Karthik Chronicles

Well it’s no big news that oil prices are on the rise. I guess it might even reach $200 per barrel soon if the price band suggestion is not implemented. This all is the technical gibberish which holds importance for us but is just not what we care about.

To tell the truth what I care about is how much I have to pay for any kind of public transport which includes buses, taxis and autorickshaws(according to Indian context). Main problem anyone would face would be with autorickshaws in India.  Take my case for example, I used to pay around Rs. 30 to go to the Bus Depot(CMBT) from my house in an auto. That was about a month or so ago. Suddenly some days ago  when I wanted to go there, I was being charged Rs. 50. I actually thought it was just this one guy trying to get more money but I realised that every single auto driver was charging the same price. The truth is that, the place is barely 3-4 kms from my house and I really don’t think 1 litre  of petrol would be wasted for 3-4 kms even if its an auto. This shows how these people are having fun with the increase in petrol price.

When you talk about fuel prices you really can’t miss the rising inflation in India. Its like the latest hot topic. Wherever I turn to people are talking about how that inflation in India might actually cross 20% if the fuel prices don’t go down.  Many things that are not related to fuel directly or even indirectly are increasing price giving a boost to the inflation. So my fellow Indians be ready to pay through your nose for anything and everything.

Photo of a autorickshaw

You don’t know what control is until you lose it.

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              I have not posted a thing for a long time on the blog. I had saved two drafts on which I was working but a reinstall of XP and reinstall of Windows Live Writer and a little bit of dumbness from my part, lost it. So here I am with nothing to post. I may not write both of those posts again. So coming back to the main part, I have been bit by the twitter bug and I just can’t seem to ignore it. If you ask how it affects blogging, well I just simply put whatever I want to say in 140 or less characters and even get comments by many people on it. Twitter has even made me lazy and I hate to type too much now.

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           For all those people out there who always forget birthdays and anniversaries and even deadlines, Gmail has come for your rescue.

New! Gmail Custom Time^TM

Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn’t slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.

          This feature is going to be the talk of the town for sometime.

               Now you can be sure that all your emails will be sent in the past and you don’t have to meet any deadlines. Here is a testimonial by one of the user.

“I just got two tickets to Radiohead by being the ‘first’ to respond to a co-worker’s ‘first-come, first-serve’ email. Someone else had already won them, but I told everyone to check their inboxes again. Everyone sort of knows I used Custom Time on this one, but I’m denying it.”

Robby S., Paralegal

Then there is this clause that you can send only 10 mails per year because google thinks people will loose faith in emails. Here is what Gmail says about how many years back you can send the email to.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You’ll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.

   If you couldn’t guess it till now let me make it clear. This was the april fools joke of gmail. Yes, and it seems it is quite good. Compared to the paper mail one which was done last year. I just love google’s jokes.

And yeah don’t lose your chance of being the first humans to colonize space http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

I normally don’t write such small posts but it would be a waste to write a big post for this. The Illusionist is a 2006 movie. The
movie is just simply fantastic. It is based on Steven Millhauser’s story “Eisenheim the Illusionist”. The movie has been
shot brilliantly. The only problem with the movie was that when Sophie dies it’s quite clear that it might be Eisenheim’s
illusion. Nevertheless it was a wonderful movie.

      I am not going to go much into the detail how TATA motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover. I actually don’t care much about it. But the point I wanted to make was how cool the deal was. I mean look at it an Indian company owning two most recognized automobile brand. This is definitely more amazing than someone wasting as much money as India’s GDP to get some cars running. More on that topic later.

          The deal was of around $ 2.3 billion which comes to around Rs. 9,300 crore. That is a huge amount considering that the company who bought these was a Indian company. They own all the intellectual property rights and factories which come under Jaguar and Land Rover. It seems they went with some agreement with the Ford Motor Corporation over this. That means they get the 3 factories owned by Jaguar and also 1500 workers with it. The Deal would officially be completed by the start of the next quarter.

       Exciting thing here is that TATA, has now shown the world that India’s automotive companies’ capabilities are much higher and better than what the other countries expect. From what I see TATA may continue the manufacture of Jaguar and Land Rover in their respective factories and use the design ideas to build India specific cars. Importing the cars to India would be a costly affair which may be done for the rich and elite class in India.