Paid my credit card bill using netbanking. My bank immediately called me to confirm that I wasn't coerced into making the payment. They wanted to make sure I wasn't being scammed out of my money.
Only problem was that the bank employee was herself so poorly educated and trained, that she sounded like a scammed. She kept asking me for my personal information to confirm my identity. I told her I am not giving a random caller any info.
Sounds like the RBI forced the banks to do something about the scams, and they chose to do the bare minimum.
Kavin made this video to "explain a hw question to my friend". I asked him for the code and he said "it's messy" because "it's his first time".
There's been an ongoing tussle between me and him. I want him to do more with his time than his usual engagements - studies, piano and crochet (and other crafts). I've been trying to get him to work on a software project or community service project that solves a real world problem.
He'd rather use his time to do unstructured stuff - to experiment and explore.
I guess he won the argument with this "boredom leads to creativity" video.
The kannadigas asserting their false claim to the state of Goa at, of all places, a music concert. My dude, nobody wants to go from being the highest per capita HDI, highest per capita GDP state to whatever clusterf@&£ it is you guys have.
What is the best way to reach out to the pool of potential candidates who are residing locally in Goa?
We also need a driver on company payroll. A commercial DL is not required. Someone suggested we should give print ads for this opening. Is that the best way to reach out to potential hires in Goa?
In 1993 my family relocated from Delhi to Bhopal. As a parting gift, TJ gave me a cassette tape of Bob Dylan's greatest hits. I listened to that tape till it was more distortion than music. I looked high and low but couldn't find another Bob Dylan cassette in all of Bhopal.
Then we visited a family friend. Don't remember who they were. They lived in number 10 market, opposite Manohar dairy, and owned all the shops there. The youngest of the family had an original of Under The Red Sky by Bob Dylan. It was perhaps Dylan's most forgettable album, but I still tried for weeks to get a copy of it from this guy.
A couple of years later I got a CD drive. Tabrez would give me CDs, ostensibly from his dad's airplane. I listened to so much MJ.
Summer of 1996, I was at Panjab University, Chandigarh. I went down to Sector 17, looking for music. Realised I couldn't afford any of the good music because it was all imported. Also didn't find Under The Red Sky.
1998. College. My friends got tired of me always listening to Dylan. I discovered other music. And suddenly my music library exploded. Fresher western music night, someone sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane" live. (Anyone here remember who she was?)
2011 I first used Spotify. All the music in the world, at the tips of your finger. And yet, it took my thirteen more years, till tonight, to finally listen to Under The Red Sky again. For only the second time in my life.
A local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around, that they offered a standing ₹10,000 bet.
The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out would win the money.
Many people had tried over time (weightlifters, pahalwans, etc.) but nobody could do it.
One day a woman came in and said "I'd like to try the bet."
After the laughter had died down, the bartender said okay, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away.
Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the lady.
But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the woman clenched her fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.
As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the ₹10,000, and asked the lady, "Who are you? Are you a bodybuilder, a weightlifter, or what?"
Sharing another customer service woe, this time with HDFC Life. I purchased a life insurance policy. They emailed me a letter. The letter has a very old office address on it. Said letter also has a link to a portal where I could update the contact details. The portal displayed a different address - which I have never been associated with. It also displayed a different email address and phone number from that on the letter.
I wrote to them, asking where they were pulling this data from. They responded with a form that I must fill up in order to have the address updated. And of course I needed to attach proofs to substantiate this address.
Indignant, I wrote back, specifically asking _them_ to provide copies of documents basis which _they_ had established these two physical addresses as mine. I also asked them for a copy of the form filled by me when applying for the policy, and a copy of the address proof I had provided then.
No dice. They keep replying back asking _me_ to provide _them_ with a proof of my current address, while not even acknowledging my concerns - where are they getting these addresses from, and how many printed letters with my private financial information have they despatched so far to these random addresses.
What is happening in corporate India? Is everybody just constantly reading from a script with no application of the mind? Is there fear and terror in the customer service departments, such that no trace of human intellect must be betrayed and only the bidding of the higher echelons must be done, customer satisfaction be damned.
