Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude

My daughters tourist visa to India expired and had to be renewed for the upcoming trip. After my first experience of sending by post, I decided to personally go and drop it off at the office in Houston. This time around Travisa is no longer the company it has been transferred to a different one called BLS international.

The new company is pretty professional and their website is pretty detailed. After due diligence and processes, I made an appointment for a particular day at 11:00AM. I showed up at the office at 10:45AM and here is how the conversation went

BLS: Hello, may I help you

me: Hi, I have a visa appointment for my daughter at 11:00, should I come back as it is not 11:00 yet

BLS: No you are fine, can I see your appointment letter

me: Sure, here you go

The lady looked at it once and started looking for my daughters name in her list of appointments sheet. She had a total of 3 sheets of paper and going by the font size I would guess a total of 50 odd names. She glanced through the whole list once and couldn’t find it and meanwhile I was getting slightly worried.

BLS: the appointment is in this name right? (pointing at my daughters name on a sheet)

me: yes

She handed me the first sheet and asked me to look through if I can find it while she looked through others. I took the sheet and looked at the appointment times it was sheet for appointments from 9:00-10:00

me: Maam, these are for appointments from 9:00-10:00 but mine is at 11:00

BLS: Oh yeah, found it

She marked my daughters name with a yellow marker and asked me to take a seat.

Assuming the BLS lady marks up all the names that has showed up for the appointment, there were only a couple of marked up names on the sheet I was looking at and couple more on the sheet the lady from BLS was looking at. So, does this mean people made appointments and never showed up during their appointment time? I think that is the obvious conclusion. If they haven’t shown up during their time then will they show up at some arbitrary time as they please?

Taking a guess here,since it is a visa for India and looking at all the people present there it will most likely be people like me who have booked their appointments and have not shown up. My thoughts on this incident,

1. If one cannot keep the appointment that too for a visa then why make it in the first place?
2. Would we do the same thing if we were applying for visa for any other country like Europe or while applying for USA visa from India?
3. I am fairly certain the people who booked these appointments are fairly educated and in some sort of white collar job. So, why this don’t care attitude for the Indian visa? 
4. Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude in people?
5. For BLS, If you can make an appointment and can still show up anytime then why keep these slots for appointments?
6. For the BLS folks, since you know this is the case then why not just organize the appointment names in alphabetical order and be done or why not do the TRAVISA way and do on first come first serve basis. 

To be fair, I didn’t pay attention to the names to guess the origins of the people who did not show up for their appointment nor did I talk to the BLS folks to know how this business work and my post is based solely on my singular experience in that office.         

iOS 7 first impressions

Over the weekend I updated my Iphone 4s to iOS 7 and here is my take on it

• I think the colors and hues are done to impress teenage girls. The more neutral look that the previous OS used to have is gone. At the first look I hated it but now its been a few days and I am getting used to it.
• The control center is pretty nice and slickly done, The OS now has a built in app to enable the flash led and use it as a flash light. Finally I could get rid of the ad driven app that I was using to do the same.
• The notes app used to have a selection of fonts and now we have to be satisfied with only default no choices.
• The camera app is re done nicely, it has a ton of live filters built in.
• Safari web browser is also redone, I like that it has the options on screen to make browsing private. I must warn you it will take a few minutes of getting used to as the default mode is full screen.
• The timer, safari apps are aiming for a 3D feel. 
• Finally any icon can be moved anywhere and can be grouped with any other one, for ex: in ios6 I couldn’t move the passbook or Newsstand from the main screen and keep them with other unused apps.
• The introduction of itunes radio is cool but I think it has a long way to catch up with apps like Pandora. At the first launch the radio had trouble finding my Wifi.
• The weather app has onscreen animations like the Android OS
• The maps on Apple still have long long way to go, on 1 instance it couldn’t find a location I was looking for while Google maps had no trouble finding the place on the second instance the app was predicting my arrival time ~20mins later than my GPS and Google maps. The error is not a big deal if it were for a 3-4 hr journey but in my case it was little over an hour long journey. 
• The battery drain is slightly faster with iOS7 than with the previous version, not a big deal and not a big concern.
• The background app killing reminds me of the old Palm OS and Android (instead of holding down on the app till we get a red bar at the end like we did in the previous OS, now just flick them up)
• The i-message interface also reminds me of Android. I hope the i-messaging works better with this OS as I had a lot of trouble using the i-message  in iOS 6 and had switched over to Google voice and whatsapp.
• Sorry no SWYPE keyboard yet.

