Sorry State of Indian Judiciary

These days we are seeing a season of scams in our country. CAG, 2G, Adarsh, Onion etc are just to name a few. First few days are filled with blame games and then some inquiry starts and if we are lucky someone like Raja is arrested. And it is just the beginning of a process which is so long that we will die without seeing any resolution of it.

I am talking about the judicial system of India. It is so time consuming and complex that common man rightfully wants to stay away from it. "Jane do court kachahari ke chakkar main kaun fasta hai". This is one of the reason someone will pay bribe, instead of taking it to police and court.

We continuously hear stories like these

• A case of petty theft is yet to be heard. Person is in jail for more than 2 decades
• Some film-star killed sleeping poor laborers on footpath when he was drunk driving and court is yet to deliver judgement on it.
• A divorce case took more than 4 decades
• A rich guy shoots a model and it takes so many years to punish him
• Bofors case is still pending
• And so on..

These are only some of the media sensationalized stories. There are many many more in which victims are not so influential to bring out media outcry on it. Thus their cases keep on pending from one hearing to another (which maybe an year after the last one).

So what is the root cause of it? It is simply lack of courts and judges and lack of proper information system. We need to do following

1. Increase the number of courts. Make lower courts more powerful to take on smaller issues at a good speed and with more efficiency.
2. Hire more judges and competent lawyers.
3. Get away from paper based system. Have a proper digital information system, so that all the required information for a case is present to lawyers and judges whenever they want them.

All of this require a strong political motivation. As we can see that many of our politicians are already involved in one or more scams, so they have less incentive to bring any changes in judiciary. A Supreme court judge recently lamented that "Less than 1% is budgeted for Judicial System". So we as citizens need to demand from lawmakers to take corrective action in this slow functioning judiciary system.

Well all is not that gloomy. I am very happy at some of the recent developments. Right to Information Act is kind of a revolution. This is putting pressure on government officials to get their act together and making them understand that they are at their post to serve the common man not the other way around. Recently read the news that Delhi Police is putting all the FIRs online. These all are step in right direction. But a lot more need to be done and they should be done soon. Because we all know that "Justice delayed is Justice Denied".

Terrace house and a nest

"Look what is here" - shouted the husband, to his wife who was cooking in the kitchen. He was pointing at a nest in the ventillation area in the terrace of their apartment.

Mr. Bimal Jha and his wife Kavya Jha has been living in this house for past 35 years. This was their dream house, bought after their return from overseas. It was not been an easy decision to come back. But once they were back, they had taken the new life with an embrace and started with the living activities. One of the top priorities was to find a place of their own. A home where they were going to live for the rest of their lives. And this was the house they have chosen.

In this house they have seen the ups and downs of life. They had 2 children. Son Kaushal is now in States. He is married and working in a well respected firm. Daughter Baruni is in Australia with her husband. Both the children are urging them to stay with them, especially since Bimal retired last year. They will argue "What are they doing there alone? They should come here and play with the grand kids. Who will take care of them, if something happens?" As much merit is in their arguments, but Bimal and Kavya don't want to settle in a foreign land again. Bimal likes to hang around with the friends who are also retired. Kavya is content with the stores and shops which she has known for all these years. Further they plan to revisit all the places in India.

So one fine day after feeling little bored after the morning tea and newspaper Bimal decided to do a little cleaning of the house. He got the broom, ladder and the stool. Kavya had already asked him to be careful and not climb the ladder too high unless he wants to break his bones in this age. When he was in the terrace, he saw some leaves in the ventillation area. And then he found this. A nest. To this nest he had shouted to his wife. She didn't hear him first time. So he shouted again in a little louder voice. Kavya came out with a spatula in her hand. She said - "Why are you so excited? And what are you doing so up there? God he doesn't listen to me." He said - "Come see here. It is a nest." "Nest!! What kind of nest?" She said. "Of course it's a bird's nest. What else did you think will be up here." - he retorted back. "And look there are three little eggs too".

