Jun 5 2013
A Flock Of Pigeons
I took this pic in May on MG Road. Pigeons on my balcony and pigeons on the road. Pigeons everywhere.
Cochin
May 25 2013
The Rains Have Arrived
It has been raining for the past 3 days over here. Finally after months of heat and humidity and dust and pollution in the streets of Cochin city, we finally get the long needed respite by way of rains. As I have stated before, it started getting quite warm by the end of January and by late February it is quite hot. March, April & May are usually the worst times as far as heat & humidity are concerned to be living in Kerala and this year has been terrible. Usually the monsoon season for Kerala starts in June (right in time for the first days of the school year) and goes on till the end of September, then we have a brief respite and it picks up again for a month or so. No fall or winter for us – just summer and monsoon!
Today has been actually a bit chilly. I did some dusting & cleaning in my room, long over due but then I’m lazy. Threw out a bunch of old office stuff – work diaries, product & process information of my old company & client’s stuff. Lots of dust. Cleaned up the dust on 10 novels and some cds & dvds. Spring cleaning can be good. Found this gem – a dvd of the Neil Young documentary Heart of Gold, which I bought in 2009 and never watched. Thought it was lost. It’s up for Sunday viewing. With the schedule power cut for 30 minutes at 7pm today, our area will have had a grand total of 9 power cuts for the day. Next year we will have a black arm band mourning day to commemorate this auspicious occasion. It seems that they had a major issue, when we called them up. No shit Sherlock – 6 power cuts from 9am – 1pm is definitely a major issue.
Ah, today is a day for lots of hot black coffee and soft buns that have tooti fruity in them. And fried fish!
May 17 2013
Kerala Rocked Hard With Celeb Scandals
The past couple of days has seen Kerala and India (in the second case) rocked by two different scandals. The first one was regarding an actor Kalabhavan Mani allegedly assaulting two forest officers in the night. Mani is a mostly comedic actor who has also donned on a few more serious roles as a hero or villain and won a few state & a national award for his role as a blind street singer. He is known to be more down to earth than most actors and is also known for his charity work. However a couple of days ago he was in the news for all he wrong reasons. Apparently he was traveling with friends in a car when they were stopped by two officials for routine car checking. The actor responded violently when he was asked to open the boot of the car and he & his friend, a doctor, assaulted the two officers. The forest officials said that Mani was inebriated. The officers sustained injuries on the chest, hands, legs and eyes one of them more serious. They were admitted to the Chalakudy Taluk Hospital.
Jaya Gopinath, who was travelling with her husband Maliyekkal Gopinath and Mani, filed a complaint against the officials, complaining that the officials verbally abused her and misbehaved with her.The actor had gotten himself admitted to a hospital in his native Chalakudy. The police have registered cases against both Mani and the injured forest officials. The latest news is that Mani has gone into hiding immediately after the police registered a case against him under non-bailable sections of the IPC. A police team visited Mani’s new and ancestral houses at Chalakudy on Thursday to take him into custody in connection with the case, but he was found missing, said the police. However some friends of his say that he had left for Bangalore on Wednesday night to take part in the shooting of a Tamil Movie.
The second incident which happened a day later when former India Test bowler Sreesanth S. and two other players have been arrested by Delhi police on suspicion of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League, sports officials said on Thursday. Sreesant is a fellow Keralite and a fellow resident of Cochin. The IPL is kinda like the English Premier League or any of the European leagues for cricket and features Indian & most of the top foreign players from nations like England, Australia, in 9 teams. Sreesant, who has been in controversial situations before, was immediately suspended from an ILP matches along with his Rajasthan Royals team-mates & co-conspirators Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila and will face harsher actions if they are found guilty post a trial. Spot-fixing is the manipulation of individual incidents within a match which may not affect the outcome of the contest, most famously exposed in a London trial and jailing of three Pakistani cricketers in 2011.
Delhi’s police commissioner Neeraj Kumar alleged that the three Indian bowlers took money to concede a pre-determined number of runs in three different IPL matches. For 4m Indian rupees (£48,000) Sreesanth agreed to concede 13 or more runs in his second over of a May 9 match at Mohali, Kumar alleged. Sreesanth tucked a towel in his waistband to signal to a bookie, giving him enough time to “indulge in heavy betting”, the police chief said.