On the whole the OS seems to be doing a catching up with Android, not too happy about that.

D-Day Hindi Movie

Spoiler Alert: I may have disclosed part or parts of the plot of the movie. 

Last night me and Sandhya managed to catch the movie D-Day, an extremely well done Hindi fictional movie on nabbing Mr.D from Pakistan and bringing him to India. So far I have seen quite a few so called thriller movies in Hindi some original and some pirated either from Hollywood or from other languages in India itself, this sits almost at the top.

To be fair, In the past Bollywood has taken up good story lines and manage to goof it up pretty badly, few movies at top of my head are Zameen which was based on Indian airlines flight hijack to Afghanistan and the movie Qayamat which is supposedly a rip off of Rock and many more like that if I think hard. Both the movies made me twitch and turn in my seat, I couldn’t take them for more than 15 mins.   

Watching the movie it appeared that Rishi Kapoor has thoroughly enjoyed playing the role of the gangster. The roles of vulnerable Wali Khan played by Irfaan Khan is very well portrayed. Of course Arjun Rampal as the silent assassin is also well played. Sad that Huma Quareshi and Shruti Hassan does not have much role to play. I must appreciate the casting director for doing such an excellent job. Most movies will either have a good first half or good second half but this movie will keep you at the edge of the seat till the very end. 

The thing that stood out for me in the movie is its boldness in terms of its dialogues. I felt the story line stayed pretty close to reality, the cat and mouse game is very well shown. Of course there is a love angle also which is some what short and does not hamper the narration.

I am not saying it is a perfect movie as I was able to find quite a few loop holes that I failed to explain to myself. One will fail to understand how the character of Irfaan Khan sitting in Pakistan is openly communicating using an old Nokia phone with his handler who is the head of R&AW sitting in India. One would expect needs to be a highly secure line. 

But if you are in for a good thriller and a Hindi movie, then I would definitely recommend D-Day.

As I said before, it is a fiction and one of those things that we Indians keep thinking to ourselves “if only it can happen like this”.

Precious moments

I have no remembrance of what I was thinking and no idea whatsoever about what is going on inside Avni’s brain. But together this made a pic to remember. Many thanks to Sandhya for capturing this moment.

Life of Pi – The movie

Long time ago, I remember reading the book “Life of Pi” and being thoroughly impressed by it. I don’t think I ever thought that some one would venture to make a movie out of it and that too it will turn out this good.  In my experience, there are only few movies that I could say the movies surpasses the books they are based on and I am more than willing to accept Life of Pi is one of them.

The book in case one has not read, is the story of a boy named Pi who for some reason  gets stuck on a boat with a Bengal tiger in the middle of the pacific ocean, how he managed to reach the land and the bonding he made with that tiger forms the rest of the story. I loved the book for it offered different perspective on life, on the life of animals at zoo and the funny narratives about how the boy was named Pi Patel while the rest of the family had normal Indian names.

The movie has gone a few steps beyond and I loved the way they have added Irfan Khan’s character (playing the adult Pi Patel) as a wrapper to the whole story. The narrative is amazing and the photography is mind blowing. I must admit parts of the movie were too real for my taste, but that’s the way the book is written. Every single actor is in their true elements. The ying and yang with father and mother playing the head and the heart roles is brought out really nice. In short it is a master piece and is worth the time.