It was a pigeon's nest. High rise buildings have suited both humans and pigeons equally. Finding of new members in the apartment brought excitement in their life. Very now and then Kavya will go there and check if everything is alright. Mother bird usually was found there, protecting her loved eggs. Father bird will go out and get food. They observed all this with very happy and content eyes. Bimal and Kavya in all silliness also named the eggs. Bholu, Molu, Polu. They used to put some roti, rice etc on the floor, so that father bird will not have to fly very far away and can spend some quality time with the mother bird and the eggs.

One morning when they woke up, they heard some more noises coming from the nest. Bimal got his high stool and looked at it. To his amazement he saw that instead of the eggs, now there were small birds. He at once ran away to Kavya and told her the good news. Both were very happy. "We have to celebrate this" - Bimal said. "Go get some sweets. We will offer it to deities for the well being of the kids" - Kavya said. So did Bimal. It was very joyous. For next few days if they had to visit some friends for dinner or lunch, all their attention was back at home. As soon as they return from home they will check on the birds.

All was going well, when suddenly Bimal fell seriously ill. He has developed some kind of infection in lungs and doctors has advised him to do complete bed rest. His son came back and said - " I don't want to hear another argument. You must have to come to US. Here the atmosphere is so polluted. You will be treated by best doctors over there." This incident terrified Kavya too. She also felt that at least for a while they should go there. When Bimal will get well they will come back again. In couple of days their tickets were arranged. Bimal will come sneakily and check on the birds. He was happy that the little birds were growing up. They had small wings now and were chirping very happily.

Their flight was on next Friday and it would reach US on Sunday. They felt both sad and excited. Sad to leave the place and their little birdies, but excited at the prospect of seeing grand kid. Next few days just flew by in preparing and making sure that everything is taken care of while they are away. On Friday when they were putting the bags in rental car, they looked at the terrace and found that little birds were also flying near the nest. This sight gave them the relief that now Bholu, Molu, Polu are ready to face the world and don't need their help. With this contentment they went away.

Copyright Notice

© 2011 Anup Mayank & Kumari Anshu

No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Author.

A Sample Web Application - 2 (Junit & Emma)

This is in continuation with my previous post

A Sample Web Application - 1

Now i have added following

• Junit

Junit is a unit testing framework for Java. To use Junit with maven all i had to include it as a dependency in pom.xml

Then i wrote a test class (MatchingUsernamePasswordValidatorTest) for testing the isValidLogin(IUserContext) method of class (MatchingUsernamePasswordValidator)

As you can notice the test classes name just appends Test to the class name being tested.

This test class contains 2 tests. One for the happy scenario in which user name and password matches and another for negative scenario in which username and password don't match.

Now run

$mvn test

At the end of the output you can expect to see something like this

-------------------------------------------------------

T E S T S

-------------------------------------------------------

Running mayank.anup.ecom.login.MatchingUsernamePasswordValidatorTest

Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.125 sec

Results :

Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Emma

Emma is a code coverage tool. I have been recently introduced to it. With this you can know that how much of your code was executed during the time of your test execution. Again you have to include it in your pom.xml as a dependency.

So your pom.xml dependency list may have something like this

Now you can run emma reporting using following

$mvn emma:emma

You

can expect to see an output like following

[INFO] [emma:instrument {execu

tion: default-instrument}]

[INFO] Instrumenting classes with EMMA

processing instrumentation path ...

instrumentation path processed in 266 ms

[3 class(es) instrumented, 7 resource(s) copied]

metadata merged into [E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\target\coverage.em] {in 31 ms}

[INFO] [resources:testResources {e

xecutio

n: default-testResources}]

[WARNING] Using platform encoding (Cp1252 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platfo

rm dependent!

[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\src\test\resources

[INFO] [compiler:testCompile {exe

cution: default-testCompile}]

[WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding Cp1252, i.e. build is platform dep

endent!

[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\target\test-classes

[INFO] [surefire:test {execution: default-test}]

[INFO] Surefire report directory: E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\target\surefire-reports

-------------------------------------------------------

T E S T S

---------------------------------------

----------------

Running mayank.anup.ecom.login.MatchingUsernamePasswordValidatorTest

EMMA: collecting runtime coverage data ...

Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.172 sec

Results :

Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors:

0, Skipped: 0

EMMA: runtime coverage dat

a merged into [E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\coverage.ec] {in 31 ms}

[WARNING] While downloading hibernate:hibernate:3.0.5

This artifact has been relocat

ed to or

g.hibernate:hibernate:3.0.5.

[INFO] [emma:emma {execution: default-cli}]

processing input files ...

2 file(s) read and merged in 47 ms

writing [xml] report to [E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\target\site\emma\coverage.xml] ...

writing [html] report to [E:\myWorkspace\amj-ecom\target\site\emma\index.html] ...

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[INFO] Total time: 24 seconds

The key thing to note is that first emma does some byte code level instrumentation with your generated main classes, then it

runs the Junit Test and finally prints the result output in html format.

Reading: Wise & Otherwise (Sudha Murty)

Here are some of the good lines from this book.

Conversation
I have a theory about conversation. You can call it an empirical formula. Quantitatively speaking, 'conversation' is inversely proportional to economic standing. If you are travelling by bus, your fellow passengers will get into conversation with you very quickly and without any reservation. If you are travelling by first class on a train, people will be more reserved. If you are travelling by air, then the likelihood of entering into conversation is quite small. If you are on first class in an international flight, then you may travel twenty four hours without exchanging a single word with the person sitting next to you.

Reading: Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri)

Recently we bought 2 books from the makeshift street side bookstore in Parihaar Chowk. One is "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri and other is "Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.

Before this i have not got a chance to read any other work of Jhumpa Lahiri. She has written famous books ("The Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Namesake").

This books is a collection of short stories, divided in 2 parts. Part one contains 4 unrelated stories, whereas part two contains 3 stories which are linked to one another.

All of the stories revolve around the Indians (first or second generation) living in US. It is quite a fascinating read. Author has captured the psyche of characters very vividly. The relationships between father and daughter, between mother and daughter, between brother and sister and so on is explored in the stories in their given context. I was able to relate to many of the points of story because of my stay in US.

Although all stories are brilliant, my favorite ones are "Unaccustomed Earth", "Hell-Heaven", "Only Goodness" and "Once in a Lifetime". I have read fiction after 8-9 months and it was very refreshing to do so. Looking forward to read other above mentioned books in near future.

Aga Khan Palace

Yesterday, we got a chance to go to Aga Khan Palace. This was our first trip to see something after coming back to India. It is a place of great historical importance as Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi were kept in Jail here during freedom struggle days.

We had taken the directions from Google, but soon realized that in India human network of finding directions is more useful than having a printout of directions. You should have a general knowledge of which way you want to go, rest you can ask.

We found the place very calm when we went inside. The campus contains very beautiful garden and green grass lawns. There is a nominal entry fee of Rs 5 per person. There are 4-5 open halls on the first floor where famous prisoners like Smt Sarojini Naidu were kept. These rooms have very rare photographs of Gandhiji, Vinoba Bhave, Abdul Gaffar Khan etc. It is very emotional to watch these selfless great people. Wonder from where did they get that kind of courage and high morals. Very rare quality in current times. So i said a silent thank you to those who didn't care for their lives so that i can have a good life today.

Then went to the Samadhi Sthal of Kasturba Gandhi and Mahadeoji Bhai. We said our prayers. There was a small khadi store near by. We purchased few items along with very delicious Ghee cookies.

A Sample Web Application - 1

I am trying to learn technologies using a practical approach. Right now my focus is to create a sample e-commerce web application using Java Technologies.

The technologies of focus are

1) Spring : For dependency injection

2) Struts2 : For MVC framework

3) Hibernate : For persistence

4) Maven: For build management

5) Tomcat 6 : Servlet Container

6) SVN: Source code managemnt

Since building a full scale e-com app is not in scope for small scale learning approach, i am going to take baby steps.

My first step is

Create a login funcitonality

Allow user to enter username and password. Right now the system will just say a successful validation if both username and password are same. It doesn't involve DB interaction and still able to use Spring and Struts 2 integration.

Build Instructions

Use this command to anonymously check out the latest project source code:

# Non-members may check out a read-only working copy anonymously over HTTP.

svn checkout http://amj-ecom.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ amj-ecom-read-only

You will need a svn client for this. I am using Tortoise SVN.

