Monthly Archives: July 2009

Real estate is back on a roll, get ready suckers :)

Someone told me the economy would take at least one year to recover. And I believed it to be so, until I saw these advertisements in the papers a few days back. Most of the ads seemed to scream: “Now is the time to buy an apartment, don’t let this chance go away, at just only yours truly 1 crore”. My quesiton is whether even 1/4 of the educated India population know how many zeroes are there to a crore. Yeah obviously only businessmen would buy such properties you and I may think, but there are a few ABCDs who are now ABReturnedDs who are smelling of green bills and some unfortunate mortals who also believe that they are in the same league only with a 75 lakh housing loan which will kill them shortly and eventually.

Look and click at the ads and you know what I am referring to.

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While Mantri and Confident were just as usual marketing unaffordable stuff in some unnamed corner of Bengaluru, there are now a new set of new entrants of new offshoots of known big builders who are trying to cater to the “LOW END” :D people of Bengaluru who have now been pushed to being low end, due to their fate rather than anything else.

Our very own DSMax contributed to some newspaper real estate with their mini offerings all over Bengaluru. ND, Nitesh Estates and Salarpuria were showing off their age old offerings in a new colourful photograph. The ozonegroup was marketing its already marketed property “evergreens” for which it has found no takers until now.

Artha money is the new Orange Properties ka Baap trying to help every disoriented developer sell off his assets. I know how life can get when one gets disoriented. Even a small advice can make someone so gullible that he will fall for anything and everything. Its the same logic what some great netas use on the “aaaaaaaam admi”. Barring these Purvankaras new arm provident homes, and CSC led by mphasis ceo jerry rao and others of jaanagraha fame, are perhaps the only affordable stuff around Bengaluru. Note that I said “Around Bengaluru” – not in Bengaluru :D These guys are promising affordable homes at 17 lacs and 7 lacs respectively. We have to wait and see whether a person can enter a 7 lac house in the first place!

One thing is clear. As long as suckers like you and me are there in India, the builders will continue the exploitation and take us to even greater depths of agony, insolvency and bankruptcy. Happy home buying suckers!

 

A month of topsy turvy life ….

When office work gets beyond usual hours, it gets on your nerves slowly. If it consumes weekends too, the load only gets worse. If you add a potion of unhealthiness within the family, its a perfect recipe for not blogging for days together.

14 hours of work a day, fully occupied weekends, no proper food or sleep, and complications on health and financial fronts. This can all be summarized as a “topsy turvy life” in short.

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Dad finally retired after almost 64+ years of unending quest for knowledge and learning.  Diplopia or double vision was his reason for quitting his job. Its not easy doing normal duties with double vision. But this has been holding me up for sometime adding to my thinking each day of things to come.

At office it was some rejuvenation after the hard work done. For a paltry 500 bucks worth of set top box, slogging three full weeks and many more months after that may seem a far fetched goal. But that is the reality. And people want the set top boxes free! Please remember that I need to be paid as well. Anyway, we did our job, and felt a bit relieved of avoiding another possible escalation and root cause analysis at management levels.

Acupressure classes took up almost 6 weekends of my time. But its going well worth it. I am learning and learning in detail. And it should be paying off in the short future. I will blog a bit about this shortly when time permits.

I also missed a car crash by about ten minutes. Thank god for luck. I too do have some. Someone decides to total my swift, and the charges add upto about a lakh worth of money. Insurance covers some, I find the wrong-doer and ask him to pay the rest. And car is back in good shape now.

Little master at home is on a roll, and his curiosity and agility is causing unwanted problems as well. With viral fever all over Bangalore, and my little one too catching some, scares flew around in the family over his ill health. Now that’s passed as well. Coming up will be some photos of evening sunsets for 2009, and other reviews! Watch out!!

I also have a plan to have 100 – 250 word blog posts going forward. Moral is to keep it short but decisively to the point. Keep reading!

An evening at the Food Street, Sajjan Rao Circle

Its been a long while that I blogged, and it feels really strange to me that I have actually not blogged so far. So let me get ahead with today’s experience – dinner at Food Street. After a rather long day slogging on a weekend, and many missed chances of being at Food Street, I finally decided to check it out today.

 

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Me and my friend reached Sajjan Rao Circle and expected something like a long street full of nice restaurants selling all varieties of food. Also knowing Karnataka I expected all these to be Darshini’s, or the fast food type of eateries. It was similar, but with one obvious difference – we had to eat the food ON the street! Nowhere to sit. In fact the food itself was being cooked ON the street. Now you get the point in the name dont you? – FOOD STREET.

The eateries are very small rooms or sometimes excuses for a room in terms of shape where things are prepared. Mostly the food is prepared right on the street and only raw materials occupy these so called odd shaped rooms. Business starts at about 6pm after sunset and gets brisk around 7:30. The atmosphere is charged up with youngsters and elders alike pouring onto food street. Steam fills the air from freshly prepared mouth watering Rice Rotis, Butter dosas and other items. Chats, juices, are everywhere. The vendors are more than courteous and show off their marketing skills extensively. Even the most disinterested person will finally succumb to the marketing skills exhibited by these vendors!

There are also stalls that sell north indian fare, such as Vada pavs, chats, and Gobi manchurians. Tucked away down the street is also the arya vaisya restaurant (correct me if i may be wrong!) where people buy snacks at all times of the evening.

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Each shop feels like it belongs to a more bigger theme – food street! No shops lags behind another in what they sell with respect to time or quality or price. They work in unison to achieve the charged up atmosphere where crowds return each night for savouring some good food.

With just about a hundred bucks, my stomach was full. It was ages since I tasted such good food. It was an evening well spent chatting away with my friend and generally enjoying a cool evening with steamy food preparations! And for those of you who want to go shopping around don’t forget to visit VB Bakery at the end of Food Street. VB has been the dominant bakers since two decades in this area. The sheer stuff they have makes them a superlative bakery in Bangalore. And don’t forget to buy the delicacy they stand for even today – Dumroot – a pumpkin based sweet preparation that is sure to melt in your mouth!

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If this article has triggered your taste buds to get more, sprint to Food Street after 6pm every evening. It will be an evening of a different kind and something that stays in your memory for a long while for the uniqueness of the concept.