Rhetorical rant: What is this manic obsession with data collection by companies? When the government does it, we well understand what their motives are. After all they've foisted the half baked CKYC system upon us. I have traced one of the bad addresses to that database, from where it is sending it to all other financial institutions. Of course I never provided that address, nor could I every have produced any "proof" for that address. How, then, did one of the financial institutions upload this junk address into the system? Why would HDFC override the address I explicitly gave with garbage from this system? And do citizens have any forum to knock to fix all this swapping of garbage?
I am facing a peculiar customer service issue with @[100069241866387:2048:Tata Motors]. I wonder what you guys do in such situations.
I own a Tata Nexon EV. The vehicle works rather well. It has a nifty design feature - a socket for an umbrella built right into the driver's door. The socket is small, and not every umbrella fits into it. Tata Motors has umbrellas designed to fit this socket (sold separately from the car). The dealerships in Goa never seem to carry it, so I decided to buy it online from here: https://cars.tatamotors.com/accessories/details.html?sku=885709101605
The website requires me to submit my car registration number and chassis number in order to buy an umbrella. Annoyed by this cast-your-net-wide manner of data collection, I nevertheless obliged because I really need this umbrella (biblical rains in Goa this year). But of course the website doesn't work, and freezes when one tries to submit the vehicle number.
So I wrote to customer service, requesting assistance in procuring said parasol. And on cue they reply back asking for the chassis number, registration number and odometer reading in order to "take my case further".
Obstinate as I am, I wrote back, asking why Tata must establish am umblical connection between my vehicle chassis and the umbrella before selling it to me.
Here is where it gets weird. I am getting calls. I am getting email replies. In each of them, robotically, they keep asking for the chassis number. When I ask them why the chassis number is required, there isn't even silence. They simply ignore me and repeat back the same question, "Please give us your chassis number in order to proceed further".
I don't know what to say. Indian corporates have reduced their minions to a situation worse than robots, where they have no intellect or soul left. They just do the master's bidding, with no shame or self respect. I really do see a future for genAI now, if this is the kind of mind numbness it intends to replace.
But I digress. What would you do in such a dystopian situation, where the stakes are not high at all? It is just an umbrella after all (although I am inclined to buy two now that I've put in so much effort).
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In recent years I have seen a distinct change in the attitude and tone of emails from sellers in China.
We regularly get spam from manufacturers in China, insisting they become our suppliers for finished computers. I am constrained to reply to the persistent ones, telling them that we are manufacturers ourselves and do not need their finished goods. At the maximum, we might source small components such as power switches or high speed cables.
Earlier, this would be met with praise or congratulations. Now, they are incredulous. "But you can't manufacture in India". "How do you make electronics in India?". "That is not possible. If you already have another good supplier in China and don't want to change, just say that".
This total domination of the market, this success, has gone to their heads. And equally responsible are those Indian brands who import fully finished goods from China and then falsely claim that they make in India, or are merely doing screwdriver assembly of SKD kits without any inputs into design or technology. They are enabling this belief among the Chinese that Indians are incompetent and lie about their achievements.
Anyway. I hope this is the beginning of the end. As someone with 20+ years of electronics manufacturing experience, I can confirm that making electronics is not rocket science. Which, by the way, is a science that we Indians excel in.
We at thinvent.in are looking for someone who has experience writing Detailed Projects Reports for manufacturing companies. The project report would be used for securing industrial land, subsidies and/or bank finance.
The right candidate would be a freelancer with a proven track record of writing project reports that went on to secure their desired objective.
A couple of weeks ago, Nilay and Kavin were doing a survey in rural Tamil Nadu for Eureka Homes (AID India). They were making a map of the village and figuring out what families need support.
I tagged along on the first day. Beyond the edge of the village was... I don't know the right term... a shrine where the village guardian, some other Gods, and a sacred banyan tree were there. At the very edge was a temple still under construction. While standing beside it we were met by a man who lamented the bad state of the temple, and implored us to do something about it.
By the third day Nilay had had it. This story apparently repeated in many village they surveyed. "There are no hospitals, no clinics. The schools are tiny and absolutely run down. The panchayat building is in shambles. And all these people care about is temples. One village had more than five temples and no functioning school!"
I tried to explain to Nilay that TN is a progressive state. The HDI is one of the highest for a large state. Per capita GDP is also high, and rising fast. The state government is progressive and focuses on social equity. He was unimpressed.
