"you should never make fun of your country"
" your country is like your mother. Remember that’s why it is addressed as mother-land"
"should be proud of being an Indian"

I never cross questioned against the elders who gave these advice .

However, within myself, I started pondering: if I were born in / belonged to a different country, I would still be given the same advice as above, except that the country-name would be different. So, its just a basic expectation that one shouldn’t deride ones own country, and every country has its own reasons the citizens should be proud about belonging there.

For example, two men belonging to countries that are bitter enemies (Ind-Pak, US-Rus, Jap-Chn ) would be ‘proud’ of their respective countries, just because they were born on that side of the boundary.

This thought is fresh in my mind even today. Somehow I stop myself from extending this to matters of Religion, although it is tempting to do so .

Today, after 20+ years of my first encounter with this thought, I come across this succint quote :

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it" – George Bernard Shaw

Wow, Ranga !

If households can blindly pay Rs200 month-after-month-after-month for ‘living-room filth’ (= cable TV) , they can more easily pay for un-subsidised cooking gas.

Thereby:
Atleast a few would stop cable TV. National productivity will improve a tiny bit. Good.
Atleast a few would look towards more efficient cooking. Good.

This will put an end to black-marketing, hoarding, and the ensuing fund-flow to terrorists.

Yes, I have a strong opinion that whenever there is black-marketing in any commodity, gains from it will inevitably trickle down to global terrorism.

However, this subsidy-end should directly & immediately reflect in lower taxes, whatever minuscule fraction it be.

Off topic:
Macro-economically, every citizen should pay the same for the same quantum of stuff. Without that, the ones at the receiving end of govt subsidies would never get a chance to realise the true cost of stuff, be it rice or water or LPG or even the cost of bringing up kids.

Day-1. 04Nov. Thu. Pre-Deepavali day. Reached home at 6am, talked till 630 & slept till 830am. Reason: Bus ride was back-breaking, last-row seat, no-road for 60km, and no push-back seat too. Felt very lucky for getting a tkt, else Diwali would’ve been alone@blr !

Dress: New shirts were stitched 1month back. Parents coaxed me to buy new pair of trousers, so went to town with dad (5km), bought new pair of everything: chappals, chaddi-banian, towel & trousers finally. Back @ home in 2hrs. Its a record breaker, since that day is human-jam at the town area & we never venture to town on entire pre-Diwali week !
Evening: burst crackers & fireworks. enjoyed.

Day-2. 05Nov. Deepavali day.
Went great ! As usual all 3 of us got ready at 530am, and lit fireworks, crackers etc.
(getting ready = a bit elaborate, with oil bath esp. Yours truly was the last one to get up, at 430am! )
I took a power nap for 30mins at 830am, to recharge for the whole day ahead.
Did 3-4 rounds of cracker bursting. Main trick: asked dad to buy 56-wala giants.(no image on web??!). I dismantled the ‘garland’ , and burst them as singles. Like Test Cricket. Nice way to spend time + burst crackers + moderate sound + save paisa !!
Mom got pleasantly annoyed at “this  big fellow  bursting all single crackers for hours together” idea.

Day-3. 06Nov. Morning was as usual. Me: eat+sleep.
Evening: went to Rajini movie Robot. Nice one. We 3 liked it. Definitely watch if if there is a native-language dub.

Day-4. 07Nov. Sunday. Most part was about packing & getting ready. Some last-minute discussions, not-to-forget points.
And, I simplified the startup steps at home laptop, and gave some practice to parents on how-to-start it, plus skype, mail etc. At first, they were a bit hesitant coz they felt laptop is more sophisticated than the desktop.

Had dinner & left at 9pm.

All 4days: great eating, home-made food, snacks & sweets (urad-dal laddu & one coconut+ghee cake) .

The previous Deepavali I spent at our Srirangam home was in 2005. 2006 & ’07 were at Blr home. And everyone knows about ’08 & ’09. !

Great trip ! Great Deepavali.

Cheers,
Ranga !

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/banking/finance/banking/Banks-will-now-lend-only-80-of-home-price/articleshow/6862371.cms

Details:

Unable to make outgoing calls, from my Aircel Prepaid mobile, from wednesday evening (29th Sep 2010).

Tried all basic troubleshooting at my end. My handset: fine. This SIM in different handset: same problem.

Incoming calls are fine.

Called cust care on Thursday: he said I need to add Rs200 recharge, to bring up the connection. Strange. Since I took this connection in Apr-2010, I’ve recharged for more than Rs600 totally. Ignored this suggestion

.

Saturday: went to the same dealer where I bought this connection. He called cust care, and they said, "no blocks from our end; try replacing SIM card."

If SIM card is problem, how are incoming calls coming fine? So, I ignored this suggestion too.

Called customer care on Saturday, and they took a complaint. #1-2728373372. Need 36 hours to respond.

Called customer care on Sunday, and they say, "Sunday is a holiday. Expect some action on Tuesday only. I requested to mark it as urgent.

Called customer care on Monday, we will work on this complaint tmrw (Tue). So, please wait.

