Sunita Williams is safely back from space, after her return trip delayed a few times due to technical and weather conditions. Probably this is the most viewed and covered news item in India in the last week or so. Sunita, the NASA astronaut of Indian roots, is sure going to inspire many children in India. The whole nation might have sighed with relief when the landing is safe. The country vividly remembers the failure of previous space attempt by a person of Indian origin, Kalpana Chawla.

I took my family to a late night movie on Friday and returned home at about 1am. Switched on the TV to see the status of the proposed landing in Florida, but found that the landing attempt is being made in California’s Edwards base. So glued to the TV for next hour or so, following the live telecast of the landing. Almost every TV news channel in India (about 20 of them) did a live telecast of the event.

Congratulations Sunita!

Well, I know how Indian Railways is making more money now.

I had to attend funeral of a relative tomorrow and I have to book tickets in the last minute. The ticket cost from Bangalore to Bhimavaram in Sleeper class is 301 rupees. But since I am booking using Tatkal scheme, and this being peak season, I pay 150 rupees more. Moreover, Tatkal is available only from source station to the destination station of the train. So I end up buying a ticket from Bangalore to Kakinada. So I ended up paying 495 rupees for this travel. That is  64.4% more than a normal ticket.

This is the first time I am buying a Tatkal ticket and now I know how Indian Railways is made profitable in  recent years :-).

About a year ago, KSRTC introduced Volvo city buses in Bangalore. Today I got a chance to board one of them. This ride from KG Bus terminus to BMTC terminus on Double Road costed me 15 Rupees (less than 40 cents US) for a distance of 5 Km. The bus is very comfortable and the airconditioning is well maintained. Due to filming of glass windows, it is very difficult to get a detailed view of the area, but it protects from heat and Sun. The elevated deck to the rear of the bus is a good place to sit and enjoy the ride.

Interesting video titled “India vs. India” with great voice of Amithabh!

Read here.

During my childhood, whenever someone goes to Hyderabad, my grandfather used to ask for only one thing: “Bring some pullareddy sweets for us.” In our coastal village located about 400km from Hyderabad, the name of Pullareddy Sweets is so common as a household name for quality and taste. I put quality before taste purposefully and I am sure the taste itself is a good enough distinguishing factor.

G. Pullareddy, founder of Pullareddy Sweets (Pullareddy Ghee Sweets to be specific) passed away yesterday. He left a legacy of quality sweet making from this town of Karnool and created a brand that is popular amongst Andhra people across the globe. He is a great believer in quality, expressed in simple layman’s terms:

Taste the sweets before you sell them, if you don’t like them, don’t sell. Procure raw materials directly from vendors and don’t compromise on the quality of raw materials like ghee. Eat what your workers eat.

Drawing parallels, this is how we develop Solaris operating system: we use it before we productize it (this blog is being typed on a Solaris Nevada internal build.) We procure our code from great minds in the industry, in the past from people working for Sun and now from opensource community.
Pullareddy is also a social activist and has been contributing to the cause of community since 1970.

May his soul rest in peace.

It rained for about 15 minutes at 5.30pm today. It is a welcome rain in the middle of the hot summer. Temperatures cooled off from 4.00pm this evening. Hope this weather continues for a few days.

There is an issue with my Bangalore Air-Tel prepaid connection. I landed in Bangalore yesterday and found that all my outgoing calls are stopped. The last time I used this is about 3 weeks ago (to be precise, March 09th) and until then, there was no communication from AirTel on what the issue is. Also, they send tons of SMS on hello tunes and all that junk, but never bothered to send any communication on why they disconnected the connection.

I tried to call the customer service, but it never connects to a customer service representative. The customer service number is just advertising their plans and all and is never trying to solve a customer problem.

Very very bad customer service in deed!

There is lot of news on this topic: Read from The Street and MarketWatch.