When you speak to people in Goa, issues like the environment, cutting of trees, quality of roads and schools, civic sense related to throwing garbage or driving properly, water and electricity - this is what people talk about. They don't talk about churches or temples - that's not a social issue to discuss.
But I really wonder - if TN hasn't moved beyond temples as an "infrastructure" issue, where are rural Bengal and Bihar?
Traveling out of Goa, food is always a pain. Not just the quality, but the portion sizes in Goa are also quite good. And the pricing is reasonable, unless you visit tourist traps. I don't know in what world this qualifies as a sharing plate.
The boys came out of the water last evening, shaken up, but still very excited about toeay. "The waves will be softer in the morning", they said. Why do I not see it?
Surfing near Chennai is definitely an extreme sport. Rocks, Heavy surf, and dozens of people in the same spot. The chill surfing vibes are kinda missing.
As long as I had nothing but my cot and my books, I was happy. Now I have nine chickens and a rooster, and my soul is troubled.
The property has made me cruel. Whenever I bought a chicken I tied it to a tree for two days, to impose my domicile on it, destroying in its fragile memory the love for her former residence. I mended the fence of my yard, in order to prevent the escape of my birds, and the invasion of four- and two-foot foxes. I isolated myself, fortified the border, drew a diabolical line between me and my neighbor. I divided humanity into two categories; I, owner of my chickens, and the others who could take them from me. I defined the crime. For me, the world is filled with suspected thieves, and for the first time I cast a hostile look on the other side of the fence.
My rooster was too young. The neighbor's rooster jumped over the fence and began to court my hens and make my rooster's existence miserable. I stoned the intruder away, but they jumped over the fence and looted at the neighbor's house. I claimed the eggs and my neighbor hated me. Since then I saw his face on the fence, his inquisitive and hostile gaze, identical to mine. His chickens passed the fence, and devoured the wet corn that I dedicated to mine. Other people's chickens seemed like criminals to me. I chased them, and blinded by rage I killed one. The neighbor attributed great importance to the attack. He did not want to accept financial compensation. He gravely removed the corpse of his chicken, and instead of eating it, he showed it to his friends, with which the legend of my imperialist brutality began to circulate in the town. I had to reinforce the siege, increase surveillance, increase, in a word, my war budget. The neighbor has a dog determined to do anything; I am thinking of purchasing a revolver.
Where is my old peace of mind? I am poisoned by distrust and hatred. The evil spirit has taken over me. Before he was a man. I am now an owner...
EVs are not worse for the environment than IC engine based cars.
I mean, the statement is so obviously wrong, that if you had studied high school physics, you would pause after saying it and wonder "hmm, then has everything I've learnt in physics always been a lie?"
IC engines are terrible when it comes to efficiency. An IC engine loses most of the chemical energy in its fuel (petrol/diesel) as heat. Only about 20% of the chemical energy in fuel gets converted to the mechanical energy of motion in a car.
If you were to replace a petrol car with an electric car of the same size, and power it exclusively from a coal plant, the net carbon emission would immediately drop by 33%. This includes T&D losses, charging losses, and what not.
IC engines are also inefficient because they are puny. The turbine in a power plant is massive, and it isn't sitting around idling or waiting for the right RPM to hit for it to deliver maximum efficiency.
Think about it. A small petrol car costs ₹8.5/km or more to run in India. The same car, in electric form, costs ₹0.85/km to run. If EVs weren't massively more energy efficient, how would that be possible?
Eliminating the carbon emissions in electricity consumption is easy. If you run an EV 2500km/month, you can stick a 4KWhr panel on your rooftop for about 10% the cost of your EV, and now your net emissions are zero. To offset the emissions of a dino juice burner, you need to plant many trees and nurture them to full size. Most of us in urban areas don't even have the space to do that.
Now coming to the assertion that EVs consume a lot more energy to make, and therefore their "lifetime" carbon footprint is higher than IC cars. EVs in India cost 50% more than comparable IC cars. And 50% additional material and energy is roughly required to make them. That's it.
On in use, an EV's "fuel" comes over wires. But an IC car's dino juice must be pumped out of the earth, transported in ships, refined, then transported in trucks to the fuel station. It leaks and evaporates into the environment at each stage, before being turned into CO2 and CO and dumped into the atmosphere. The lifetime consumption of energy in just keeping an IC car fueled is more than the energy consumed to make an EV car.