To build it you just need to run ($mvn package from your command prompt). It will create a war file ecom.war in target directory. I have created a small script cleandeploy.bat for easy deployment of app to a tomcat container. You will need to edit this file to point to the correct path of tomcat dir as per your system.

Any suggestion and feedback is welcome.

I intend to add more posts as and when i add more functionality in this project.

Red Box

He opened the box. The red box. He has been pondering for quite long. Unsure of the contents inside. Unsure if it was a practical joke played by one of his friends.

Past few days have been really tough on him. He was trying his best to do the right things. But it doesn't matter. Whatever he tried, boomranged on him. To others he was living a perfect happy life. He had a nice paying job in one of the best firms in town. He had a beautiful wife and a very darling daughter. What else one needs in life. But there was discomfort and discontentment. And especially for past few days it was getting worse. His boss was throwing all kind of unwanted work at him and was expecting faster results. As if he had a magical wand to do it. He was supposed to go to onsite project, but that seemed far from happening. Long hours at work were affecting his health and family life too.

Yesterday he was going through all the humdrums of his daily routine. It was approaching lunch time and although he was feeling hungry, he didn't want to go to the crowded cafeteria. He didn't want to sit with the large crowd, where everyone was constantly taking to other and making all kind of noises. By GOD, today he can't tolerate them. On the other hand eating on his desk was even more disgusting. Invariably one or the other colleague will pop up in his cube and will say "Wow eating alone !!!". Who gave them the right to enter in his solitude. So he decided to wait. He couldn't concentrate on his work, so he decided to take a stroll in the nearby park. This park was a haven for him. Whenever he felt stressed, he came here and spent some quiet time. The fresh air, the rustling sound of leaves and occasionally a bird flying nearby energized him. So he came to the park and was taking his usual walk around the small lake. He was still thinking of his problems and how to solve them. Suddenly a thing caught his eye. It was a bright red box. It was lying under a tree. He looked around to see if someone has left it there by mistake. But there was no one there. Curiosity took hold of him. He decided to have a look at it.

The box looked like a lunch box. It was almost brand new, as if someone has just opened the cover. But there was no cover box near by. The lid seemed to be firmly put on it. He cried out loud "Who has left this box?". But there was no one there to answer him. He was hesitant to touch it. Who knows who has left it there? But he picked it any ways. It was little heavy. Then he noticed a small colorful card on the ground. As soon as he picked up the card, he was scared. It was written "To Ankush, It will solve all your problems." He almost dropped the box and card. It was for him. How in world someone will leave this for him. Who is there playing tricks? Soon he was angry. He shouted and hurled some abuses towards that person. But there was no one there. He thought "To hell with them". He left the box and card as it is and started leaving the place. He didn't go very far then the idea struck him lets find out who is doing this trick. So he hid behind another tree and started waiting. He was also keeping an eye on the tree where the box was. But no body came there. He was hiding there for almost couple of hours but nothing happened. Then he realized that he has been away from office for quite some time and his stupid boss must be looking out for him and thus decided to return to office thinking that whoever is playing this trick will get tired of it.

On returning to office he was caught up in work and forgot all about it. He even forgot that he hadn't taken his lunch. As usual it got very late and it was near 9 PM. Almost every one was gone. He too decided to leave and then he again recalled the incident of afternoon. He almost laughed that he had given a suitable reply to whoever was playing game with him. However just to check, he drove near the park and decided to have one more look at that tree. See if the box is still there or gone. It was dark and no human soul was in the park. With a hurried pace, he went near the tree and to his horror he saw the box as he had left in the afternoon. He picked up the box and card and returned to his car. He decided to inspect it at home. But soon decided that it was better that he do it alone. His wife will ask so many questions and he didn't had that kind of energy and patience. He thought he will check it later in the night.

His morning alarm at 5:30 woke him up. He couldn't sleep well last night and was dreaming all sorts of thing. Both his wife and daughter were fast asleep. Quietly he got down and went to the garage to get the box. He brought it in his living room and put it on the center table. He was still not sure if it is a wise idea to open the box. Who knows what is in it. Maybe some drugs. He kept on staring at it. Clock was approaching 7. Very soon his wife and kid will wake up. So he decided to open it. With trembling hands he opened the lid. A very nice smell came out of it. He looked inside. He was relieved and couldn't stop smiling. Soon tears started flowing and he felt sleepy and had simply dozed off on the sofa. Later doctors pronounced him dead at around 7.

