FTF India 2008

My second year at AllGo, and my second FTF. Freescale Technology Forum is a global event that is held annually to help Freescale and its partners showcase the latest technologies and products. In India, it is held in Bangalore. Like last year, this year too I was part of the team that represented AllGo at FTF. The venue this time was The Leela Palace Kempinski and it was held on the 13th and 14th of November. Compared to last time, the venue was better, the food was better, the freebies were better (heh heh), and even though I didn’t win a Creative Zen at the lucky draw , it made for a very satisfactory FTF for me.

We had a booth at the Technology Lab and we had one demo relating to automotive infotainment and another in home automation. We showcased Trio, AllGo’s popular multimedia solution as part of the automotive infotainment demo. We had on display support for different devices like iPod and USB thumb drives. Also on display was the Bluetooth handsfree support, which lets the user answer phone calls via his car audio system. It certainly made for a very interesting demo. As part of the home automation solution, we demonstrated a Wi-Fi and Zigbee based setup which lets the user control different electrical components of his house using his Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, no matter where he is. Needless to say, the participants were very impressed by it.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from the event. If you want to see all the photos we took at the event, you can head to my Picasa account here.

Me at the AllGo booth (Day 1)

The AllGo Team : (from left) Srinu, me, Girish, Kunal, Yagnesh (Day 2)

Our Automotive Infotainment setup

The Home Automation setup

FTF India 2007 Photos

The Freescale Technology Forum took place at the Grand Ashoka in Bangalore on the 19th and 20th of this month . I had the opportunity to visit FTF with my teammates, since we were demonstrating the “Plays From Device” capability of our Trio multimedia solution. Both Trio and ZigBee demos from AllGo were very well received by the participants. As expected, the participants were knowledgeable and inquisitive, and we had a good time interacting with them. FTF also gave us an excellent opportunity to look at some of the current activities going on in this field. Though there was a sizable crowd at the event, we did manage to take some pictures of our company booth at the Technology Lab.

The entire album can be viewed at my Picasa account here.

All in all, it was a good break from the regular Monday morning routine for me!

Jab I Watched Sonu Nigam Live!

It has been an extremely entertaining week for me. For two major reasons. The first, because I watched Jab We Met at Fun Cinemas here in Bangalore in the first week of its release. And a very entertaining movie it was. Well worth the money you spend on the multiplex ticket.

The second and the more important reason is that I got the chance to watch Sonu Nigam live in concert yesterday evening at the Cisco Family Day in KTPO, Whitefield. Having got passes for the event, me and Kaari reached there at around 7, well in time for the major attraction of the evening. Sonu Nigam finally came on stage at 9 30 and gave an absolutely electrifying performance for two hours. As is usual with such concerts, a grand stage entry was arranged for him and an assortment of screens marked with a huge “S” (which certainly did not stand for Superman or Slytherin) were held up hiding him until the precise moment. And when he emerged, the crowd went absolutely wild.

A couple of slow songs later, Sonu raised the tempo with a few dance tracks. And with the many fun tricks he had with him, he made it clear that he was not there just to sing songs – he was there to entertain. His “on the spot” brand new song composition with the words “Aloo, Gobi, Mooli, Mutter-paneer” later seemed to fit perfectly with the music of “Aaja nachle ve” (Ta Ra Rum Pum), much to the amusement and delight of the crowd (well rehearsed with the band it appears, but hey, I am not complaining!). More fun was in store when he pretended to forget which “Bijuria” song the crowd wanted, singing two completely different versions, one sillier than the other, then finally jumping down from the stage and asking a front row guy to remind it to him by singing it, which he gleefully obliged (damn those lucky front benchers!!).

For me, the best part of the evening was when he picked up a file of Kannada songs, asked the crowd (thrice) to forgive him for any mistakes and then gave an almost flawless rendition of “Mungaru Male” and “Anisutide”. The last song of the evening was the title track of “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, which he interrupted after the first stanza to thank the crowd, and then sang a completely westernized version of the second stanza (and it sounded beautiful!) to finish the day. Not since Jayciana have I enjoyed an evening so much. I had only two complaints though – one, Sonu did not sing my current favourite “Ninnindale” and two, the concert didn’t last all night, which if it did, I would have happily stayed there the whole night.

A zillion thanks to you, Jyothi, for the passes. I owe you one.

FM Radio : A quest

Here’s a question : How difficult is it to buy an FM radio set in Bangalore if you are in the Indiranagar area? Not easy at all, I’ve concluded after spending over three hours looking for one.