Sure, EV batteries are toxic. But so are the lead acid batteries powering your inverter, or the batteries in your phone, laptop or TV remote. And they are all recyclable. You are required to recycle them by law. We can recover all the material in a battery, and this technology is only getting better. So all those metals are only mined once, and then they live on and on in our batteries.
The trick here is that the materials used in batteries are precious. They are expensive. As long as they are expensive there is value in recovering them. As long as they are toxic the government will force the manufactures to recycle them at end of life.
All cars are bad. Private transport is worse than public transport. But public transport will never be viable for a lot of use cases, especially in rural and remote areas. Transportation is the single biggest cause of carbon emissions. Electrifying rail, bus, ferry, truck, and cars and bikes, is the only way forward.
I've been reading some ill-informed, stupid "forwards" by people claiming that solar energy is bad for the environment. I am in the mood for a rant today, so here goes:
1. "Solar panels consume more energy than they make". Before 1990, some solar panels consumed more energy to be manufactured than they produced in their "useful life". This energy consumed, included the energy required to mine and refine the materials such as polysilicon and silver that go into solar panel production. A lot of these panels were specialised panels such as those that go on to space stations.
Today most solar panels break even in one to four years! And their useful life is 20 to 25 years. Within the first year of operation, a solar panel would have generated more electricity that was consumed to create it. If you think your solar panel will take 20 years to pay back its carbon footprint, you are living in the 80s.
2. "Solar panels lead to toxic waste". OK, lots of points here. a) solar panels are way way less toxic than regular electronics - even headphones and remote controls that people so frequently throw away (source: I manufacture electronics for a living). b) the government of India, like most governments in the world, mandates that manufactures compulsorily recycle all e-waste they product. It is up to the consumer to return their used electronics to the producer. The producer is also required to collect and recycle a certain amount of electronics every year through their own initiatives. It isn't perfect, but the system actually works well. (source: I own a company that is required to recycle e-waste and we do it all the time).
So if your solar panel is ending up in the landfill with the trace amounts of heavy metals it might have in it, that is entirely on you. Recycle it responsibly - you already paid for the recycling when you bought it.
3. "Solar panels have a limited life". There is no end of life of solar panels. They just become "weak"; they don't die. When you replace your solar panels after 20-25 years of use, it is because you want more powerful solar panels on your roof. But that panel still works, and most likely in a country like India, it will end up on the rooftop of a poor family in a village somewhere, where it will keep making small amounts of electricity for many more decades.
"Operating" a panel costs effort - mostly to keep the panel clean. Most middle class Indian households depend on external labour to upkeep their panels. That is why at some point we would replace our old panels with new shiny ones. But a poor family can maintain its panels on its own, and can therefore eek electricity out of "weak" panels for a long time using the free labour of its family members.
4. "The right answer is to consume less". I am someone who can quote E. F. Schumacher from memory, yet I disagree. Less is not always the right answer. We should be consuming more and more energy for purposes like healthcare and education. Even reducing unnecessary toil in the household using machines is a good thing to do. Let us stop romanticising domestic labour and chores - only those who are willingly blind to the caste, class and gender imbalance baked into domestic work would do that. Even climate control using electricity is a good thing. Blindly saying ACs are bad doesn't help. Indian summers are hot and keeping indoors cool helps improve productivity and health. Indian winters are bloody cold in a lot of places and electricity is a great alternative to fireplaces.
Next rant will be about how EVs are bad for the environment. Some people are shills for the oil industry and don't even realise it.
An engineer's brain is tuned to identify and solve problems. But there is no morality attached to what problems we identify. Glancing through this post the problem/opportunity I noticed is that the drudgery of hand block printing can be eliminated with a robotic arm and some randomness added in.
It's sheer evil. You can immediately see the evil of robbing thousands of people of centuries of livelihood and craft with code written over a month by one person. I'm not eliminating drudgery. I'm eliminating livelihood. And someone will do it. If it's not already done (coz we can't tell the difference with a good algo mimicking a human hand).
Technology. Development. Science. Capitalism. And the worthlessness of being a human being with skills. Another human with tech skills could eliminate your entire clan's livelihood over the greed for another international vacation.