I’m not surprised in either case. The Indian film world has always been associated with corrupt politicians, underworld figures and lots of illegal activities going on. An actor with good connections misbehaving and thinking himself to be above the law is nothing news – Mani has had two other cases against him, both which were settled. Sreesanth is known for being arrogant and hot-headed and his antics have lost him more fans than he can ever know. And cricket & match-fixing is nothing new; this is India after all and corruption & illegal stuff is everyday news. Not surprised in that case either. It’s not the first match fixing scandal to rock cricket and it won’t be the last. And I couldn’t care much since I don’t watch it and I can’t stand the game.
There that’s my two cents worth!
May 11 2013
Woods Manor’s New Pizzeria
Time to discover an all new pizza place in good ole Cochin. Woods Manor is a long established hotel in the city on MG Road. They used to have a cafe called the Sidewalk Cafe. Well that is no longer there and the took apart the place and rebuilt it as a semi-open cafe called Pizzeria. Yes it’s just called Pizzeria and it’s a good little pizza place with some sandwiches, burgers and stuff as well. After attending an engagement today, I left early as there was a huge crowd in this small house and arranged for my cousin and I to have a couple of beers and then we went to have pizza.
I’m guessing they have a chef who has had some proper training in making pizzas because they are really serious about the pizzas here and they are really good. Really like the image on the front. Their furniture isn’t as good and they should replace them. It’s also a little too hot and no washroom in the near vicinity (you have to go to the main part of the building and then go past their normal restaurant to the washroom).
The pizzas are delicious. My cousin Sujith had a Chilli Prawn pizza – prawn as he was on a sea food roll for the week.
I had the Cajun Spiced Chicken pizza. Both were delicious and the thin crust were crunchy and everything was really good. We had Sprints (kinda like a very bad local imitation of Sprite) to wash them down.
Great pizzas – however they took almost 25 minutes to acknowledge us for the bill. No waiter or manager was around for a while even though there were one other table occupied at this late afternoon hour (we went in at 4:15 pm). If they improve some aspects of their service, this will be one great place for some slices.
Apr 24 2013
A Look At SFC Plus
I’d like to show you the newest place (new as in atleast for me) that I like to go to for a quick bite to eat and some cold drink. SFC Plus is an Abu Dhabi based, Indian Malayalee owned, fast food restaurant which currently has two franchises in Cochin. The one that I go to, or have been going to for the past month or so, is the one in Alliance Residency on Marine Drive, which is quieter, much much quieter shopping mall next to the hustle & bustle that is the Bay Pride Mall. And while Bay Pride has the food court with Indian, Chinese and Marry Brown’s similar fast food menu, I think I prefer SFC Plus.
One main reason I like SFC Plus is that it’s quieter and less crowded. The 4 times I have been there there’s just a few people in there and it’s quiet and peaceful. There is also a lot more seating available with wisely placed tables, booth seats and in the middles these smaller square table with cushion stools. There’s plenty of space and 3 doors leading into the outlet as well. Now the menu is similar to Marry Brown’s – southern fried chicken, chicken strips, some veggie burgers, chicken burgers, prawn & chicken subs, salads, fried rice, wraps and good pizzas. And they do have 2-3 rather cute & petite lady servers from North East India! Bonus 
I’ve had the chicken sub twice (the third pic) and their prawn sub (the 4th pic) and both are very good. Their fries are hot & awesome tasting. Their burger was ok, nothing to rave about. And once I had a pizza from there, a barbecue chicken with jalapenos, capsicum, onion & tomato pizza which was hot, good and served on a hot plate. So since the food is good as well I really enjoy this place. They mostly have Coke to drink but I also had a Sprite there once. Nice place to chill out in the evenings.
