Municipal Wi-fi

January 11, 2006

Many American cities- San Francisco is the most well known example, but Philadelphia and some others are also planning it- are planning to roll out free wireless broadband networks covering the entire city.

If you have an opinion, please answer the following questions:

  1. Is this a waste of public money? Shouldn’t municipalities be more concerned with providing water, police and fire services, garbage disposal and so on?
  2. Would your answer to question 1 change if the city in question was Bombay or Bangalore or Belgaum or Patiala? Why?

Update: For question two, I don’t really care about the relative waste of public money, or that San Francisco can afford to waste public money. What I’m asking is if internet access is an essential municipal service in the first world and not the third (or two-point-fifth) world.


B-School PJs: Transco and Ceat

January 10, 2006

What is the difference between Transco (the power transmission company) and CEAT showrooms?

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The Best Thing About WordPress

January 10, 2006

is the Save As Draft feature. Now, even if I don’t have time to type out the complete post, I can leave a draft for editing later.

Drafts were not just something I never got around to implementing in Sonali (my old CMS), but something I never even imagined the need for. After all, I could always save drafts offline.

There are two problems with that- first, I’m not always going to be on the same computer. More importantly, when I have my drafts saved offline I don’t have a pressing urge to complete them. On the other hand, when I log in to WordPress and see all your drafts there in front of me, it reminds me to get them finished as soon as possible.


Singapore Diaries II: People Eating Tasty Animals

January 10, 2006

Time now for the second in the Singapore series: the post about food.

I never thought of it that way before leaving, but once I got there, my Singapore visit began to resemble an exposition of animals- with one new variety of our dumb chums ending up on my plate or in my bowl at every meal. The list of animals I ate:

  1. Fish
  2. Crab
  3. Prawn
  4. Chicken
  5. Duck
  6. Oyster
  7. Squid
  8. Cow
  9. Pig
  10. Sheep

Much to MadMan’s likely disgust, the first thing I ever ate in Singapore was a mushroom bun, which my brother bought for me for breakfast after I landed. However, this weak start was made up by a visit to Marche for my birthday lunch.

Amit Varma would like Marche. It is decorated with life-size cow replicas, and there are pictures of happy cows on all the menus. The motto of the place is- I kid you not- Moo, moo.

So, what were the highlights of my gastronomic journey?

First off, calamansi juice. A calamansi is a lime from the Phillipines, and its fresh juice makes brilliant nimbu pani- without any need for sugar or salt. You just juice it, and it’s perfect.

Then, the two ‘meal in a bowl’s. There’s Laksa, a soup stew filled with whatever you like- I always thulped the seafood laksa- and fishball soup– that’s balls made of fish meat, and not literally, er, fish balls.

The green tea cans in the YMCA minibar were just the thing when you’d walked back from the food court.

Sushi was good too, and I only wish I’d had a more comprehensive range than the five piece set you get at food courts. Someday, I too will visit the temple of Yumski!

And on the subject of fish, I had this delightful mango and red chilli flavoured fish. The fish was okay, but the chilli did amazing things to the mango. I shall strongly recommend the combination to all my vegetarian friends.

As to deserts- there was the ten scoop sundae at Svensens which comes with its own container of dry ice to ensure that the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth scoops don’t melt while you’re finishing the first five. And, waffles with kaya paste/ blueberry sauce.

Kaya paste, incidentally, is the one thing the vegetarians actually liked in Singapore (besides the dosai at Little India). Plemi wanted to carry back lots and lots of kaya, but had already exceeded his baggage allowance. This inspired me to think of a Kaya pipeline from Singapore to Chennai, following the route of Bharti’s undersea cable. It isn’t all that original an idea- my uncle had once imagined a whisky pipeline from Dubai’s Duty Free Zone to Greater Kailash. Sadly nothing ever came of it.

It wasn’t a complete experience, of course. As I mentioned before, I never went to a proper sushi bar. I was also too chicken to try out durian and pig organ soup, and I completely forgot about the chocolate buffet at Fullertons.

That finishes the food. Next up, posts on Singaporean Mainstream Media, Blogs, and Blogger Meets.


Curses! Foiled again!

January 9, 2006

Aqua has discovered the Pompous Libertarian conspiracy to defame Chetan Bhagat’s excellent writing skills. Dammit!

We Pompous Libertarians were hoping to inflame our attacks on Chetan Bhagat into a full-fledged blogosphere war, eventually resulting in a Desipundit sticky post. While the rest of the blogosphere would have been preoccupied with attacking or defending Bhagat, we would have stealthily carried out the next step in our plan for complete world domination.

But now that Aqua has outed us, we’ll just have to think of some other diversionary tactics. I hate it when that happens.


Heh

January 8, 2006

I’ve got this far without a single cussword. I deserve to be rewarded, lauded, applauded. Now my post is only as abrasive as TravelTalesFromIndia’s comments.


The Karnataka-Tamil Nadu Rivalry

January 5, 2006

Attention readers with broadband connections! Please download these two videos and vote for the more awesome one in the comments.

Tamil Superstar Rajnikanth in Aasai Nooru

Thalaivar Rajnikanth in Aasai Nooru. (7.21 MIB)

Annavru Rajkumar in If You Come Today

Annavru Rajkumar in If You Come Today (2.36 MB).


How stupid does he think we are?

January 1, 2006

For the past three weeks I have been struggling to come up with a post that can accurately describe just how bad One Night @ The Call Center is. And I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t possible. This post simply cannot begin to explain how awful ON@TCC is.

Still, I’ll try.

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