Copyright Notice

© 2010 Anup Mayank

No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Author.

Quotes From Book: The little book that beats the market

• Saving : It takes a great amount of discipline to save any money. After all, no matter how much money you earn or recieve from others, it's simply much easier and more immediately rewarding to find something to spend it on.
  


• On Academic theories behind irrational behavior of stock market: In fact it is such a good question that professors have developed whole fields of economic, mathematical, and social study to try to explain it. Even more incredible, most of this academic work has involved coming up with theories as to why something that cleary makes no sense, actually makes sense. You have to be really smart to do that.


• Individual stock picking: Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you are looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you're still an idiot.

Book Summary: The Dhandho Investor

This is a book on investments by Mohnish Pabrai, the founder of "Pabrai Investment Funds". I have read this book over a weekend and found it to be quite interesting, knowledgeful and entertaining at the same time. This is a 200 page book with examples from various successful enterpreneurs and quotations from investors like Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. In nutshell the book talks about how you can get good return on your investment(bet) without taking unnecessary risk. The recurring theme is "Heads I win, Tails I don't loose much".
Initial few chapters talk about the investment strategy taken by successful people. It is a very interesting read about how Patels in US own more than 50% of the motel business. How Richard Branson and Laxmi Mittal have made their fortune.
Then he goes on to describe the "Dhandho Framework" (Investment Strategy). I am jotting down the 9 investment principles outlined in the book.

1. Focus on buying an existing business
2. Buy simple business in Industry with ultra low rate of change
3. Buy distressed businesses in distressed industries
4. Buy businesses with a durable competitive advantage
5. Bet heavily when odds are overwhelmingly in your favor
6. Focus on arbitrage
7. Buy businesses at big discounts to their underlying intrinsic value
8. Look for low risk high uncertainty business
9. It is better to be a copycat than to be an innovator

All these points are explained with examples and doing mathematical modeling DCF (Discount Cash Flow, Kelly Analysis etc.). I will admit that i haven't done the mathematical part on my own. That is an exercise for later.

In summary, the author urges you to find out simple businesses which you can understand. Do your due reading, find out what are the factors in that business. If you don't understand, don't invest. Then within that industry find out businesses which are fundamentally strong but for some reason their stocks are trading significantly below the intrinsic value. Of course it means more study and analysis. You should do a rough odds estimate of what are the chances of getting good return and what are the chances of break even , and what are the chances of being complete failure. If the odds are heavily in your favor, then put good amount of money on such bets. You should be patient for a duration of around 3 years. As businesses take time to solve their issues and uncertainties to disappear. This is the strategy taken by author and his 2 idols Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. Hope it works for you too.

Cool Advertising

While browsing on a website, i stumbled upon this. First time for me and i was wowed. The interesting fact is that the clothes worn by the actor (Salman Khan) was pre decided. What do you say??

Drawing with SDEdit

Today I had been assigned the task of creating sequence diagram for one of the project I am working on. As with most of the things this was first time for me.

A sequence diagram helps you in understanding flow of control from one component to another component of your software when a particular action (ex. User presses a button, or your web service receives a request, or a scheduler wakes up and starts some action) is triggered. It is the intermediate step between writing problem on a document to converting solution in a programming language (Java, C/C++ etc)

Anyways since I was new to doing this, my first thought was lets do it in Microsoft word or Powerpoint. But very soon I realized the futility of this approach. I will have spent whole day on drawing lines and blocks. Then someone suggested to use Microsoft Visio. I installed it too, but only to realize that it doesn't have capability to draw sequence diagrams.

Then I searched for tools. There are many tools available on internet but most of them are commercial. Finally I stumbled upon SDEdit. This is a java based tool and available as open source. Perfect for my needs. However understanding the working of this tool required reading the help text for 30 minutes or so. It uses commands to draw and is not as intuitive as MS Word or powerpoint. Reminds me of latex. But the end result was very beautiful. With just 10-12 commands I had drawn the sequence diagrams and created pdf out of it. It even allowed me to create pdf in landscape mode (better for viewing). Overall a very useful tool. Please share your experience and let me know if you have used other similar good open source tools for UML etc.

