Tittle-Tattle

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine. Our office canteen has this great Biriyani counter. I told my friend that this guy has one of his outlets somewhere near RV Dental College in JP Nagar. My friend said, you mean the one opposite to HDFC bank. I said, no HDFC Bank should be opposite to this RV Dental College. (Actually, neither is correct, but that isn't the point of this post). We laughed over this, but this reminded me of the way landmarks keep changing and its repercussions. I sometimes take a bus to travel back home from my office. BMTC conductors are familiar with the way the bus stops were named earlier. But that was then, and there are several new landmarks in Bangalore now, including on the Bannerghatta road. There is this Bannerghatta road and Outer ring road junction and BMTC knows it as JD Mara junction. On the same junction, there's a Maruti showroom called Mandovi Motors. Similarly there is Jayadeva Flyover junction which was called BTM checkp...

Today's Hindu features a house panel report on the shoddy workmanship exhibited by the builders of the Bangalore International Airport . There are two news articles in the print edition today and I tried looking at the elaborations of shoddy workmanship in those articles, but I couldn't find any. Its a 124 page report it seems, but all that the news media has picked up is following - 1. Profit making by one of the promoters by trading BIAL shares 2. The facade of the exterior of the airport not showing the culture of Karnataka or India for that matter 3. Hold Narayanamurthy, Rajiv Chandrashekhar et al responsible for such lapses I have looked at the google news results for BIAL also, but seriously I don't find anything else in the news reports, and I am especially interested in looking at the elaborations of the poor workmanship. I would also like to the see if the house committee looked at the delay in building the approach road(s) to the airport (Why am I asking ...

Last Saturday, we went to the Bangalore International Airport. I have uploaded some of the photographs from that visit at my flickr site . While we were there waiting for our guest to come, we noticed a huge group of school kids visiting the airport that day. All their teachers did is to divide them in two different groups. One group stood near the departure terminal and the second group near the arrival terminal. We were sitting close to the arrival terminal.  These kids were having fun. And they have their unique ways of having fun. Whenever some foreigner (especially white skin) was coming out of the Arrival terminal, all the kids would in chorus say a Big "Hi" to them. I am sure those guests would not have expected such huge welcome when they land India. Not sure what all their teachers showed to them that day, soon our guest arrived and we left the airport. There is one good area though to watch the happenings on the runway etc next to the departure terminal.  One can cl...

During the recent Bangalore Bomb blasts last Friday, I was tracking the happenings at various places on the web. One such update caught my eyes, I was a little late in doing the print screen but still I managed to get a fading view of what I want to show here (inside red enclosure below) - The text is - " Guys hate to break this, but info from sources well placed whom I cannot reveal : 5 more blasts to happen in Bangalore ". A very serious rumour, I gathered this at around 7pm in the evening while all the Bangalore blasts happened in the afternoon. I still remember we were getting news of two more blasts that day which didn't happen - one in Iskon temple and another somewhere near Hebbal on the new Airport road.

There was one major fire near my apartment on Bannerghatta road... In the background is the Mantri Elegance apartment. It must be somewhere close to Mandovi Motors junction.

We recently went for a Trip to Coorg on the Jan 26 weekend. It was an interesting trip because it happened in a very unplanned manner. We have been thinking for sometime to go out, go on a long drive, go somewhere sorts. So we thought, we will go for a day long trip on Jan 26 weekend, starting on Saturday morning and coming back on the same day. And we finalized on Hogenekkal for this day long trip. Saturday morning came and we started for Hogenekkal, we heard that there was no good place to eat around Hogenekkal so we packed lots of food as well. When we reached the Silk Board Flyover (Bangalore), a discussion started and this idea to drive to Coorg instead was thrown in and everyone agreed. We had no stuff to change to for the overnight halt, no hotel bookings and no places decided, I had just browsed thru a traveler's guide the last night, noted a few places (in mind) in Coorg and then I forgot picking that book up in the morning haste. By the time we decided to go to Coorg inst...

This blog is for people in Bangalore , who happen to travel on Hosur Road every weekday or more to reach their offices in Electronic City . I have tried to create a tour in Google Earth of an alternate route from Wipro Office in Electronic City to Bilekahalli-Bannerughatta Road junction . The latter junction is a few hundred meters away from the Bannerughatta Road and Outer Ring Road junction. This route will be a wee bit longer than the regular BTM-Hosur road route but the time one would take on this route is always close to 30mins (in almost all weather conditions!) unlike that on regular route which varies from 20 min to 4 hours. To check this route, you will have to install Google Earth and open the .kmz file using that. The route starts from the Wipro Office gate in Electronic City and takes you thru some villages although the road thru them is mostly wide and tarred and in very new condition and rarely used. This even avoids the NICE road whose exit to Bannerughatta road is...

I was trying to search for some Movers and Packers in Bangalore today when I noticed this call thing in the sponsored links. So I dialed out the first result and it actually connected me to the movers and packers listed there. Its another thing that I was trying to call at 10pm in the night and this movers and packers guy didn't want to talk and disconnected immediately. The feature as such was a pleasant surprise. I will test this out tomorrow during working hours. ~mks

Watching formula1 is dangerously infectious, it gets into your driving immediately! I have watched two Alonso won races (KL and Monaco) till now and he must be really thankful to Hamilton for blocking the Ferraries for him all the way till the end. Such consistency! When LH starts getting the pole position... Monaco race track is crazy, you start from Residency road - St. Joseph School Crossing, take right at Bangalore Central, take right again on the Richmond Road at Lifestyle crossing, go straight, climb up the famous dissected flyover of Richmond/Residency road, take a U-turn on the flyover itself towards Residency road... That's Bangalore Formula1 race track for you. If you want, you go from under the flyover, that will give you the tunnel like feeling. ;-) ~mks

We had an interesting experience of rain and water logging recently. We went to meet a relative in Malleshwaram (Bangalore). On our way back, I took the Sheshadripuram-Majestic route to come to BTM. It was raining heavily all the time. In Sheshadripuram, there is a rail over-bridge and there was good amount of water logging under it. And just when I was crossing it, one BMTC bus also crossed it from the opposite direction and splashed huge amount of water on us. The car was literally poured upon by that dirty, muddy rain water. For a few seconds, we saw only opaque water on the wind screens all around the car. Certainly an amazing experience! A fellow blogger pointed out, the experience could have been more amazing, had I left the window(s) open! ~mks