Sivaram's Blogs

I read in the 52 weekends book that Yercaud is also called poor man's Ooty. And heard from friends and on internet that GRT is a good hotel to stay. A friend told me that the service at Grand Palace was not as expected. I wanted to go to Yercaud for about an year now and just kept on postponing it. GRT did not have any rooms available for the weekends. Our desperation to go on a long drive reached the peak. We finally decided to book a room at GRT for Friday, take the day off and drive away. The reservation was simple through web. I confirmed my booking with the hotel and requested that if they had different views of rooms, I prefer the best they had, that would have a view of every thing. Only valley view and Panorama room were available and going by the names, the latter looked impressive. So, booked it away. We closed doors and took off from Gate-B15 (my parking lot number) 25 minutes behind schedule at 7.25 AM. We took the Begur Kappa road from Bannerghatta road and touched Hos...

It has been long since we sat in front of TV and watched a sport with passion. IPL has changed the way we think about cricket. It has become a mere entertainment and no passion. And the sheer number of matches they play - the seriousness is not there any more when we watch cricket matches. Just because of the love of the game, I do watch cricket still, but passively, not passionately. We were in Germany during the 2006 Football world cup and enjoyed the atmosphere, the passion they have for the game. I know many of my German friends actually do not support Germany because they do not like the style of their game! We inherited the spirit from there certainly and passionately followed all the matches. When this world cup started, one thing was sure. We are not missing any German matches. Not against England for sure. One thing I like about our son Srish is that he does not watch TV. He is only two and half years old - always stays in the balcony and plays with his toys. As usual, when we...

I have bought this new phone a couple of weeks back from Univercell, Bangalore. Do not go by their online pricing, it is without taxes, etc and the phone you will buy will be at least a few hundred Rupees more than that. After agreeing to purchase, they took around 15-20 minutes to sort my bill and send me out. I was excited, so did not mind the wait. The MRP on the box was 6800, and I paid 6150. Why the huge difference? I noticed this in many mobiles, there is no parity on the prices that are on the box and what you will pay. Even though the latter is lass, it makes you wonder if you still paid more than it is worth. I also bought a car charger, just in case. In fact, my decision to buy the charger was driven by my year-old LG Cookie, which needed to be charged every night or else, the next evening, it would sleep on you. Why I bought this phone? My company gives me 6000 to buy a phone. And it has 3G (384kbps?). Do not ask me what I will do with it. I do not know. I just read a few da...

A few days back, I travelled by Nizamuddin-Bangalore Rajdhani Express from Bhopal to Bangalore, along with my wife and a little kid. I was expecting a memorable ride, since this was the first time I got a reservation in this train (2430) in two years that I started living in Bangalore. We reached the station well ahead of scheduled 04.50 AM departure at Bhopal station. The train was 15 minutes late on the platform. It was a big relief that the coaches were not wrapped in Airtel/ Max New York advertisements. The first experience started when the train halted and all the coaches were locked from inside. Including us, many were banging the doors. Finally, after some time of tension, some passenger from inside opened the door for us. We got into the AC 2Tier compartment only to find it worse than a dustbin. There were left over ice-cream cups, half-eaten dinner plates, paper envelopes and what not. We made our way to our berths (side lower and side upper). It was evident that somebody els...