Auto ride and wait

These days auto rickshaw is my main mode of commute. So far it has been going smoothly for my daily commute from home to work and back. But today was different.

After leaving from home, I prefer to walk little bit. First reason is to settle the heavy breakfast I had. Another is to avoid the rickshaw-wallahs near my home. They typically charge more. For a Rs 30 fare, they will ask around 50-60. So I walk till the McDonald’s nearby. McDonald’s being the hot spot; it is easy to get a ride from here.

However today as it turned out, either all the autos were full or those who weren’t didn’t want to go to Bhau Patil Road (my office location). I had talked to almost 15 drivers but with no luck. One was going in the same direction but had another female passenger. So the auto-wallah asked the girl if I could share the auto. Maybe out of apprehension or maybe she thought she had the exclusive rights, she didn’t budge. “Main doosra auto le loongi. Mujhe nahin jana”. To end this discussion I had to tell the auto-wallah to let go. I waited for another 5 minutes and then suddenly an auto stopped in front of me.

The driver was an old fellow. All the white hairs and must be above 70. He agreed to take me and turned on the meter. No haggling. And thus ended my almost 20 minute wait. This ride was very joyous and I didn’t mind leaving some tip for the gentleman.

Coming Back to India

We made a decision to come back to India. There are many reasons behind this. People ask all the time what happened? Why are you leaving after so many years? And these questions come from even a cab driver. The simple answer is that i just wanted to come.

In this post i will write how things have progressed since we made the decision about 4-5 months back.

1) Job Search

After we decided that it is time to move back, i started searching for jobs in India. In India right now Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR (National Captial Region including Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida) are the prominent places for IT jobs. However i had been reading in the news that Hyderabad is very hot place. After living in a very good californian climate who will like to live in too hot climate. Recently Pune has come up as a very good spot for IT business. Many reputed companies have setup their development centers. Pune is very near to metropolitan city Mumbai and it seems to have a nice weather. Further my wife has stayed here for her B.E days and she liked it. So it became the top location choice. Second preference was Bangalore and then Delhi region. Then it started by sending resume to friends and contacts in linkedin. I also registered on job sites like monster india and naukari.com. From the job sites i keep on getting the requirement emails. However 99% of the time it didn't result in any actual conversation. Looks like companies in India are hesitant in hiring guys from US. From some companies i got the advice that i should come to India for a face to face interview then only they will consider it. Finally after 2-3 months one company from Pune started the telephonic interview process. The whole process took about 1 months. Finally they offered me the job. It came just 2 day before we were about to leave for our east coast trip. They asked me to join in 1 month. My current job required to give a notice of 4 weeks. This was a very tight deadline. However i negotiated with them for 2 weeks extra time. Then i talked to then current employer about my decision. There was no objection from them and things went pretty smoothly there. Then we left for our 10 days vacation trip to East Cost.

2) East Coast Trip

This trip was planned for quite some time. I never got a chance to visit east coast during last so many years. So thought we must make a trip before finally going back. Who knows when we will get another chance. So on 1st July early morning we left our house to catch the flight. Thanks to Uma Aunty for dropping us at the Fremont BART. If you are living in East Bay area then BART is the best way to go to San Francisco. Very pleasant. Much better than driving or by cab.

Reached SFO on time and got the boarding pass of Virgin America. It had one stop at LAX where we waited at airport for about couple of hours. Then the next flight was for almost 5 hours. Since this was the first time for Kundan to travel, he got very uncomfortable during the last one hour. The seats of a plane (in economy class) are not comfortable at all. It is a torture for adults then just imagine the situation of a 2 year old. We reached JFK at around midnight. That night we stayed in a nearby hotel JFK Inn. They had courtesy shuttle service, which picked us soon. The room was small and it had a very big TV. So looked like sitting in the first row of cinema hall.