Apr 20 2013
The Top 5 Food & Drink
Who doesn’t love a list? So write one! Top five favourite food & drink joints in your town
Top five fried chicken outlets
- KFC
- Chick King
- Marry Brown
- SFC Plus
- Chicken Chicago
Top five slices of pizza in Cochin
- Dominos
- Pizza Hut
- US Pizza
- SFC Plus
- Woods Manor’s Pizzeria
The top 5 favourite watering holes
- Couchyn
- Loungevity
- Velocity
- Volga
- Mansion House
The top 5 coffee shops
- Cafe Coffee Day (both Ravipuram & Shenoy’s Jn)
- Fort Cafe
- Coffee Beanz
- Coffee Cube
- Cafe Canopy
Apr 14 2013
A Kerala Power & Weather Rant
Time for a climate related & government & Kerala rant. I hate this weather. We are so screwed. Let me start by reminding you that in my part of the world we have just two seasons : monsoon and heat. Call it summer, call it whatever; it’s just heat & fucking humidity. When it rains it can rain a lot and I kind of like that. Then there’s a brief period in January early February when it’s a little bit more pleasant with the early mornings and late evenings being a bit cooler but then bang we come to the end of Feb and March and it’s fucking hot. Energy sapping, sweat inducing, moisture robbing heat & humidity. That’s what we have now and it’s annoying as hell.
Kerala depends on Hydo-Electric plants for the majority of the electricity with the dams and the water level in Iddukki being a constant topic of discussion for all Keralites. We depend on the rains for providing that water and usually we have a heavy monsoon that takes care of the supply of water needed for the power demands of the state. Last year the monsoon was weak and we didn’t get much water. Whenever this happens we have scheduled power cuts in weekly rotation timings each evening to save electricity usually for 30 minutes a day and between the peak hours of 6pm and 10pm. With that scheduled power cuts they also sometimes have unscheduled power cuts during the day in certain areas depending on the whims & fancies of the deranged assholes working at the controls – or so it seems! This past year it has been bad. 1 hour power cut a day, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the evening. Starts from 6am to 10am and 6pm to 10pm. And now we have unscheduled power cuts during the day as well.
And for the past few days we have 2 hour power cuts a day – scheduled! Yes 2 hours a day. This week my area has been having the power cuts for 30 minutes each at 7am, 9am, 1pm and 8pm. And yesterday the motherfuckers cut the power to my area 3 extra times in the evening for who knows what reasons. It just kept going off and coming back on – looks like like someone at the controls at KSEB was either having fits or rolling around on the controls having sex! Man, woman or animal – I’m not sure! KSEB is run by incompetent shemales who can’t distinguish between power sockets their own assholes! Plugs might go in anywhere, in any hole!
I have no idea when the state is going to have it’s power issues and their shit back together. I know some other states have it really bad but the problem is that this state is so complacent with a bunch of old, uneducated & corrupt men who are just interested in filling their pockets and don’t care about progress. We should have gone to solar power a long time ago and not depend on the rains as much as we have. Imagine if we had both options and Kerala could actually move forward. But no! Screw your parties, screw your politicians, fuck the Kochi metro talks and all that shit!
Apr 5 2013
ICICI Bank’s Service Sucks
I am wondering how low can bank service go in India and the King of them all ICICI Bank shows me that they are definitely deserving of their status – as the worst in how to deal with customers. They are utter useless and pathetic. They don’t have the decency to call back a customer who has sent them several emails asking for an explanation or clarification and their managers cannot be bothered to call you back unless you have called them several times asking for a status update.
I got it into my head that I finally needed a credit card and applied for one for the first time in my life. Unfortunately my current bank, Federal Bank, does not have credit card services and hence I had to apply elsewhere. So I did to ICICI, HDFC & Citibank which are the three major ones and to some others as well. The other banks have terrible online services and I am still to get a call back from several of them despite registering for a card back in February. Citibank rejected me while I applied online. That left me with HDFC and ICICI and I applied to them both. Frustrated with the online option for ICICI, I went down to their office in MG Road and asked to speak to someone regarding credit cards. I was guided to a manager and I told her all my details and showed her the documents I had with me for the card. She looked it over and said that I would need a signature on my bank statement (from Federal bank) and that once I get it she would send an agent over to my office to collect the details and to help me fill the form. When I told her that I had already filled the online form and that I got a call back from a girl who said that an agent would come to meet me, she said that the online format was not reliable and that she would send me someone.
