The problem with all these 1 rupee – 2 rupee offers in indian aviation is that they aren’t really that cheap. On top of this you have the various taxes and user charges which come up to some Rs. 1500 (I’m not sure of the exact number). What has effectively happened is that these charges have put a floor on the price of airline tickets in India.
Month: May 2008
Random
Given Shah Rukh’s affinity for smoking, I won’t be surprised if Kolkota Knight Riders decide to purchase a tobacco firm. Then it’ll be yet another case of KKR being involved in Barbarians at the gate
PS: Today‘s was one of the best games of the IPL so far. A low total defended successfully on a decent pitch. An excellent show of fast bowling, a few run outs, late recovery, bad umpiring (Tiwary had an inside edge)
Temple food
During my recent pilgrimage, three of my four meals were at temples – two at the Horanadu temple and one at Sringeri. For the fourth meal, we took a conscious decision that a temple meal may not be suitable for an overnight bus journey on a bumpy road, so we ate at a restaurant.
Immadi Bangalore Photowalk
Has been postponed by a week for political reasons. Given the extrapolated line based on the single data point, it should’ve been held on the 25th of this month. However, it is election counting day in Karnataka and the cops, etc. may not take too kindly to random unlawful association of people so it may not be a terrific idea to have the walk on that day.
It will instead be held on the following Sunday – June 1. Given that it’ll still be summer, and since I think this might be a slower route than last time’s, I propose that we begin this walk at 7:30 am. I’ll announce the exact route shortly, but I hope to keep this around the Majestic area. Do watch this space.
PS😕 Readers and photowalkers are requested to write in with suggestions for routes for further photowalks.
Dickheads
I don’t understand why most temples ban photography inside the premises. I mean there are so many strong things that are there inside temples that are “capture-able” that it’s almost criminal that photography is banned. My mom says the ban is so that unscrupulous elements don’t take pictures and then distort them. If this is the reason, then I think it’s better to allow these unscrupulous elements to collect bad karma by distorting images. Anyways.
One signboard inside the Horanadu temple said (ok i’m translating here) – “parents are requested to ensure that their children don’t pee inside the temple”. Unfortunately, by the time I saw this notice, I’d already seen one other that said photography is banned inside the temple. However, I don’t think the temple had done a good job of putting up this signboard in all appropriate places. Before I’d seen one such signboard, I’d already shot a small video of the mangalarathi. It isn’t too clear but then I shot it in a “no video” area so …
Anyway the point of the photography ban has to do more with the Kalaseshwara temple in Kalasa (some 10 km from Horanadu). There, I noticed an unusual thing – a face had been painted on the lingam. I mean, I thought the purpose of the lingam was because Lord Shiva has to be worshipped in the phallic form. Now, when someone goes and draws a head on it, I don’t really know what to say.
The thing is this isn’t an isolated occurrence. I saw in Sringeri, too, in a couple of places, where a face had been painted on the lingam. I seriously don’t know what the painter was thinking. Or was it a conscious effort by the uber-moral Sringeri mutt to de-sex the lingam?
Looking for porn in Sringeri
Now that this half-blasphemous title is out of the way, let me get straight to the point. Actually I think a bit of beating around the bush is warranted. When I read Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist, I wasn’t sure if i would be quoting part of this book on my blog. However, considering that I almost directly applied one of the ideas mentioned in the book, I think it deserves a mention.
Pilgrimage
I’m off on a pilgrimage tonight. My mom, for a long time wanted to visit Horanadu and Sringeri and for some reason she’s had to keep postponing it. Finally, taking advantage of my joblessness we are going tonight, along with two of my mom’s cousins.
We’ll be back on Saturday morning so till then my blog will be on? break (ok I haven’t been too regular of late so the break might not mean much). It’ll also mean that I’ll be off email and GTalk and BRacket and all that.
Nevertheless, I hope to be twittering continuously. I got my twitter to work (the helpdesk got back to me saying that the india short code is facing some problems nowadays so I should use the international thing). This is my twitter page: http://twitter.com/karthiks
And this is the RSS feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14645914.rss
SLV Banashankari 2nd Stage
Around this time last year, I was doing a series of blog posts on delivery and revenue management practices in restaurants in Bangalore. My apologies for not updating on that series for so long.
This morning I had my breakfast at SLV in Banashankari 2nd stage (near the BDA complex; opposite the park next to the complex). Despite being within 200 metres of my school, I don’t particularly remember going here too often. This is one of the very old-school darshinis – for a long time, these guys made no dosas. Even the last time I went there (about a year back), they served only idli, vada, kesari bhath and khara bhath. Today, however, I noticed that they were also making masala dosa.
Local bodies and elections
Last evening, my neighbour, who is also the president of the local resident’s welfare association, briefly dropped in to hand over my mother’s voting chit. And dropped in a line asking us to vote for a particular party. “This guy has done excellent work in his previous term as MLA”, he said, “and we’ll all benefit if he is gets elected”.
Correction
In a post I wrote a month back, I had talked about Predicatably Irrational Traffic – in which I talked about a bunch of motorists collectively jumping a signal which they deemed unfair.
Now, having read “The Logic of Life” a couple of weeks back, I’m not sure the heading of that was correct. I’m not sure if we were being irrational there in jumping the signal. I think what happened that day can be better classified as, to use the terminology developed by Gary Becker, etc., a “rational crime”.