|
|
We had a wonderful trip last four days, no rain and we got clear views of all places we went. As I said in the previous post we stayed in “The Trident”, Jaipur. Trident is on the highway going to Amber fort, opposite to Jal Mahal. When I booked after seeing the hotel in their website, I thought the Hotel is on the river bank (as shown in the left photo below) and it will be great. When I actually went there I realized that the hotel is on the other side of the road, and in between there is a park. One good service in the hotel is that of “Kids Club” where you leave your kids safe and they have toys, TV, books, games and trained people to take care. My son Vaageesh loved the place, I wish all other vacation hotels adopt this. The view from the park to Jal Mahal is beautiful but the park maintenance and cleanliness have to be improved greatly.
 
Day 1: In Mumbai we had few hours for transit from Chennai to Jaipur, I decided to go out of Airport rather than spend few hours inside. We took a taxi and went to Oberoi Mall (Dindoshi, Gen AK Vaidya Marg, Off Western Express Highway) which is probably the closest mall to Mumbai Domestic Airport. It took some 20 minutes one way, we had a good time there and had a great UP style vegetarian Thali (set lunch) at Sanskriti restaurant. We arrived in Jaipur in the late evening and after check in I went to their travel desk (which is oddly not manned by the Hotel but by Avis). When I approached the Avis representative, for planning my itinerary for sight-seeing next few days, he was only interested in selling his “Car Rental” services. He started the conversion by saying and then repeating Avis’es full-day/half-day charges, I had to raise my voice before he started to talk about the itinerary. Though he said it was not required, I insisted on having a “Guide” to accompany on both the days so that we can understand what we are seeing.
Day 2: On the second day we started around 9:30AM and went first to Amber Fort, which is near-by to the Hotel. The fort is not at a high altitude so the car journey to the top took only few minutes. If you wish you can travel royally in a Elephant Ride to the top which costs about Rs.550 per person. Amber fort has a beautiful palaces used by the kings then – a Summer palace and a Winter palace. We then went to see the Madhavendara Palace inside Nahargarh Fort. The palace has 9 compartments for king’s 9 queens – it struck me if the king married once more for 10th time, he would have had a tough time expanding the palace!. Each Queen’s compartment is self-contained with a Kitchen, Bedroom and Living area – you can see most of these rooms intact with the furnishings & fittings removed. The top of the fort has an excellent view of the entire Jaipur city. Our guide Mr.Rajiv did a great job in showing us all the places and explaining it in detail. (You can see the photo album for more details on what we saw).
For lunch we went to Pink City Restaurant which served good Thali and you can see the cooking clearly as they have an open kitchen. After lunch, we went to Jaipur Mall we saw how the block printing is done in textiles using natural vegetable colours.
Our guide recommended us to try staying in heritage hotels like Samode Haveli in our subsequent trips to Jaipur.
In the evening: We went to the famous tourist restaurant – Chokhi Dhani which is nearly 1 Hour drive (closer to airport) from Trident. It is a theme restaurant on a wide open space modelled like a typical village market of Rajasthan. Entry fee is Rs.300 per person which includes Dinner. They are open only from 6PM to 11PM. My son loved the rides – you have camel rides, elephant rides, horse cart rides and more. There is also model Rajasthani village houses for you to see. We stood in the dinner queue for over 30 minutes before being let in (crowded). The seating was in the ground with traditional low-height table for eating. The food was rich with lots of butter and ghee in almost all dishes- so be careful to eat limited if you wish not to gain weight. You can unlimited helpings of all the served items.
Day 3: Today we had another guide Mr.Vijay Singh for our city tour of Jaipur. We saw Hawa Mahal from road, I believe there is nothing much to see nowadays inside. Then we went to Birla Mandir and had a good darshan there.
Then we went to Jantar Mantar (which is near city palace) the centuries old Sun Dials and other instruments which were way ahead of their times in their accuracy of readings. The large instruments there are believed to be used for both Astronomy and Astrology. Our next stop was City Palace. We saw the 350Kgs Silver urn used by one of the earlier Kings to carry Ganges water during his visit to London. Apart from the usual items that you will see in a palace, there was a huge display of weapons in the Queen’s Area of the palace. It had variety of daggers – one that can open up and be turned for maximum damage to the victim, one that shoot apart from the cut, 15Kg swords, metal helmet cutters and more. The kings seem to have spent a lot of money and talent, on fighting wars and building weapons. (You can see the photo album for more details on what we saw)
We had lunch in Peacock Restaurant which had a decent food but a very ordinary service, so if you are not near-by you may want to skip this restaurant.
In the evening: We went for shopping to Jaipur Haat (which was walkable distance from the hotel) and bought some traditional style dresses. The varieties and the service was excellent, though the dresses were little pricey.
Day 4: We left this day intentionally free, spending the time relaxing in the room. In the evening we went for a walk to Jal Mahal (the mosquitos were too much on the road, making it difficult to walk).
