie related to origin of life. Topic itself is not very interesting. If they get good movies then it will definitely a good experience. For those who have not seen such kind of movie before, it is recommended but those who have see it somewhere you can skip it.

By the time we finished all this, it was already 7 PM so we decided to call it a day. So we took coffee from Cafe coffee day and came out. It was dark and lighting effects were in form and looking realy very good.

So what is the over all impression. I think, it a good place to plan a day's outing. Still a lot of things are under constructions so experience will be even richer once it is complete. Entry fee is very less but if you add the individual attractions (which are generally 100 Rs. each) then it will be good amount. Quality of attractions is good and of internation quality. Distance from Bangalore is also not an issue if you are planning to spend the full day there.

So over all, a very good place to spend your day. I am surely going to visit it again as soon as I get some guest :). One problem is solved. Thank you Innovative Film City.

Joining the blogger community :-)

Greetings and thanks for landing (and staying) on my blog. By creating a blog and adding this post, I feel I have added myself to the blogger community. Writing blogs was never my dream but often I come across 'thoughts' (due to some pleasant/unpleasant incident or may be originating from some discussion or just because I have some free time and thinking aloud) which i want to share with someone. Not just share but get some feedback as well. So this weekend, I thought of setting up this blog account so that I don't have an excuse of not having a setup. So this post is just for the completion of that first step.

Wish me luck.