To describe my own experience of watching the movie, after a hard day on Saturday. I was pretty tired and wanted to sleep off but on insistence of Sandhya (who had seen it before) I sat to watch the movie saying to myself that I would watch for just half hour and then sleep, but little did I know that I would be so engrossed and occupied with the movie that I sat through the whole movie of nearly 2 hrs and few mins. Keep in mind, I have read the book and I know the ending and there is no suspense element involved in the movie for me. 

ps: I should have caught this movie in an IMAX theater but as luck shall have it I saw it at the comfort of my home.

The magic of Disney

Sometime in May 2013 my company announced a mandatory week long shut down during the July 4th weekend. I was confused as to what to do for a whole week and where to head to and Sandhya suggested Disney world, Orlando. We deliberated for a few minutes and decided to head there for 4 days with 2 days extra for travel. I am glad I did this, at the end of 4 days, none of us wanted to come back and had to literally drag our feet to the airport to return to Austin. 

In my stay in US, I have been to several theme parks (couple of six flags, couple of sea world’s, Hollywood studios and also the Disney Land LA) and before we reached there my impression was this place probably is a mix of Hollywood studios and Sixflags. I was wrong, it was as the name said a magical place. It is probably the one and only theme park that I felt, I wish I had more time to spend here.

As the title of the blog goes we spent more than half of our time in Magic kingdom and the other half was split between Disney Hollywood studios Disney Animal kingdom. My 2 and a half year old was thrilled to meet the characters of Disney like the princesses, fairies, the Mickey the Minnie and Buzz and Woody. She also had a lot of fun dancing in the street parties and also watching the shows. In short she had a blast and so did we. 

One thing to admire Disney is their transportation logistics. To reach magic kingdom we had to go drive the car, raid a tram and then ride a mono rail. All of which was well manned and was very very efficient. I remember coming back one night after the fire works (~10:30PM) and the place was really crowded but it didn’t take us more than 15 mins to reach our cars and the drive out of the parking lot was also real smooth and no congestion what so ever. Considering the scale of operation they have in Disney world, makes me wonder how many people and contractors and temporary workers they need to employ for a smooth operation of the place. Their fast pass system also deserves some appreciation, if utilized properly can save a lot of time (Keep in mind they have fast passes for most but not all shows and rides).

The one and only crib I have about Disney is their lack of good food inside the park. They have lot of ice-cream shops but 1 or 2 burger places and 1 or 2 restaurants which typically have a wait time of 45mins or so. If you are a vegetarian like me then the options reduce drastically.      

One piece of advice, if you consider a Disney vacation then do not spend the extra money on options like park hopping and all, from my experience it was a useless thing for we did not have time or energy to jump from park to park.   

I can’t end the blog post without mentioning a word about the FL weather, the months from May to October is what they call the hurricane season and out of the 5 days we were there we had rain on 4 days. The rains won’t last too long but are pretty intense while they last. So, if you are there buy a poncho and keep moving. Also, pick a rainless night and watch the fireworks from magic kingdom and the show right before that (can’t remember the name).

In the end there is no denial it is an expensive vacation, it is a place where you will spend a lot of money on stuff toys and plush toys and all such stuff. Not to exclude the flight tickets, park tickets, the stay and so on but a worthy visit.

The abortion debate

I don’t understand the stands of these so called republicans. On one side they believe everything should be persons choice and government should not interfere in any aspect of a persons life including owning a gun to paying taxes and so on but in the same breath they want to ban abortion in whatever time and way possible.

Passing absurd laws of banning abortions altogether and not even in case of genetic diseases like the one in North Dakota is border line ridiculous and madness. If the government wants to pass such ridiculous laws like these, then the government should be ready to take responsibility for everything from mothers health, child birth to child bring up and more care/support for ones whose kids are born with genetic diseases that would prevent them from leading a normal life. But wait, that is against the republican principle.   

For me it is simple, choice should and definitely be of the mother. All said and done, it is the mothers body and mind that has to go through the changes required for baby’s development. That said, I am not proposing a free for all, when and where possible abortion but allow a minimum time of first trimester or so and after that only allow if there are medical conditions like genetic diseases that warrant such a move. 

I guess some would say, they are republicans and not libertarians.