Now your friendly neighborhood cyber cafe wala will ask you to give your finger print before you can sit on the machine and start browsing. That is if Mumbai Police had its way.

Mumbai police recently had proposed that we should make it mandatory for everyone who is visiting a Cyber Cafe to have their finger print submitted. This recommendation has come up after series of cyber crime that is happening out of these cyber cafes.

Will you be comfortable with that? I guess no. Not for me. If I ever wanted to access internet over the public domain, I would not do so just because I have to share my finger print. I would rather go to a friend’s place or reach home to have my internet connected.

What this move will do is to close the cyber cafes and a boom for ISPs and Computer dealers in these gloom times. People will prefer to spend money and use it for a net connection rather have their finger prints scanned.

What is the guarantee that this will be foolproof? People can also steal my finger print! Why the hell should I leave my identity at risk?

As you might know, there are various types of Boards which your school and colleges might be affiliated to. So when Maharashtra Government decided to put a Quota for SSC students who come from State Boards, it was pretty much obvious that the parents of students who studied in CBSE and ICSE are now knocking the court room doors. The swap ratio is not acceptable which as of now stands at 90:10. Funny as it might sound, but those students who belong to CBSE and ICSE who had scored 90% looking for decent college seats may not bag them at all.

From one point of view, this is also the right thing to do. Why not CBSE and ICSE have their own 11th and 12th? Though students who belong to these Boards are not much in numbers, they always end up taking the creamy seats and some others. That leads to a blank hole for the colleges by some thousands in numbers.

State board students are 2.7 lacks. Now that is where it sounds problematic. State Boards students are no less than CBSE, but these students pass through a good bad time, starting from the schools to examination and invigilating officers may put scores to their mood.

I accept this change! Hope this brings in more challenges.

Let me put the pic right here. Its disburbing, and is against law. Law of the land and the law of human being. Its a message that is spreading hatered and I strongly oppose it. Shortly after this post, I am going to share this picture with most of the leading media channels and newspapers and hope we can start the movement here.

Reader Discretion Advised

Open hated messages in Train

I was shocked to see a message like this! It is usual to find graffiti on the Mumbai local train. I boarded the Kalyan fast from Byculla at 8.37 pm when I was on the way to my home. Unfortunately I was not carrying my deo, with which I would have removed this otherwise.

I am used to see some of graffiti on the inside of locals and those generally are of funny nature where friends write their names, sometimes their crushes or lovers names often. At times, it evens goes to an extent of giving numbers of call girls and boys! I ignore them since these are not those that hurt me bad.

But this one was different, it was disturbing and it was painfull. Who would have this kind off problem with Sonia Gandhi and Muslims? What wrong did they do? Is not India a free, democratic country for anybody having the right to follow their own religion?

It was done by someone who was saddened by the victory of Congress in the General Elections, 2009! Is some one really inspired by what Varun Gandhi said??? That is why he have been booked, but that is done more harm than good. Isnt it?

Why are these brothers of ours against us living peacefully in our own country? Without any differences in caste and creed, there are a lot of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikh, Jains, Buddhists and others who take these trains everyday which gives India and its very financial capital with their man hours!

Why do you want to create a stirr again. Mumbai has left everything behind and has always looked forward to what the future beholds.

I would request one and all and specifically those who travel in these locals, do not go by them. If you can use a bit of your deodrant what you carry everyday to just remove these horrible message with a peice of rough paper, we can remove these messages. Deodrants work!

Make it clean, in the trains and our lives. Let’s pledge!

Aircel now in Mumbai

With the launch of Aircel in Mumbai, the telecom competition has certainly getting heated up. For my dear readers to get a fair view of the services of Aircel in Mumbai, I decided to get hands on one. The following are the few details I have been able to get. The connection will be active from tomorrow so you may just have to wait to know more about its overall performance.

The First Glance

Aircel was launched with a big bang in Mumbai at the Gateway of India and now the advertising banner shout very loudly about the arrival of a new competition. The branding of Aircel had always been different and with Dhoni now jumping as the brand ambassdor things look a lot better for Aircel.

Costing and Ease

The Aircel sim and connection costs Rs. 99 as opposed to Airtel’s Rs. 20. Connection comes with a default talktime of Rs. 10. The biggest difference is that Aircel has launched the card in Mumbai as a full lifetime card only. That means, no validity recharges.

Other attractions include more talktime than the value of the voucher it self. For a recharge of Rs. 199, you get the value of Rs. 250. That is, a full Rs. 51 extra. Top that with Rs. 1500 Aircel to Aircel local call free every month for first three months and 300 local and National SMSes free.

Call cost per minuite has gone in a decreasing mode as call time increases. For example, if you call someone, the first local minute will cost you Re. 1, second minute will cost you Ps. 50, and the third minute ownwards will cost you Ps. 30.

For STD, the call rate for First minute will be 1.50 ps, second minute the cost comes down to Re. 1, and the from 3rd minute ownwards, Aircel will charge you with .75ps.

I have not been able to get more details on how the VAS charges are, but believe that would also be market shattering.

Wait for the full review as I start to explore serviecs of AircelMumbai.Network remains very important to me than any other parameter.

Welcome to Mumbai, Aircel.

Update 1:

Aircel Customer Care in Mumbai is not equipped with much information. I called up Aircel customer care to find out what are the charges for GPRS on Laptop and she was fumbling for an answer. I then had to switch my language to Hindi to make her understand what exactly I wanted. Not an issue as such since I know both the languages very well, but for those who speak English more often might just find the going though.

Anyways, the girl said that browsing internet on an Aircel phone using it as a modem will cost you 10ps. per 10kb. Oouch! That is too much.

Update 2:

SIM activation has taken 3 days which is very bad for a new company to start off with. The customer care continues to be pathetic and not well versed with products and services. On IVR, you cannot go back to menu by pressing 8 as the lady’s sweet voice tells you!

Network remains the biggest issue. Though voice clarity is on par, but the connection is not constand while on the move.

Update 3:

Network in closed areas goes to Zero. Network in Mumbai local keeps fluctuating, hence not consistant and more chances for call drops.

Hemal Shah’s List of Current Best Mobile Service Provider (GSM) in Mumbai:

Vodafone reigns on the top even after Reliance and Aircel came with onslaught with cheapest charges and more talktime. A distant second is Airtel in Mumbai which still has a negative network in Mumbai, though it runs on 1800/1900 Mhz.

Third position is shared by is Loop and Reliance, followed by MTNL and Idea at fourth. Aircel cannot be counted in the ranks because it has not got a fair amount of time to show what it can do.

As such the summer is so undesireable in Mumbai, and to have temperatures break the roof is like hit on the face and at the back at the same time. On Wednesday, the maximum daytime temperature recorded was a maximum of 40.6°C.

It is too bad thing for me. I am sweaty person and it falls like Rivers and Waterfalls from my body. When I try to sleep in the night, it is all over my body. Since the whole day is spent in the comfort of Central A/c in office, when you come home you cannot possible bear the heat.

“But this is not unusual for summer. March too saw days when the daytime temperature rose up to 40C in the city, if April is so hot, how terrible will May be?” (continue reading…)