OK, so the next day the agent came to my office and I gave him all the documents and filled out all the forms. Since my current company does not provide Pay Slips to employees I got a Salary Certificate from the HR department and gave that to him. Now both he, the agent, and the lady manager said that this would be enough. So I signed everything, filled in everything and he took the form and went back to the office. I was told that I would have to wait for a month. Ok not a problem! About 10 days later I got an email from ICICI’s credit card section saying that:
Dear Roshan Gopal Krishnan,
We thank you for your interest in ICICI Bank Credit Card.
We have processed your application ID 6089359969 using the information and documents submitted by you and additional criteria as applicable, which includes the following:
1. Eligibility criteria of ICICI Bank
2. The viability of the proposed purposes of the credit facility
3. Past borrowings by you (if any)
4. An existing Credit Card application under process (if any)
5. Your prior experience in respect of the proposed purpose and
6. The regulatory and statutory provisions governing ICICI Bank.Based on the above, we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you the credit facility at this point in time. However, this is not a reflection of your credit worthiness.
For any clarification or more information regarding this matter, please e-mail us at creditcard@Loans.ICICIBank.com.
Sincerely,
ICICI Bank Credit Cards Team
Not understanding why I was rejected I called the agent. It took him 5 days to answer me – I called him once he said he would get back. I called him the next day, he said he would call back. I waited two more days and he finally tells me “I forgot to check”! Then he said he would get back to me, which he finally did – “Sir, there is no issue. We just need additional documents”. What documents? He did not know. Frustrated I called this lady manager – it took me 10 days of calling her to finally get through. She was on leave due to health issues or something and she said she would call back – she didn’t for several days. Finally I called back “I forgot your number”. Finally she said she had checked and it was because I don’t have a salary slip and since my salary is in a non-ICICI account they have kept the application on hold. But she said that usually a salary certificate would be ok and she said she will check and call me back. 2 weeks pass by and I get no call from her. I sent her an email – she does not reply back!
Finally I called her but she was on another call and she called me back. The status is the same – my application is on hold as there is no salary slip. Did she not know this would be the case when I applied? Did the agent not know this? They work for the same bank and yet she tells me “from Chennai it is the decision!” like she isn’t part of the company. What’s more the email id that the bank gave me to send for any clarifications “creditcard@Loans.ICICIBank.com” is useless. I have sent 6 emails to them asking for a clarification but no reply back till date.
Do they treat all prospective customers this shabbily or did I win some fucking contest that they ran?
Mar 19 2013
The Kids Are Alright!
Right next to my office building is an Upper Primary school run by the government. It looks more like a cleaner cowshed really, right in the center of the plot. On both sides of the school building is the playground – on the left side the boys play and on the right side the girls play. I don’t think that this is meant to be segregated this way but it just so happens that on the left side are what seems to be a version of a football field cum cricket pitch. There are two goal posts that I can see on one end – what looks like goal posts as there is no netting.
On the right side of the building the girls play on swings, see saws, a kind of carousel and I also see a few kids reading under the huge tree that offers a lot of shade. The girls seem to be going at a more leisurely pace during their break while the boys are in aggressive games of cricket almost everyday. The school hasn’t provided them with proper equipment so the boys make due with what I assume are sticks of plastic or bamboo and not proper cricket bats. No pads or caps and they play with a rubber ball – bright blue!! I’m two floors above yet I can see that bright blue. And the kids bowl underarm while the batsmen or batboys use all their might to swing at the balls toss to them. The fieldsmen run and jump and lunge to catch them.
As always across schools throughout the state, the players are quite serious about their game. Today there seems to be a lot of caught outs! One frustrated player threw his ‘bat’ 50 feet away in disgust as he was out within a minute of joining the game. Two boys at the far end were cracking jokes to each other – that’s what it seems like, cause they keep going off into fits of laughter, doubling over in the hilarity. I don’t see any teachers or gym teachers during these sessions. Reminds me of my childhood days in school although we played a lot more football than cricket in our school grounds.