With Dasara holidays for my son from today for a week, we wanted to go somewhere for a small vacation. My initial plan was to go to Bangkok – idea was to combine it with a business conference there and then extend it for next few days for vacation. Unfortunately that conference got cancelled a week back and I was left scrambling for options. With only a week left, the usual international locations got mentioned and dropped due to lack of time to plan and book – including Nepal (may be next time I will do this), Malaysia & Singapore (we have been there), HongKong (I am going there for few days this month-end) and Dubai (there is no sightseeing apart from shopping I was told). So it has to be within India.
We have been to many places in South India including almost all the favourites. Our memorable once were those to Mysore (especially the Palace), Kabini, Hoysala (Hasan), Kumarakom & Coorg. So we wanted some other place, the only condition being it got to have something that interests a 5 year old (my son). So after many arguments between myself and my wife over the places (Sikkim, Shimla, Dargeeling, Andaman Islands, Gwalior, Goa featured in our deliberations) we picked up "Rajasthan" and managed to get rooms booked with "The Trident" in both places. So finally we have started our trip today to Jaipur and then to Udaipur.
I was surprised by the first page of Economic Times newspaper today. First there was no colour it was all Black, then the headlines. For about 15 to 20 minutes I was left scratching my head trying to make sense of the headlines I was reading and re-reading.
The headlines were:
- Sensex hits year’s low at 2832 points (I even checked the latest stock market figures in TV after reading this)
- Now, pay your bills via ATM (haven’t this feature been there for years now? )
- Infosys income rises 115% to Rs.98.43 cr (Something was wrong here, they do more than that figure in a week now)
- Incoming calls are now free and Rs.4 /min for outgoing calls (This is when I started becoming suspicious)
- Crude Near $10 (Now I know for sure this is a prank, looking up the mast-head I saw the date as September 1998)
It turned out to be a prank by Economic Times to “Commemorate 10 years of the Economic Times Awards” and the great journey Indian Inc. has made in the last 10 years. Very nice work by ET, kudos to their team who imagined and pulled off this coup.
Last weekend, I went to this much talked about Tamil Movie – SAROJA. Directed by Chennai 600028 movie fame Venkat Prabhu (son of Music Director Gangai Amaran) movie was certainly enjoyable. The story is all about what happens when 4 friends on a red colour van (Nice looking van shown above) get lost on their way from Chennai to Hyderabad. The whole story happens in one single night where they cross path with a kidnap gang and how they finally escape from them. The director has done a fabulous job in keeping the action alive scene after scene, you are almost left wondering what’s going to happen next. Definitely a new kind of film in Tamil Cinema. Excellent performance by the relatively new faces to Tamil cinema with the veterans Prakash Raj and Jayaram also doing their roles well. I really liked the place where the main villain behind the whole plot is revealed only in the last few minutes and his background story is shown in few quick slides.
A must see for every Tamil movie buff.
 My son was selected in his school (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) to participate in a fancy dress competition conducted in Chettinad School last week. The task of coming up with the theme and the dress was left to us parents.
The first was the theme (concept), after much wrangling between me and my wife, she came with the brilliant idea of doing Kannappa Nayanar story with the message on "Eye Donation". She said since I am an avid blogger I write well so she assigned me to writing the script (this is the downside of writing blogs I learned on that day  ). Add to this she assigned me to write it in both languages – Tamil and English as we couldn’t agree on which language our son will feel comfortable delivering. Here is the complete script in Tamil and English on Kannapa Nayanar story in brief with a message in the end on Eye Donation (Please feel free to use it if you have a need).
The second was to source the costume. We needed a hunter dress complete with Deer skin (or like) bottom, Bow and Arrow, Cap, Beads Garland, etc. After some search in Internet I came across an article in "The Hindu" listing some costume hires. With that information and inputs from friends and relatives, we identified 3 shops in South Chennai. We went to all the three, all of them had the dress set we wanted for hire. On an average per day of hire they quoted Rs.100-150 and a refundable deposit of Rs.200-400. We went with the first shop listed below just because the dress looked slightly better than the others.
- K. Nathamuni & Sons (Theatre & Cine Hires & Suppliers), New #179 (Old #73) Kodambakkam High Road, Chennai – 17. Phone: 044-2345 5990, 4212 2229. If you are coming from Valluvar Kottam towards Vadapalani, instead of climbing the Kodambakkam Flyover, get into the small lane below (left hand side of the flyover, opposite to Murasoli office) after few shops you will find this one.
- Nathrang & Co. (Hires of Cine & Dramatic Costumes of Historical & Social pattern & cartoon characters), Nathigam Press Building, First Floor, 97/55 Arcot Road, Chennai – 600 024. Phone: 044-2480 2489.
- Thangam Dresses (Costumes & Ornaments for Hire & Sale, Character Wigs, Turbens & Dresses, School Drama, etc.) 199 Arcot Road, Vadapalani, Chennai – 600 026. Phone: 044-2362 3467, 98415 53888, 98418 46888. This shop is exactly opposite to Vadapalani Police Station on Arcot Road itself, few shops from the Ring Road intersection.