Next day we flew to Niagra Falls. We reached buffalo airport at around 2 o clock. There is a bus service from buffalo airport to niagra falls. But its frequency is very less. So we made sure that we reach the bus stop in time. The due time 3 PM came but there was no sign of bus. Using bus it will cost you only 3 bucks per person, otherwise the cab will charge you around $100. There were other people waiting for the same bus. Slowly they took the cab. But we stayed there waiting. Finally the bus showed and we went happily to our hotel (Quality Inn). The credit goes to Anshu for being persistent that we should wait for some more time. After changing we took the trolley and went to see Niagra. It was just amazing..

3) Selling our household items

4) Long flight from SFO to Kolkata

5) Stay in Kolkata

6) Stay in Darbhanga

7) Starting in Pune

PS: Since it is getting late for me i have not filled in the details. Intend to do it later.

Premchand Notes (Kayakalp)

From Premchand Notes

FARQ SIRF ITNA SA THA

Teri doli uthi,
Meri mayyat uthi,
Phool tujh par bhi barse,
Phool mujh par bhi barse,

FARQ SIRF ITNA SA THA
Tu saj gayi,
Mujhe sajaya gaya .

Tu bhi ghar ko chali,
Main bi ghar ko chala,

FARQ SIRF ITNA SA THA
Tu uth ke gayi,
Mujhe uthaya gaya .

Mehfil wahan bhi thi,
Log yahan bhi the,

FARQ SIRF ITNA SA THA
Unka hasna wahan,
Inka rona yahan.

Qazi udhar bhi tha, Molvi idhar bhi tha,
Do bol tere pade, Do bol mere pade,
Tera NIKKAH pada, Mera JANAAZA pada,

FARQ SIRF ITNA SA THA
Tujhe Apnaya gaya ,
Mujhe Dafnaya gaya !

PS: It is not my creation. I have shamelessly copied and pasted from some mailing list.

Shoddy customer service of Reliance iCall

Please see below the email communication i am having with the customer service at Reliance. Do you think i am not justified at being upset with them. It has been 4 days and i am not able to use their service. Instead of taking it seriously they are playing email game with me.


==============================================

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am not going to waste my time in answering these questions. If you want me to continue the service and pay for it, please call in between 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM. Otherwise i will happily take my business else where and inform others too.

With regards
Anup
- Hide quoted text -


On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:14 AM, wrote:


Dear Customer,

We understand that you have faced an issue while using our services.

Kindly confirm the exact error message you get while using the services. Also provide the IP address for further investigation.


In case you require any information regarding our services, visit the Help or FAQs section of our website, for further details give your comments in our feedback section at www.relianceicall.com or mail us at customercare@relianceicall.com.


Keep Talking
Reliance iCall Team







To
customercare@relianceicall.com
cc
Subject
Re: In response to you Reliance iCall feedback





> 1. Suitable timing for test call : 7:30 - 8:30 AM PST, 7:30 - 10:00 PM PST
> 2. Phone number to contact you for on-line testing. : +1-XXX-XXX-XXXX
> 3. Country name from which you are calling: US
> 4. Destination country.: India
> 5. Time and date of unsuccessful calls: All attempts made since last 3 days.
> 6. IP address:

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 5:05 AM, wrote:
>
> Dear Customer,
>
> We are analyzing the issue, if required we would like to do on-line testing.
> Please provide following info:
>
> 1. Suitable timing for test call
> 2. Phone number to contact you for on-line testing.
> 3. Country name from which you are calling
> 4. Destination country.
> 5. Time and date of unsuccessful calls
> 6. IP address:
> 7. Brief of issue faced:
>
> In case you require any information regarding our services, visit the Help
> or FAQs section of our website,for further details give your comments in our
> feedback section at www.relianceicall.com or mail us at
> customercare@relianceicall.com.
>
> Keep talking
> Reliance iCall Team

Hibernate Tutorial With Java

A good tutorial on how to get started with hibernate. I am going to try it with H2 DB instead of MySQL.

People's madness to See Amitabh Bachhan

On importance of doing

This is a quote from a speech that President Theodre Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in April 1910 entitled "Citizenship in a Republic". This was also lately quoted in book "Too Big to Fail"

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails with daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.