Mar 4 2013
India’s Biggest Shopping Mall 2B Opened
Lulu Shopping Mall is a shopping mall that is to opened on the 10th of March in the Cochin neighbourhood of Edapally. It will be one of the largest malls in Asia and is built on an area of 16, 98,261 sq ft, with total area for mall alone at 300,000 square metres (3,200,000 sq ft) and the remaining portion for a premium five-star hotel managed by JW Marriott Hotels. It is anticipated to be the largest mall in India with 1.6 million square feet of Gross Leasable Area, beating the Phoenix mall of Mumbai which has a GLA of 1.34 million square feet. More than 360 outlets including food courts, restaurants, family entertainment zones and a seven-screen multiplex will all come together to make Lulu Shopping. The estimated cost for this project is more than 1500 crore rupees. The mall is run, managed and set up by the EMKE group, a business group with interests in Middle East, Africa and Asia and who’s staff have strong ties to Kerala.
As many as 320 international and national brands have a presence in the mall, out of which 46 are coming to the state for the first time. According to officials, about 30 new brands including Walt Disney and Barbie (Mattel) will come to the mall soon. The first Mac Donald Restaurant in Kerala will be opened at Lulu Mall. The mall will have an indoor ice-skating rink, a 5-D cinema hall, bowling alleys, water rides and electronic games. The mall provides a parking area for over 3,000 vehicles. As soon as it opens Lulu Mall is expected to have huge crowds of people thronging to it’s many stores and facilities and be a landmark for the city & suburb. he mall expects about 50,000 visitors a day and the expected monthly revenue is `80-`100 crore, said the officials.
The complex will house, among many others:
- Lulu Hyper Market (2 Levels)
- a 3500-seated Food Court that has 18 multi-cuisine kitchens and three fine restaurants
- 71,000 sq ft, 8-screen multiplex with fabulous computer games, bowling alleys, rides, and amusement
- Expansively spread check-out counters
- Ample parking space that can easily accommodate up to 3000 vehicles
- Money exchange centres
- Bank counters & ATMs
- 16 pairs of escalators, travelators, elevators, and lifts
- Spacious corridors
- Large glass central atrium with translucent roof
- Facilities for the disabled
- Easy access and exit
Lulu Hypermarket on the ground floor having an area of 25,800 square metres (278,000 sq ft) selling fresh, frozen, canned food, fruits and vegetables, along with butchery, bakery, hot food counters etc. Lulu Department Store on the First floor with 13,500 square metres (145,000 sq ft) of shop floor selling non food items like garments, footwear, luggage, white goods, cosmetics, electronic goods etc. International home furnishing store of area 49,500 square metres (533,000 sq ft). Gross leasable retail space over 19,800 square metres (213,000 sq ft).
I know that you westerns in the US, UK, Canada, Germany etc etc are used to big malls but for us here this is the biggest deal ever! We have smaller malls that are mostly wannabes and they don’t have much in the form of entertainment – except for shopping and some dinning. We are all excited for the international brands as well.
Feb 7 2013
My Lament To Cafe Coffee Day
I posted this on Cafe Coffee Day’s official Facebook page sometime back along with the photo!
“Your outlet in Shenoy’s Junction, Mg Road, Kochi has become so depressing. I went there this evening after a gap of a month. The quality has been declining steadily week after week. A couple of months back I had pieces of plastic (from the milk packet) in my frappe. Today I went there and the place is looking like a dump. Cartons, boxes & black garbage bags filled with stuff dumped to one side. Due to this there was a lack of space on one area of the cafe, where I had the misfortune of sitting and the tables were pushed so close to each other. I regretted placing an order especially when my veg samosa arrived – the texture is like leather! I could use it to make a pair of shoes! Atleast the coffee was good. But I am not going to step inside the place again. Here is a pic of said cartons & black plastic bags. Couldn’t take more as my phone battery was dying.”
Feb 5 2013
Japanese-Indian Connection
What there is an international football game being played in Cochin tomorrow and I didn’t get to know about it till today? So I was reading about the build up and previews; India is playing Palestine who doesn’t even have a proper nation to define. I read about the difficulties that the players & that which the Palestinian coach faces – unable to get all players together most of the time, difficulties in getting visas for some of the players, travel being banned between West Bank & Gaza, some players based in Jordan or Lebanon etc etc. Compared to that Indian football faces just bureaucracy, stupidity, lack of funds, advertising & sponsorship as cricket gets all the money, low public expectation and thereby nonchalance attitude over the national team’s performances. And then I found out about this guy:
Arata Izumi will be making his international debut for India when the match kicks off. The Pune FC player is usually a roving second striker and will be the first foreign national to play for India. The Japanese born Izumi has an Indian father and a Japanese mother. After his early years in Japan, he started his professional football career with Albirex Niigata Singapore of the S.League.
