No more Megan

One of the Transformers' biggest USPs, Megan Fox ....

.... will not be seen in part 3 of the series.

Replacing her will be ....

.... Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Hmmm ....

30 years of Pac-Man

.... and Google commemorates with a live game on it's home page, complete with sound fx!

Holiday drought

Tomorrow, 2nd April, is a holiday for Good Friday. The next scheduled holiday is on the 2nd of September for Janmashtami ..... a straight 5 months without a single day's off from work!

The Israelis at it again

Another MOSSAD hit goes down just as planned .... the Arabs are left floundering .... the world wonders in awe.

How often & how well have the Israelis managed such covert operations against enemies of the state. Makes one wonder why we can't mete out similar treatment to our friends in the Land of the Pure.

Agni 3

The 4th test flight took place today. Reportedly, it's been a complete success with the 3,500 km range being fully tested & a CEP of 40m.

Opens up really interesting possibilities with regard to the big neighbor up North.

Our leaders

The PM consorts with Obama ....

.... while the Prez flies the MKI ....

Hmmm ....

Find your God

It turned out to reflect what I actually am in real life .... maybe this thing works!

DMRC's new stock

Delhi Metro moved into U.P. today with the inauguration of the line into NOIDA. The new rolling stock from Bombardier looks nice & solid.

Moose Miller

It's amazing .... wikipedia doesn't have a page on this comic strip! No pages titled Moose or Moose Miller or Moose & Molly!

Jacqueline Fernandes

Miss Sri Lanka, debuting in Hindi movies with Aladin this Friday. A beauty indeed!

Honda-fication

Bade papa took delivery of his new Honda Civic yesterday. That makes it 2 Hondas in that family adding to the Honda City that Vinnie drives.

Then there's Chhoti's City ZX. And Archana too moves around in a City. It seems the Maruti era in the family (when just about everyone gave up their Padminis & Ambassadors for assorted Maruti models during the late 90s-early 2000s) is coming to an end.

I think I'll contribute further to that next year.

Tariff wars & the Indian mobile market

DoCoMo's launch in the Indian market 3 months ago was a big surprise. The option of per second billing saw people buying the company's SIMs in black. Tata followed it up with a per call billing plan from it's CDMA arm, Indicom.

Needless to say, they've run away with the most new subscribers in GSM & CDMA over the last few months in the world's fastest growing telecom market.

Then the baniya company decided to get in on the act. Reliance, through it's GSM arm launched a 50p per minute billing plan - regardless of STD/local or SMS to any & every kind of phone across circles, countrywide! The rationale given was that the market had moved from being competitive to cut-throat & now it was a case of who could bleed longer, in order to garner more connections in the short term. And we all know the kind of cash reserves the R companies have.

Not that I am complaining. I remember paying Rs 2.30 a minute for STD calls when I first started using a cell about 7 years ago. This was soon after incoming calls (which are still charged in markets like the US, by the way) became free & cellphone purchase in urban India exploded. And has remained so from then onwards.

It seemed unbelievable 2 years ago when STD tariffs dropped to 1 rupee a minute. But that was then & this is now .... they cost me 50p since last Sunday (yes, Vodafone launched it's own scheme & also gave me validity till 2021 as a bonus). Thus, the customer is ruling the roost in the Indian mobile market. But somehow I get the feeling that things just took a turn for the worst .... competition moved from being healthy to downright brutal. Which is something that might not necessarily be good in the long term.

The metros already have about 100% teledensity. And the other cities will get there soon enough. And with companies like Telenor, Etisalat & SingTel planning on launching their operations pretty soon, things will get murkier as growth starts to plateau. There will most likely be a much needed round of consolidation & mergers.

The market though, still has lots of potential. Teledensity countrywide is not yet up to the 50% mark.

Whatever happens, it's gonna be interesting.

Saved?

Somebody had messed with SprtRd's fuel pipe and the handle lock on Monday night. Didn't take it to work. The chain & fuel lock might have saved my bike, I think.

Memory effect ....

..... both, the cellphone and laptop seem to be suffering from it.

Revving up

Very interesting article on Bloomberg today about India's car exports this year vis-a-vis China's. Seems Al-Hind has handed the much-hyped dragon some much needed humble pie. Made for pleasant reading on a gloomy day.

Dudes and TV

Ajay came along this morning. Was meeting him after about 6 months, how time flies. He has mellowed down after marriage .... in a pleasant way.

Caught up about a lot of things .... Deepanjan's leaving for UK, his own plans for the future and of course, the good old days at Shivam. It's strange how all past memories acquire a rosy tinge regardless of how the prevailing situation at that time might actually have been.

Gunakar has shifted base to Bangalore and with Arni set to arrive back from LA sometime in the 3rd week of this month, it looks like it's gonna be a partial Shivam old boys' reunion pretty soon.

On an aside, there's been a spate of emergency oral contraceptive ads on TV over the last 6 months. Was watching an ad for Parle's shitty lemon drink 'LMN' today. It goes by the tagline 'emergency lemon refresher' and when the dude doing the voiceover mentioned the word 'emergency', I was sure the next word to be mentioned would be contraceptive. It was only when he said lemon, that I looked up from the laptop & realized that it wasn't another 72 hour contraceptive being advertised. That's how pervasive their ads have been!

... and another ....

Andhra's much popular 'YSR' becomes the latest in a long line of Congress leaders to meet his unfortunate end in a crash. The names of Madhav Rao Scindia; Jitendra Prasada and Rajesh Pilot come to mind .... tall regional leaders snatched in the prime of their political careers.

I was impressed when, defying all popular opinion, YSR led the Congress to a sweep of 33 out of 42 LS seats in this year's general elections, besides winning a 2nd term in the state assembly polls held concurrently.

The search operations for the wrecked chopper were pretty intensive, involving as they did IAF Mi-17s; Dhruvs; Su-30 MKIs (with an IL-78 for in flight refuelling); an ISRO terrain mapping plane with Indian and US reconnaissance satellites also playing a part. Ground forces included AP Greyhound special forces; Army and Central paramilitary troops besides the local tribals. Boats were also pressed into service on the Krishna river.

Brings to mind the question, is the Congress cursed to lose such powerful leaders ever so often? Because one doesn't see this happening with other parties a lot.

The PM's entourage

These AFP photos ....


.... of the PM's convoy at the Red Fort on the 15th of August shows all black X5s and 7 Series Beemers. So it has happened - all desi pretensions have finally been junked with no Ambys or Safaris present.

Makes for a darn good sight .... and I envy those NSG commandos .... riding around in black BMWs on traffic free streets.

Game Over.

Sri Lanka finally got it's most wanted man's head today. Wonder when we'll get ours.

Elections 2009 - The day after ....

The NSE Nifty hits the upper circuit breaker twice before trading is suspended for the day. It's the first time this has ever happened.

It was the same with the BSE Sensex ....