It all began when I realised one day the reason my house was so quiet. It was because the good folk at Motorola had forgotten to put an FM radio receiver into my L6. That was when I decided that a nice radio would liven up my 10PM to midnight slot well. My requirements were simple really:

1. It must have a speaker built in to blare out music loud enough to disturb my neighbours.
2. It must draw AC power. I didn’t fancy changing batteries every Friday at 10:21PM.

And so I set off, thinking it would be an easy task, since I was surrounded by dozens of electronics shops all of them eagerly waiting for the knight who would come to rescue his, er, radio. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The guys at the first shop (for want of a better word, let’s call them salesmen) were busy watching cricket on one of their indecently large plasma TVs and paid no more attention to me than they would if I were a tree stump. One of them finally looked up during a commercial break and told me they didn’t sell such things as radios. The second shop didn’t seem to know what radios were and the third tried to sell me a thing that could play CDs, audio cassettes, video cassettes, DVDs, and wash your clothes and cook your food, with an FM receiver thoughtfully built in, so you can enjoy the music while the thingummy washes your clothes or cooks your food or, well, plays some other music.

It was the same story with the other shops as well, with salesmen trying to sell me odd devices ranging from ones that could play audio formats not even invented to ones that could separate Uranium-234 from Uranium-238 and ones that could do back-flips and fight space aliens, all with FM receiver built in. Since my requirements didn’t exactly specify separation of Uranium isotopes or alien warfare, I patiently explained to the salesman that I didn’t want any of those fancy gadgets – I just wanted a simple FM receiver. The salesman grinned, showing all his 29 teeth, probably implying that he had just brushed with an electric toothbrush, oh, with an FM built in of course. That’s when I finally understood the problem – radios are no longer sold as stand-alones; they are always built into something else. No wonder I seemed out of place. It was as odd as asking for a lone human hand at a shop that sells full human beings; the hand just can’t be purchased like that (I am not sure if it’s entirely legal to purchase human beings, so this analogy might not be completely appropriate).

I finally gave up the search. I was too tired to enjoy anything but a good night’s sleep anyway.

Epilogue: I finally got what I wanted two days later – not in Bangalore but in Chennai. I am now the proud owner of a Philips Bahadur DL-167. Plays crystal clear sound. Apparently if all you want to buy is a radio, humble Chennai is better than glossy Bangalore.

Meanings of difficult words:

Radio: An electronic device that has a couple of knobs which when turned causes the speaker to produce interesting sounds. For more information, contact your grandpa.

FM: The electronic jiggery-pokery done on sound before it is tossed up in air. Stands for Freaky Magic. (A guy in my office tells me it stands for Frequency Modulation, but don’t worry. I think he was only joking.)

Salesmen: The kind folk at shops that do little more than guide you to the next salesman who in turn guides you to the next salesman and so on until you find yourself at the exit.

Electronics store: A store that sells plasma TVs and more plasma TVs. Might even sell ordinary TVs if you go on a lucky day after duly consulting your almanac. Does not sell anything that begins with an R.

Of Rains and Autos

The day was not turning out to be very good. I had just come out of the restaurant with my sister when I realized that it was raining very heavily. God, in His infinite wisdom had apparently decided to pour all the water in the world onto Bangalore. Sis began worrying about getting me safely back to my place which was more than 5 km away.

“Relax”, I said, ” we’ll just stand here and talk until it stops raining. And then I’ll take a bus!”. Sis looked at me as though I was deranged. Apparently I knew nothing about Bangalore rains. The whole city would be flooded and I would be stranded there without means of getting back home. And so we ran from shelter to shelter until we could see an auto.

“Auto!”, sis screamed. He stopped. I ran to the auto, jumped inside soaking to my pancreas and declared, “Jeevan Beema Nagar!” expecting my charioteer to take me back to safety. It didn’t happen. The auto-driver shook his head. For those uninformed about the ways of Bangalore autos that is the equivalent of saying, “I am not going anywhere. Get out of my auto you oaf!”. And so I did.

We switched to Plan B. We would take an auto till my sister’s place where I could wait till the rain stopped (which was unlikely, but at least it was better than staying out there in the cold). We set off in another auto. The driver kept jumping across adjacent roads saying this one was too flooded to continue, often taking us in the opposite direction until the auto decided it had had enough and the engine went cold. After ten minutes of tinkering with the engine the auto finally started and the auto driver took the cursed tin can back to where we started and asked us to get down. We refused to pay him.

