IPL3 - A fair result..

Congratulations to Chennai Super Kings for lifting the IPL 3 cup.
I am a Mumbai Indians fan and it has been like that for last 3 years. Even though I am no way related to Mumbai (well...I just spent couple of years there, at the beginning of my career..thats all) I wanted them to win, simply because Sachin plays in that team. I have been a huge Sachin fan through out my life.
I was really sad to see Mumbai Indian lose the match -- especially with the kind of fire power they have got, they could have easily chased it down. Some bad batting order decisions prob. cost them the game. Well everyone can say that...but if the gamble would have paid of everyone would have said brilliant captaincy--- for the same batting order.. Hence don't want to be critical..

But one thing that saddened me the most was - seeing the GOD cheating !! Yes, When Sachin was caught behind by M S Dhoni, I felt he should have walked. Just by looking at Sachin's expression, I can be 100% sure that he knew about it. He was hesitant to look into the eyes of the umpire...and thats the first sign when someone cheats...not able to meet the eyes...
I am not a great Dhoni fan, but I like his leadership qualities and ethics. No wonder, they won the Kingfisher fair play award...
I hope India wins the T20 World cup and bring back the cup again. All the very Best to the Brave Warriors of Cricket !!

Salarpuria Builder - 1st hand review

Around 10 months back I purchased an apartment in Salarpuria Serenity.
Just to give a prelude, I have been looking for an apartment for good 2 years. I have visited and seen a lot of apartments at various corners of Bangalore.
The criterion that I was looking for are (In the order of priority)
1. Location
2. Budget
3. Various approvals and Loan approval from govt. banks
4. Amenities
5. Builder credibility
6. Only completed / near completion projects
7. Floor plan (Open kitchen, big living room etc)
8. Open space

Having stayed in HSR Layout area for past so many years, I was biased towards this locality. Also I felt that it makes more strategic sense for me (a software engineer) as electronics city, Outer ring road and ITPL are all easily approachable by big roads...
I approached the Salarpuria sales person directly. He promptly arranged for a site visit. I came and had look at the flat. I liked it.
Salarpuria Marketing and Sales:
I think this aspect of the builder is the best. They do what they commit and no false commitments. They kept all their words. It was a hassle free sale process for me. They arranged for the registration very promptly and made the unit ready and available as per the promised dates. They accommodated some of my requests out of their way since they believed that those were genuine requests.
After Sales Support:
Salarpuria is helping us in doing the Khata transfer (well of course not free of cost. we have to pay some bribe, but not to Salarpuria)...
They were accommodating to some reasonable changes. They accommodated some of my electrical change and structural change requests...
Maintenance:
So far Salarpuria is maintaining the property. They have collected a huge amount (all most 4% of the property value) in the name of maintenance fund. The maintenance has been patchy.
They listen to all the problems and try to resolve it as soon as possible. But at the same time there are some issues which they are very slow or unwilling to resolve. So it has been really a mixed bag so far.
Quality:
I have started doubting the quality of some of the work that has been done by Salarpuria.
1. The biggest problem is Plumbing. There are leakage in bathrooms in lot of flats including my unit. The water proofing work that has been done is really bad.
Also the common area plumbing is no better. There is water leakage in a lot of places in the parking lots and below the swimming pool (Swimming pool is in 2nd floor in this apartment).
2. The water treatment plant doesn't seem to be doing a good job either..The water is too hard and is damaging all the fittings.  The taste of the water is horrible.
3. They have given the option of wooden flooring in living room. I guess I did a big mistake by going for it. The so called wooden lamination flooring is not at all of good quality. Also the way they fix it, it makes a noise when someone walks on top of it.
4. Amenities - The Swimming pool is of good size and the area has been developed nicely. But it lacks a shower booth near the swimming pool.
The Lawn tennis court is a joke. First of all they have just managed to prepare a tennis court with whatever space they had, which is not a rectangular place. It doesn't have any space at the end of the court for someone to even serve. Worst, they have given some plastic net around the tennis court and the quality of the tennis net is really bad. I have never seen a tennis court as pathetic as ours..and believe me ...I have seen quite a few.
The party hall is extremely small, but can't complain there, as I bought it after seeing it.
They have given good Steam and Sauna rooms..
The GYM is also well equipped.
5. The fire alarm system is extremely moody and goes off every now and then...So actually it has become a pain rather then a security feature as it makes horrible noise in the middle of the night without any reason.

My Verdict:
I would give Salarpuria a thumbs up simply because of the fact that, apart from some issues, in most of the cases they were completely honest with us and are helpful. Especially in a place like Bangalore, most of the builders are taking the owners for a ride...

I will keep updating this , once we take over the maintenance from them and come to know about some more facts about the apartment. Watch out for this space....

New Updates
===========
After staying in the apartment for 2 years, I thought I will update my experience.

Khata Transfer
============
This is one of the best things about this builder. We realized that their papers are completely in order. They also helped us in doing the Khata transfer (We didn't even have to go to the BBMP office). We completed the Khata transfer within one year of moving in to the apartment which I feel is quite cool. Also they arranged for the payment of property taxes and they have paid the property tax for all the previous years. 
I know for sure that SJR Verity guys when purchase apartment, they had to pay property tax for past 2 years as the builder didn't pay it....