Despite his growing reputation in Singapore, he was never called up for the parent club in Japan. In 2006 he moved back to Japan and signed for Mitsubishi Motors Mizushima F.C. of the Japan Football League, where he worked at the Mitzubishi plant for 10 hours and then practiced for 2 in the evening. Late in the year he signed with East Bengal FC in India and played with them for a season. In 2007 he signed with Mahindra United and from 2009 he has been playing with Pune FC, where last year in August it was announced that he has recieved Indian citizenship. Reading up on him, reminded me of this fellow:
Dan Nainan is an American standup comic born in Indiana to an Indian Malayalee father & a Japanese mother. Before becoming a comedian, Nainan worked at Intel Corporation as a senior engineer, before being promoted to Strategic Relations Manager! During presentations at high profile events Dan found it experienced tremendous stage fright. To fight he fear he took classes and eventually joined a comedy group. His Intel coworkers, upon viewing a videotape of his, invited him to perform at a team dinner for 200 employees at a high tech convention in Las Vegas. Upon seeing that performance, the organizers of Intel’s annual sales conference asked Nainan to perform for 2,500 salespeople from around the world. Restless at his stationary new job and anxious to use his creative talents, he left Intel to pursue stand up comedy full time in 2007. He opened his 300 seater club to promote clean comedy in the DC area. Nainan’s book about standup comedy, titled How to Become a Full-Time Standup Comedian, was published by HyperInk Press on April 18, 2012.
Jan 23 2013
No Power, No Power
The power was out for a long time today. Apparently it was in the paper (not in the Indian Express which is what I read but it was mentioned in the Malayalam Manoram which I do not read) that there would be electrical work being done and hence from 11:30 am – 5pm we had no power at home (ofcourse we also had the 30 minutes power cut in the morning at 7am). Oh I guess I should also let non-Malayalees (or even just non-Indians) know that here in Kerala we have a 60 minute power cut scheduled for us on a weekly basis i.e same time every day for a week. The 60 minutes is split into two so 30 minutes in the morning between 6am and 10am and another 30 minutes in the evening between 6pm and 10:30pm. This ofcourse is because India still depends almost solely on the hydro electric projects (there are 2 diesel power plants and a solitary wind power plant but that’s it) and when the rains fail to supply us with enough water for the dams, we get power cuts to regulate the power supply until the next monsoon is done.
Oh and Kerala gets it’s power from the Kerala State Electricity Board (otherwise knows as incompetent doofus dinkus assholes corporation board). So we have the 30 minute scheduled power cut in the morning at 7am as it is supposed to be this week and then it goes out at 11:30 am and comes back at 5 pm. And then it goes out at 6pm for a few more minutes and instead of 9:30pm as it scheduled for this week, the evening power cut goes out at 8pm! Fuckers at KSEB doing as they please! For once I would like to go to their office and cut their power without prior information! Bastards!
Jan 12 2013
Fish n’Chips – Much Better Version
Ok, a few weeks ago (in November) I had posted a pic of a fish n chips plate I had from Abad’s Cafe Canopy. I had labelled it as a miniature version of fish n chips and was disappointed in both the size of the dish and the taste. A few days back I tried it again in the evening after a tiring day and I must say that this time – they did a much better job. The fish pieces were bigger, juicer and more succulent. Just amazingly delicious. Can’t say the same for the chips or French fries as they weren’t that good but overall I loved it so much.
Jan 7 2013
Indefinite Bus Strike In Kerala
The indefinite bus strike launched by private bus workers since midnight demanding wage hike has hit the mobility of people across the state. Starting from today we have an almost total strike for buses as the state run KSRTC has failed to run additional services (as usual the government fails to help the public when it is needed) and they have used more buses for the Sabirmala area for devotees & pilgrims in that area. Reports from various districts said the impact of the strike was severe in northern and central districts, where people depend heavily on private buses for their movement.
