Fast in support of Anna Hazare

Today during the Bhagavatam session our teacher Rajima brought up the topic of Anna Hazare who has started a fast until death to get the bill against corruption done right. She said we believe in praying, having a strong intention and doing peaceful protests to get things done rather than retorting to violence and extremism.

So, she asked us to have the intention to eradicate corruption from the whole world and fast a day in support of Anna Hazare. I have signed up to fast till dusk tomorrow. Will you do it with me and support the cause?

AOL Austin fundraiser event with Omkara

March 26th 2011 was a big day in the history of Art of living foundation’s Austin chapter, for one we hosted the biggest fund raiser event in the chapters history and second we did the event with our long time friends Omkara. A gathering of over 600 people who were totally entertained and enthralled by Omkara.

It started with a simple intention of Sridhar Adapalli (volunteer with Art of living Austin foundation) to host a fund raiser event for Art of Living Austin center with Omkara. Over the last couple of months, volunteers from the foundation made time in their busy schedule to show up at all the possible cultural and social gatherings to spread the word about the event. Some of the volunteers worked towards getting sponsorships for the events while others were busy with e-marketing for the event.  The fruits of all the efforts was evident on the event day when the auditorium was filled to the brim (~600 people) and we were scrambling for chairs to accommodate the last few people who showed up a tad late (what a wonderful problem to have).

Thanks to good leadership shown by the team leads and great efforts by the volunteers, the big day went very smooth barring a couple of minor glitches. To issue concert tickets for over 600 people and provide food and drinks to over 350 people isn’t a small thing after all. The setup team had the hall ready by the scheduled time, the ticketing team was very professionally managed, the food team packed and distributed the food as though they had been trained in the art and the ushering team which managed the seating of all the people. All in all it was a job well done and executed beyond excellence. 

The band itself did a wonderful job in keeping the attention of the people for the whole 3 hours of the event duration. The addition of Bollywood Shake provided the much needed color to the melody. The band had picked the right set of numbers to sing, the songs varied from the oldies to present day hits and the compilation had both Hindi and Tamil languages. It was evident that we had a great show when the entire dance area in front of the stage was occupied with audience dancing away and the band had to stretch their time in honoring the “once more” requests.

I do not know the financial aspect of the event, how much money the foundation raised or the final head count of the audience or the number of food boxes sold. I am sure I will have these numbers pretty soon and will share it once I have the same.

PIO, Indian visitor visa – some learning

I recently went through the process of applying for a PIO card for my daughter and for reasons beyond my control, I ended up just satisfied with a visa, but in the process I did learn a thing or two

• If both parents are citizens of India then the kid can only get a PIO and not an OCI
• Consulate General of India doesn’t handle the PIO cards or anything of that sort anymore, they have outsourced it Travisa (I found it the hard way when the consulate returned my application without even opening it)
• Unlike the old times, The new regulations require to send the passport along with the application for PIO card
• The Travisa website is well documented a complete opposite of CGI Houston which left things to imagination on requirements for either a PIO or a visa
• The Travisa office is also very professionally maintained, when I went to apply for a visa I was in and out of the office in less than half hour. They send you an email every step of the way (I got 3 emails in total, one saying they received the application, second saying they received from consulate and last one saying they have shipped along with tracking number)
• The only forms of residency proof they accept are drivers license or a utility bill, cable bill or DSL bill won't work
• Visitor visa is the simplest and fastest thing to get (I personally dropped the application I got it the very next day)
• One thing I didn’t like was the fact that they were willing to hand over the passport back to anyone who had the receipt. 
• Tuesday is a bad day to go to Houston as most Indian outfits in Houston are closed on Tuesday
• In spite of clear instructions I witnessed quite a few people sent back due to lack of things they were supposed to get

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2 cents donation fund

Other day I was at the dentist for a routine checkup, they were running late due to some emergency that had come up in the clinic. So, by the time they called me in it was ~40mins after my scheduled time. The receptionist wanted to make up for the delay and gave me a Starbucks card.

The card did not specify the value it held or I did not notice it, I went to Starbucks and ordered the usual, after swiping the gift card the cafe owner told me that I am left with 2 cents on the card. The card supposedly can be recharged and can be used as a cash card at Starbucks, but there is no additional discounts for doing so. Since I am not a regular to expensive coffee, I shredded the card.    

After couple of weeks after this event, it occurred to me that the card is an open account which the company has to keep active and it won’t be long before the maintenance cost of the card will go beyond the balance left on the card. The fact that I have already shredded the card there is no possibility of future additions to the card.

Here is a solution I would like to propose to these companies that prefer to sell the gift cards, why not ask the customer if he/she would like to donate the left over couple of cents to a charity. Initially the cents might be small but over time I am sure it can grow to a decent fund. The potential savings on maintenance of these almost delinquent cards alone should be an incentive to take this approach.

VW repair Austin

Most VW owners in Austin agree with me on the fact that owning a VW in Austin is a pain, not because the cars are less reliable in Austin but because of the lack of quality specialized repair shops, or so I thought.