Keeping Promises 
=============
Again another thumbs up.
First the water situation. They had given us 4 borewells out of which hardly two are working and with a very less yield. So after talking to the management, they agreed to dig another borewell, but asked the management comittee to do it and said that they will bear the cost which they reimbursed once the management comittee took over.
As promised, they also returned the complete maintenance deposit collected by them at the time of purchasing the house.

Proper Handover
=============
There were a lot of complaints from individual flat owners about plumbing problem. They tried to attend each and every complaint. Also the swimming pool leaking problem also was fixed.

So all in all so far I am having a good feeling about the builder and would like to recommend this builder to others. In future if I purchase any property, I would like to go for Salarpuria again...

Social Networking - or Social NOTworking

Last five years or so we have seen a huge insurgence of Social networking sites (orkut, face book, HI5 etc), blogging (Google, yahoo 360 etc), micro blogging (tweeter, google buzz) and so on. Most of the users of these sites are youngsters. But also there are people like me, who have created an account in some social networking site, because everyone else is doing it. There are certain benefits though...For example, if someone uploads some information / photos about him/her, I get to know about it without neither of us making a special effort to keep in touch (the only effort involves logging into the website I guess).

But we need to ask a question to ourselves...Am I really interested to know about that? If I am really interested in a person, shouldn't I drop him an E-mail or make a call? I feel that instead of bringing people together, actually it is pushing us away and we are becoming more and more DISCONNECTED.

Apart from a social evil, there is a huge danger to in terms of Identity Theft, and information misuse. A lot of us do not understand how to use these facilities responsibly. People are exchanging cell phone numbers, photos, mail ids and even bank account numbers etc over publicly visible mediums.

But there are people who are sitting there and silently observing all this to take unfair advantage.

A hacker with a little more effort can probably find out your family details, their and your birth dates, your address, what is your favorite movie, your pets name and so on. Well so far this seems ok...

But there are software once fed with all this information can start creating passwords, which a hacker can try to gain access to your email accounts or some bank accounts. Think about it !! Doesn't your password made from these above information? If not, then you are a smart and I guess also smart enough not to share sensitive information over insecure mediums. But most of us are NOT.

Once he has access, he can use it whichever way he wants. !!

I am not strictly against these social networking websites. But I guess there has to be very strict guideline and some intelligence imposed by the websites to protect gullible users, who fall prey to it.

Cricket in India - Debate

This is my friend recently said -


" I really think, BCCI, IPL should be scrapped and the whole bloody mess of cricket mafia be cleaned up by someone (home, CBI ?). What nonsense is our Agri minister doing in BCCI ? I am not a fan of cricket, I think it has done more harm than good to India - and totally wasted the youth force. Not a single sports can come out of India because of this. It is like a chakunda tree which doesn't allow a single blade of grass grow near it. In this point I am totally with Swami Ramdev. Recently I provided a volley ball and net to my village boys to play. The ball got punctured and now the field we prepared to play the volley is a cricket field. "

And below was my reaction....

humm....thats a outburst from no where...I guess you are frustrated because the volleyball court in your village got converted to Cricket field, which you didn't want :-) !!
I agree with the fact that Cricket in India is highly commercialized....but why it happened? Why all these things didn't happen for any other sports? First try to figure that out instead of just blaming the game.
I think till 1995 or even later, BCCI was a loss making organization depending on the govt. to function.
I am a great admirer of the sport and happy that India is dominating world of cricket with some of the best players in the world being from India.

Yes, at the same time I am also NOT a IPL fan. I think it is killing the sanctity of the game. What we are producing as cricketers (so called the promotion and identifying young talent) doesn't have the substance in them to become great.

If you point fingers at Cricket for the obscene amount of money involved in it, then you have to point fingers at lot of other things like Media and Entertainment, politics etc. Where ever there is money, there will be corruption. Money doesn't have any religion. It has even happened in individual sports like Lawn Tennis.

I agree that there is a problem...and as you said it needs cleaning up. But the solution is not killing cricket...

BTW, I feel it is completely wrong to use the "Chakunda tree" analogy here.. Other sports are not orphans and need not grow under the "Chatrachhaya" of cricket.

There is always a place for a banyan tree or a palm tree along side the Chakunda tree...its a matter of nurturing and growing them....

when cricket took precedence over life

We went to watch the match between RCB and MI on 17th Apr. This was the first ever T20 match that I had gone to watch live at the stadium. But ironic it may sound, at around 3:30 PM one of my apartment friend called to check if I am allright as there is a bomb explosion in the stadium.
I guess few minutes before he called, we did hear a loud noise, but we mistook it for some crackers being burst by someone outside. I called home only to get the confirmation that indeed there is a explosion, but of low intensity.
Again as ironic as it may sound, all this news seemed completely meaningless to me/us at that time and we decided (actually we even didn't think about for a moment to leave the match and go back to the saftey of our homes) to continue waiting for the match to begin.Of course there is slight less blatantness to the whole thing as the reasoning was if the players can take the risk, definitely we can.

Later on when I reflect, in the bigger scheme of things (thats the life) I feel it was really a stupid thing to sit there and continue watching the match.

But thats the kind of world we are living in, where the value of life is diminishing at a much faster rate then anything else and the kind of impact cricket has got on our lives that sometimes we are ready to put our lives at risk, just for watching cricket...realllllly ironic.

Happy to be alive !!!