By now, the rain was slightly less. We walked until we reached one more auto stand. The auto driver demanded Rs. 150 to take me to Jeevan Beema Nagar. Only my previous experience with Chennai auto drivers and their ridiculous rates stopped me from laughing in his face. We found another guy who would take me for just Rs. 75. Ah! What a lucky day I was having!

And so I set off solo on Auto No. 3 to the blessed J.B. Nagar. Sis would walk back to her place. All was well until we reached intermediate ring road. That’s when we were caught up in the mother-of-all-traffic-jams. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, it did.

Auto No. 3 died. It refused to start. Driver No. 3 started tinkering with Auto No. 3 but it seems he was not so adept at the tinkering business. At any rate he did not have the success Driver No. 2 had with Auto No. 2. Thats when he declared mournfully that the auto would go no more. And along came Auto No. 4.

Auto No. 4 already had a passenger going to Thippasandra and so Driver No. 3 struck a deal with Driver No. 4 to drop me to J.B. Nagar. A revenue-sharing agreement was reached between the two Drivers. And then I set off on Auto No. 4.

As we slowly inched towards the flyover, Auto No. 4 decided to join the party. The engine went cold. Just what is with these autos that make them detest rain so much I will never understand. Anyway, I was witness to yet another tinkering that day what with Driver No. 4 deciding to jump inside the auto’s rear. The Thippasandra passenger went to a pan shop and started smoking, preferring to catch the action from a distance. After 10 minutes Driver No. 4 came out and announced that we would now push the auto.

“We? What do you mean we?” would have been the normal reaction. But normal is a word not normally associated with me. And so I pushed. And pushed some more. And pushed a little more. And then the by-product of modern science came to life.

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully except for the fact that a hitchhiker decided to travel with us and insisted that he be dropped off first. A normal man would have objected, but.. you know…

It was 10:30 at night by the time I reached. And as I changed into dry clothes and snuggled into a warm comfortable bed, I realized I still had so many things to be thankful for, even though I could recall very few at the moment…

House-hunting Tips

Searching for a house in Bangalore is no easy task. Here are some pointers for effective house-hunting:

1. Decide on the approximate location. Take into account your daily commute to work and the public transportation facility in that area. Note that rents vary widely depending on the locality.

2. Make a list of your requirements. Categorize them into Mandatory (got to have a bathroom!) and Preferable (preferably two bathrooms – but one will do if everything else is okay).

3. First try searching using the classified newspapers like AdMag or websites like http://bangalore.kijiji.in/ or www.magicbricks.com. You might get some good leads. In case of websites pay attention to the date on which the ad was posted. Some websites have ads that are more than 6 months old. Also be aware that some of the contact numbers may be those of brokers, in which case you’ll end up paying a hefty brokerage, thus defeating the purpose of looking at ads in the first place.

4. If you are willing to pay extra, get hold of a good broker (the word “good” here means recommended by someone, whom you can always blame later if the broker isn’t “good “). The brokerage will be a month’s rent (negotiable in some cases). Be clear on the area and your budget.

5. The house-owners will require you to pay a refundable deposit. That’s usually ten months’ rent. The deposit is negotiable in some cases. While you are at it, try to negotiate on the rent too (why pay more when you can pay less?) .

6. Insist on a proper agreement and tell the owner clearly that you’ll be requiring receipts for the rent paid. This will result in considerable tax saving on your HRA.

7. And when you finally find your perfect house, you can enjoy handing out unsolicited advice like I am doing now!

And the search finally ends…

My search for an accommodation finally ended yesterday. We found a 2BHK house near airport road and for once, it seems to meet all our requirements. It is very expensive though – a big rent and a huge amount as advance. Of course it is normal in a place like Bangalore to shell out such money and so even though it exceeded our budget by a good Rs.3000, we didn’t think twice before sealing the deal.

So this ends almost three weeks of the house hunting we carried out in the evenings. Also the innumerable calls made to brokers, searching through obscure ads in the classified magazines and looking at houses no sane man would ever wish to live in. Our house actually seems to have ventilation, a fact that made us make up our mind so fast, since our previous experiences in looking at houses tells us that the v-word is never taken into consideration by the builders. In fact, one particular house that ended up on the huge list of “rejected” houses actually had buildings so close to it that I wondered if any of the windows would fully open at all. And yet the broker insisted that the house had brilliant sunshine during daytime. If only he had paid attention in high school science classes…

Given a chance to go back in time (and of course with a pot full of money), I would definitely build a house in these areas to rent out to software engineers. I would surely end up with enough money to build more of them!