There is one dealer in town, who from all points of view is below standard. The only option I had getting my VW fixed was to drive 35miles to the dealer in George town. For the last 8 years of the ownership of my VW, I have used the dealer in George town for all the major and minor repair services. I like the dealership, so far I have had ok experience with them. But this year when my car was at 96000 miles and had a coolant leak problem, I decided to find a local independent repair shop. After spending long enough time on Google and yelp and other such places I found this place called Austin Veedub.

Even though the reviews were very positive for this repair shop I was hesitant, but figured I had nothing much to lose and decided to give them a shot. I was pleasantly surprised when they said they can only see my car a week later for they were busy. On the scheduled day of service, my car had more problems than just coolant leak. The service manager Adam was pretty professional and he even arranged a ride for me back to work. They called me the same day with the repair estimate. The thing that really impressed me was that they worked on things that I had quoted as problems and not sneaking around to fix things preemptively. After they did the repairs they realized that one of the repairs they had quoted and performed hadn’t fixed the problem and the actual problem was somewhere else. They were professional enough not to charge me for that repair (there is no way I would have known where the real problem was).

Also, they were professional enough to honor their warranty and replace the part they had put in for free. The repair costs were also reasonable and frankly much cheaper than my dear dealer. 

It is not all bed of roses, some times they do not have parts and might have to get it from other places (dealers amongst others) and that could delay the service time. They are located near the airport and getting there is a tad tricky.

In spite of these drawbacks, I like these guys and I am willing to say bye-bye my dear dealer and hello to Austin Veedub. I wish I had tried this place couple of years earlier. 

Flickr, photo streaming

Ever since the arrival of my daughter to this world, capturing her beautiful moments has become my favorite past time. I have the Canon-xsi equipped with kit lens and a decent flash to help me accomplish this.

The next step was to start sharing the good ones with friends and family. I have friends who are either on Facebook or Buzz or those who do not have any known social networking foot prints.The choices were, create an album on Facebook and start sharing for people on FB and upload to Picasa web album and share with rest of the friends. I hate the idea of managing inventories at 2 different places. Another draw back with this approach is it leaves Buzz out completely (trust me, you do not want to link your Picasa account with your Buzz account). I needed the one place to put the pics and share it on Facebook, Buzz and with the rest.

Taking a leaf from my pro buddies Anoop and Madhu, I decided to explore Flickr. The good thing about Flickr is, it can send updates to both Facebook and Buzz. When I realized there is an Iphone app for Flickr (supported by Yahoo) and not for Picasa, I said “Sold”, Flickr is the way to go. Sadly, Google doesn’t believe in investing on a Picasa app for Iphone.  Thus started my share of photo streaming on Flickr.

Flickr isn’t without its quirkiness, they limit the storage to 300MB (its working to my advantage though, unlike previous times I upload only the ones I believe are the best), unlike picasa they upload the full resolution pic (eats up storage limit real fast). If the pics are not in the public domain, then sharing it is a tad painful compared to Picasa. But the ability to put at 1 place and share across different social networks beats all these inconveniences.

If interested, you can checkout my photo stream here.

Movie Guzaarish

Guzaarish, a high profile movie with heavy weights Aishwarya Rai and Hirtik Roshan, movie is directed by another heavy weight Sanjay Leela Bhansali (SLB). I watched this movie on Netflix streaming last week. Before the movie I thought I will have something to write about and after the movie I thought otherwise. But after a few days of cooling off, I figured there are a few things I can write about.

The movie is unique for it tries to address the issue of euthanasia, and does a bad job in doing it. I think SLB didn’t want to make an art movie out of Hirtik and Aishwarya so the movie became a “commercially blended art movie”. The movie had the potential to raise to the heights of movies like Philadelphia (I know we are dealing with completely different things here)  but it doesn’t even go anywhere near.

The story line is simple, one time great magician and now a quadriplegic radio host Ethan wants to end his life. Its been 14 years since he has been bed ridden and been an inspiration to lots of people like him. One fine day he decides to end his life, so he files a petition with the court for euthanasia, rest of he story you can find on Wikipedia.

In spite of being a commercial blend, the movie does show the struggles of Ethan’s life, his never say die spirit and his total dependency on some one to take care of him. My biggest complaint is of the government lawyer who does not do his job right. From my point of view, court room was a joke. The witnesses called were even bigger joke. 

The movie did raise the question in me, who owned Ethan’s life?, The guy can’t do anything in life and he has no visible responsibilities either towards the society or towards family. He cannot sustain his life style as he is deep in debt. The only part of the body he can move is his head. His kidneys are already shot and his lungs are also failing, the chances of him getting better are 1 in 10s of millions. With all these reasons I felt the court was wrong in saying he cannot opt for euthanasia. I would have at least referred the case to the higher court to decide.

SLB had a chance to create history by making court room drama more dramatic, more involved and giving a land mark judgment allowing the person for euthanasia or at the least referred to the higher courts but I feel he failed.