Called customer care on Tuesday, and reply was, "You need to re-submit documents at Aircel Store. That is why outgoing is blocked."

No response yet for the complaint, till 11am. Received a call at around 3-4 pm. He asked some basic questions, and got full residential address.

Though I had given the papers while purchasing the new connection, I had a small doubt with that dealer. So, decided to re-submit the documents, and printed the them.

Nearest Aircel store is near Jayadeva Hospital, 12+km from from my place. Still decided to go for it, spending Rs60 for bus + total 3hours in travel. (prepaid balance is Rs60).

No.40 old no 1384/1383,
South End Main Road,
9th Block
Jaynagar-Bangalore

Contact No:
9738292865

Found that store’s ph num on net [here: http://www.aircel.com/AircelPortal/aircel.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Circles_karnataka_Pages_Others_contact_us_page ]

, called to get their timings. Response, "This number is invalid.".

Called customer care, to get working number for that store. Response, "We don’t have *any* number for that store. Can give the address.". I asked the store timings, response, "10am to 6pm.". Great. Thanks.

Arrived at conclusion: "Aircel Sucks"

Arrived at decision, "quit aircel ". Go for some other provider.

Installed ubuntu 10.04 on office laptop. This time it is a different method. Earlier I did using Wubi , that failed because we have encrypted harddisk.
Also, we cannot partition the HD , some restrictions.
Got tips from someone at office, thru the mailer. Details here:

Need to burn the img to CD, bootable.
First step starts at ‘defrag’ HDD from windows. Force defrag even if windows says you need not do.
Then do error check. this is important.
above two steps took 2+hrs totally.

then, restart in windows, (actual disk check happens here).
restart 1-2 more times & check if all is well.
then restart & boot from ubuntu CD. Choose the ‘side-by-side’ installation, and select the HD space we’d like to give for Linux. (I chose 23GB).
clickety-clickety-click a few times, (it was 1130pm) and I started to sleep, with the lptp near my head.
wokeup around 3am, it was waiting for ‘remove disk and press enter to reboot’. I did that in sleep and fell back to sleep.
wokeup around 430 am, it was waiting for time-zone , login etc. didnt do anything, just fell back to sleep.
wokeup at 630am, did the remaining few clicks, gave my wifi paswd, and Ubuntu 10.04 was ready, asking for an update (290+MB download). Refused it. and powered off.
Didnt start Ubuntu until weekend. Fri night onwards, partying with Ubuntu10.04. Good. Everything is fine.
Looks like ultimately Ubuntu does partition the HD, very well taken care by itself. Thanks a ton to all developers involved.

Installing new s.w in Ubuntu is like cutting though butter. Dad & mom will love to use this; more so, if I guide them right from the installation phase. Let me see..

Some reason, Pidgin installation failed; sad.
Chrome in Linux rocks. Installed Skype too. Also Gmail Video chat is ready for Linux. Installed. Havent tried yet.
Lenovo / Thinkpad is a dear friend of Linux, every extra button on this T400 lappy works perfectly. Wifi rocks.
Music/mp3: yes.
Video: yes.
Bluetooth: yes,
Youtube: yes.

And, I’m able to change keyboard shortcuts to more ‘familiar’ combinations.
Win+D, Win+L, especially.

Triple Cheers to GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Thinkpad !!

Cheers,
Ranga

ps: actually started as an email to friend [www.vishravars.blogspot.com], but decided to post to WordPress blog instead.

Ideally, it is understood that insurance companies get premium as input & give out claim settlements, and get to keep ‘some’ portion to pay salary, bills, etc. Premium is calculated based on the insured stuff’s value, risk ( = probability of damage ), owner’s profile, etc. That is why they insist on medical checkup for Life Insurance, vehicle RC,FC,inspection etc for vehicle insurance, house inspection for property insurance etc.

With these, how are insurance companies able to post hundreds of crores of Rupees as profit every year?
1. Perhaps they are getting far more amounts as premium, than the claims they are paying out. This implies that the customers are being grossly overcharged than what the statistics & probability models reflect.
[OR]
2. Probably they are investing the money and getting returns from them.

Is there a transparent reporting requirement for the insurance companies to declare the break-up of their revenue and profit from premium and from investment returns ?

Good if there is one. If not, then they are simply pocketing the premium money from investors.

Further, if they earn returns by investing customers’ premium money, don’t the customers have a right over the returns?
Okay, since this is paid as ‘insurance premium’ focussed on damage-claims, perhaps the customers are kept insulated from both profits as well as losses from the investments made by the company.

Nevertheless, shouldn’t this reflect in the form of lesser premiums?
This will increase good competition, and benefit the customers.

However, during bad times, all players will increase the premium charges, and will end up as double-whammy to customers, since they are already facing tough times, and need to pay extra premiums too!

What if the insurance companies’ big investments flop?
Firstly, they should be prudent enough to anticipate this, and have good balance of low& high risk investments.

What if still they lose a lot of investments *and* there are huge claims (like 2008 plus Mumbai attack claims)
Sad point. Perhaps there might exist some nexus with mega money lenders who can lend money tide over this.
This is a nice point to think about.

Cheers
Ranga