All bus workers unions affiliated to major central trade unions including CITU, INTUC and BMS, are participating in the strike demanding an immediate payment of 50 per cent interim relief. Union leaders said the workers were “compelled” to launch the strike, causing difficulty to the people, as bus owners had refused to honour a commitment on pay increase made during a tripartite negotiation three months back. Therefore a heavy rush was seen by people in the available KSRTC buses in the cities, like in Cochin.
To make matters worse government offices will come to a standstill from tomorrow after employees and teaches start an indefinite strike seeking withdrawal of the government decision to introduce contributory pension. A section of KSRTC employees too have supported the strike and will protest from 6 am to 6 pm tomorrow. Wonderful, just wonderful my dear Keralites.
Emerging Kerala my ass! We can’t even get to work properly.
Dec 11 2012
Grilled Hens, No Coop Needed
Taken almost a month ago at a Arabian restaurant called Burfis near my place that I go to a couple of times a month. They are known for their Shawarmas but I find that their grilled chicken in the Al Faham style is just excellent. They are made just right and I enjoy them with some porottas.
Dec 10 2012
Hit By The Bus Strike
Today the people of the state of Kerala had to endure another one of those miserable strikes. The private bus worker’s unions had called a strike a couple of days ago, to be held on the 10th of December. Why? Well in lieu of the petrol & diesel prices going up in recent weeks the private bus owners group held a strike as they wanted to raise the prices of the bus tickets, especially the minimum charge from Rs.5 to Rs.6. Initially the state government did not agree so the strike took place. Predictably after a day the government agreed to increasing the bus tickets rates and the strike ended after 24 hours. In effect I now pay Rs.9 instead of the Rs.7 I was paying to travel from home to the office.
However we had another strike today related to the same incident. The bus workers union (drivers, conductors and door checkers – why the fuck do we need so many people operating a single bus?) were not happy as even though the bus fare was increased, their salaries weren’t. They demanded a good pay hike, which is standard across all the unions and bus owners, as the rates of commodities have been increased. It wasn’t done and so they held a strike today. So no private buses! Great, big fucking great! The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation runs it’s own buses but they are few and far between and worse thing is that there are so few that run from my place to my job in Kakkanad. So I waited for 45 minutes this morning in the hot sun waiting for a bus and on finding the only one completely filled with people like sardines in a can, I took an auto just to reach to the office on time. I was 20 minutes late and poorer by Rs 160.
I left the office early to try and get home quickly but wasn’t able to get into a bus. The couple of ones that were going in my direction were packed like crazy. I waited and I waited and then got an auto to Palaraviattom -> Rs.60. I waited some more, then had a cup of coffee and waited some more and finally at 7pm gave up and took another auto and came home. Rs.100 poorer! Tired, needing a shower and hating this stupid state and it’s people and it’s unions and it’s striking mentality.
Dec 8 2012
December Is Hot & We Have Mosquitoes!
It’s December and even if we here in South India don’t get a winter season – no snow, no ice and not even cold weather – and it’s usually just warm, this year it is really bad! Last year we had mornings that were cool with a little bit of morning mist. By mid morning it would be warm and kinda normal but it wasn’t that hot during December-January. This year not so much!
This year it’s mostly hot with more heat piling up. It’s quite sunny and hot these days, from say around 9 am till evening 6pm when atleast the sun goes down – and it is getting darker than usual this month. I’ll give the season atleast that much. But the evenings are worse cause I can’t keep the windows open. It’s hot and sweaty and even if there isn’t much of a breeze I’d love to be able to keep the windows open but I can’t because of all these damn mosquitoes! I’m finding it hard to sleep at night because of them bastard vampire insects buzzing around me all night long, going into my nostrils, my ears and flying into my face and biting me all over. I guess I’m going to have to get some mosquito repellent (I’m allergic to most of them) sooner rather than later.
Damn, I hate Kacheripady when it comes to mosquitoes. Having lived in a place that didn’t a problem for 19 years and then moving here to find that this is a mosquito haven, ugh! And the heat, shit we’re all gonna need personal airconditioner packs some day soon! Global warming – and to think there are idiots who think that global warming is a myth!! Don’t they read the papers, morons? This is all because of mankind being irresponsible and having causes depletion in the ozone layer.
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