I randomly messaged a friend today, to annoy her about some rather questionable moral choices her large corporate employer has made. And it turned out that she is going through a major personal struggle.
To say that she hadn't triggered my spidey senses multiple times in the last few months would be wrong. But for entirely stupid reasons I didn't reach out to her. I didn't want to "impose" myself.
Trust your sixth sense and annoy your friends. Annoyance >> silence.
All these charlatans who use the pejorative allopathy to refer to modern, scientific medicine, go rushing to it at the first sign of trouble. I don't mind. I do mind them preventing their victims from accessing modern medicine and pushing them towards concoctions that haven't passed clinical testing.
If you are a serious investor in the stock markets in India and the US, I would like to take some advice from you. Please reach out over WhatsApp, or comment here and I will connect.
(Happy to compensate you for your time in kind or through some good deed.)
Please ignore the word salad that this article is and focus on the message: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same
This is precisely what is wrong with a number of these Instagrammable restaurants that keep coming up (and thankfully, going down with equal alacrity) in Goa. There is nothing truly unique or quintessentially Goan about them. The Miss Margarita in GK-II and the one in Vagator - to the casual observer they make look worlds apart, but look closely and it is the same decor and aesthetic. And it isn't so much about the aesthetic being similar between two branches of the same chain, as it is that essential elements of the Goan aesthetic are missing.
Just making a restaurant or cafe open air doesn't make it Goan ("oh look, in Goa you can breathe and feel the open air whereas in Delhi it will suffocate, freeze or singe you"). I am no architect or artist, but there are places that make me feel "at home" and places that don't. So as an untrained person, let me put out my list of nuances that make a Goan restaurant, truly Goan:
- An unpaved floor - just slabs/tiles placed on the ground. - Mangalore tiles on the roof. - Being welcoming to dogs and other animals and birds. If there isn't a streety or two on your premises, then you aren't Goan. - Trees. Architecture around trees. And creepers. - The bartender being able to make a Feni concoction without having to be f^&*ing told what a Feni drink needs to look like. - Warmth. If the staff isn't friendly and laid back, or worse has a plastic smile on their face, then that's a piece of big city culture we don't need. - Knowing your food. Everybody in the establishment should know the food they serve.
So yeah, all this Instagram homogeneity, and people traveling to dine in specific fancy places so they can mark their presence there on Instagram, is nothing but an extension of what we used to derisively call "Patel shots" when young. Don't do it. Be in the moment when traveling. Experience local culture. Immerse yourself in nature. Travel is not about posing in front of every "I ❤️ Whatever" sign you come across.
I'm going to be partying tonight at Happy Brew in Koramangala with some friends. Come over if you'd like to meet. I'll likely be there by 9:30pm. Karaoke begins at 10pm. DJ set begins at 11:30pm.
@martindsouzaofficial is the DJ. See https://instagram.com/stories/martindsouzaofficial/3251973264964821055 for a glimpse of his karaoke last night.
यह फूल मिला मुझे, पणजी में, मंडोवी के किनारे। तमाम मुश्किलों के बावजूद इसने जिंदा रहने की ज़िद की। जो मंहुसियत कभी अहमदाबाद में फैलाई गई थी, नदी के किनारे को concrete में ढलने की, वो अब गोवा में भी फैल रही है।
हरियाणा में हरियाणवी भाषा की इतनी दुर्गति है कि सरकार ने गुड़गाँव को Gurugram बना दिया, और कोई कुछ ना बोला. हरियाणवी भाषा के मुद्दे पर बने प्रदेश हरियाणा में हरियाणवी नाम हटा कर एक शहर का नाम हिन्दी/संस्कृत का कर दिया जाता है. और नीरज जैसे दिग्गज को भी बोलते वक़्त यह ध्यान देना पड़ता है कि वो हरियाणवी को एक भाषा नहीं एक बोली बतायें. हरियाणा सरकार के पास हरियाणवी भाषा या सभ्यता कर लिए कोई बजट नहीं, कोई समय नहीं. इस भाषा को इज़्ज़त देने का काम सिर्फ उसके बोलने वालों का रह गया है.
Just another garden variety domestic migrant leaving Maharashtra/Haryana for greener pastures. He will settle down once he reaches Goa. He will then also solve the Mhadei issue single handedly.