I have never been good in free-hand drawing or colouring. Other than Plays and oratory competitions, Arts and Crafts were always distant skills for me right from my school days. In fact I hated Biology classes in School and Engineering Drawing in Graduation just because they required me to the draw. I could getaway without drawing from my teachers, but I couldn’t from my son. Two weeks back on a weekend he wanted me to draw Tractor Tom – how much ever I tried to convince him that I can’t draw he didn’t agree. So here is what I managed and below that the original image of Tractor Tom (as seen in DVD):
In the afternoon there was a lively session by TV fame (Cricket Commentator) Harsha Bhogle. He was representing his management consultancy firm Prosearch Consultants. The talk was on T20 Cricket game and the differences of the format with One-Day / Test cricket. The title was very apt as the Microsoft Event was also titled “Together To Outperform – T2O“. Harsha drew brilliant parallels (in a extremely light manner) between T20 as a sport and situations in today’s corporate world.
He was extremely hilarious, throwing many funny punch lines, few of them below:
- All Good Lines are Unfair (including whatever I just now said)
- He didn’t have time (came that fast) to drop the ball
Amongst the points he covered:
- The T20 format demands that “Performance on the Day matters, not reputation”, “Shape up or ship out”, “Any team can win, no underdogs”, “No time for course correction”. In T20 you need Wartime leaders and not Peacetime managers.
- When you have right partnerships, the sum of 1 + 1 can be 3. Like Paes/Bupathi, West Indies Past bowler pack including Malcolm Marshall (they hunted like a pack, it was We over Me), Cycle champion Armstrong and his US Postal team colleagues who went before him uphill and he rode on their slipstream
-Unlike earlier formats in Cricket, in T20 you had to go after audience and advertise. You have to excite people on their second identity (apart from an Indian) which was of their city/region. This was a litmus test, which IPL passed.
- Players in IPL T20 were not needed to be trained, you paid (bought) for them – just like in business with 30% attrition rates today why will you want to train, you will only want to hire from others . You could source talent not locally but from around the world, so your incentive for training got reduced in IPL T20.
- Another thing that IPL T20 did was to put world champions and unknown local players in the same team. They had to get together and work as a team nearly overnight. They didn’t have any bonding glues – no common heritage, no common geography, no common in experience; still had to perform as a team.
- Marketing was new to cricket with T20. You had owners from 3 diverse fields came together – Cricket, Film & Business houses.
Switching on to serious subjects discussed during the Partner Summit:
- I heard this nice management quote “Accelerate at corners“, that’s what F1 champions do. Everyone can accelerate in straight road and everyone slows down in corners, that’s an opportunity for you to accelerate”. The famous Lance Armstrong,rides on the rider’s slip stream in front of him
- In India especially in E-Governance the discussions mostly are hijacked by technology arguments. It has to be debated on outcome and objectives
- In India for education there is no dearth of funds for education related IT. It is about sustainability and proving their effectiveness
- Microsoft India on their part through Project Shiksha have trained over 265,000 teachers over last 4 years, each for a minimum of 15 days
In the evening today there was a Bollywood play "All the Best" directed by distinguished director "Feroz Khan". I was hoping it will be in English as my understanding of Hindi is extremely limited, and I will certainly not be able to appreciate a Comedy Play in Hindi. The play did turn out to be in Hindi, but since the play had a mute character there was lot of hand gestures and body language so I could understand it well and was able to have split laughs as well. The appreciation should go to the four excellent actors (Iqbal Azad, Kikoo Sharda, Kranti Redkar and Vikas Kadam) who performed brilliantly on the stage.
The play deals with three friends, one blind, the other deaf and third mute, who all fall for the same girl.
If this comes to your town, don’t miss it.
For a Microsoft event I am staying here at Renaissance in Mumbai (A Mariott Hotel) and they allotted me a room in the newly constructed (nearly complete) Renaissance Towers – like in Software we were made to beta test the towers!.
In the morning when I got up and went for my bath – surprise, no running water. The housekeeping didn’t even have an estimate of when they will have it repaired and they didn’t even show a sign of remorse for their poor service. I had to do a “Luxury” act of brushing my teeth with bottled water, then with the help of perfumes and a set of clean clothes I went for my breakfast meeting. I was feeling a little better that the person I met was also staying in the Towers and couldn’t have his bath either
After an hour, water supply was restored but that too only Warm Water – no Cold Water!
For last two days I am attending Microsoft India Partner Summit titled “T20″ at Mumbai. Yesterday there was a written quiz on Microsoft Virtualization , I attempted just for fun. Generally I am not lucky to win any prizes, but today was my day.
In the morning they announced my name as one of the winners for XBOX 360, I was happy to collect it. On my way back to my room I was invited to a game show where they had questions on Windows Live/Vista/IE 8 and were giving prizes up to 10 Grams of Gold. I played and answered a simple question on Windows Live (being a Windows Live MVP does help) and won a 2GB USB Thumb-Drive.
Since I got my prize, I helped the gentleman next to me to answer the next question and he won the 10 Grams of Gold
|
