Mandovi

Utterly Unsafe India

2008-11-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

More than 100 people have been killed in today's blasts in Mumbai. The financial capital of India. The strikes have been at the most affluent areas of Mumbai. If the government can't protect such areas, how can it protect less affluent and the remotest areas. What would happen if terrorists attack a small software office in Koramangala? None of the offices have the required security to defend themselves. And an average office will house at least 50 workers!

What if a terrost attack a small village in Andhra Pradesh?
What if a terrost attack a school in Orissa?
What if a terrost attack a BMTC bus in Bangalore?

I doubt anybody will even notice if the bombs have been planted in these areas. The world will know only when the bomb blasts.

Damn! I really feel insecure living in this country now.

Why don't the government stop doing everything it is doing and protect its citizens? What is of more important than life?

Fuck the politicians and their parties. Bastards. They are useless.

Wacky Vakow.com

2008-10-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

ChaNdaN Ki Khushbu Resham Ka Haar, SawaN ki ...
Everybody want friend sum1 special sum1 nice sum1 ...
1 ladki ne coin dalke apna vajan dekha ...
1 bar jaan mangkar dekho, 1 bar yaad ...
Rose is famous 4 Grace... Advocate is famous ...

That's the " Most Forwarded this Week" list of messages in vakow.com. A India centric micro blogging site. On the other hand this is what Twitter's public time line looks like:

I would hardly know - it's been a couple of years since my last indie gig!
suddenly, waiting room is flurry of activity.
Relaxing and chilling with on my relaxy site: http://www.thecoronabeach.com/
@patphelan Where are you? I'm always behind the times...

A micro-blogging site like this is only useful i its subscribers are using it for some real need or utility. Jokes won't take it any further. People will find different means to entertain themselves if they don't have vakow.com.

Smoking ban

2008-10-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Its been 10 days since the new smoking ban came in to effect. Has it make any difference? Absolutely not. You can see smokers happily smoking everywhere as they were earlier. Where is the police to oversee the ban? There is absolutely no difference to smokers.

When India doesn't have sufficient police to control terrorism this man has introduced smoking ban.

This man Anbumani Ramadoss is talking about controlling alcohol now. bah!@#$%^&*() What's wrong with him? Someone put some sense in to this man. He is trying to act like a big moral police who wants to clean up the country on his own. We need sensible policies.

Tax paying patterns of Indians

2008-03-19T04:58:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if this is only Indians or others too follow this.

At the start of the year when I had to submit my tax plan to the accounts team, I said I'll invest the maximum amount possible and submitted my plan. Now at the end the year, I haven't met that plan. As a result I am having to pay huge amounts of tax in the last few months just before the closing of the financial year. This is a huge pinch on my monthly financial commitments. While I was doing this some of close friends disclosed even they are having to pay big tax. I just did a bit of probing and figured 98% of my friends are undergoing this same pattern. Very few people have met their financial goal that they set for themselves 9-10 months earlier.

I wonder what's wrong with us? All of us are well educated and do enormous amount of planning in our projects and we even succeed in that planning. Still being employed is a proof that success. But when it comes to our own planning why are we failing so miserably?

Story: Two Choices

2008-02-12T00:36:00.001-08:00

A little friend of mine forwarded this story. Instead of forwarding I chose to post it here.
-------------
> Two Choices
>
> What would you do?....you make the choice. Don't look for a punch line,
> there isn't one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the
> same choice?
>
> At a fund raising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled
> children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would
> never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and
> its dedicated staff, he offered a question: 'When not interfered with by
> outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet
> my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot
> understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of
> things in my son?'
>
> The audience was stilled by the query.
>
> The father continued. 'I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically
> and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize
> true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people
> treat that child.'
>
> Then he told the following story:
>
> Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were
> playing baseball. Shay asked, 'Do you think they'll let me play?' Shay's
> father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on
> their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed
> to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some
> confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
>
> Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not
> expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance
> and said, 'We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning.
> I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the
> ninth inning.'
>
> Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a
> team shirt. His Father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in
> his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted. In
> the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was
> still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a
> glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he
> was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning
> from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom
> of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two outs and the
> bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was
> scheduled to be next at bat.
>
> At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win
> the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit
> was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat
> properly, much less connect with the ball.
>
> However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that
> the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life,
> moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least
> make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.
> The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly
> towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow
> ground ball right back to the pitcher.
>
> The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and
> could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have
> been out and that would have been the end of the game.
>
> Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head,
> out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams
> started yelling, 'Shay, run to first! Run to first!' Never in his life had
> Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down
> the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
>
> Everyone yelled, 'Run to second, run to second!' Catching his breath,
> Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to
> the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder
> had the ball ... the smallest guy on their team who now had his first
> chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the
> second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so
> he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the
> third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the
> runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
>
> All were screaming, 'Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay'
>
> Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by
> turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, 'Run to third!
> Shay, run to third!'
>
> As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were
> on their feet screaming, 'Shay, run home! Run home!' Shay ran to home,
> stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam
> and won the game for his team.
>
> 'That day', said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,
> 'the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity
> into this world'.
>
> Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never
> forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home
> and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

PlayPumps

2008-02-10T21:41:00.000-08:00

Extract drinking water from underground while kids are playing. Superb idea.

http://www.playpumps.org/

Busy people

2006-08-18T03:06:00.000-07:00

I am a fairly active technical person. I work on a few crazy projects. I keep track of the technology trends. I tend to broadcast all my technology junk around. Some people like some people don't. But there is my boss who is always busy. I don't say she doesn't like to listen to technology trends. But she is too busy to listen to such news. It's been happening from the last 6 months. She says she is really interested in knowing tech stuff but she can't find time. But my dilemma is if she can't listen for another few months, a new technology will come and replace the old trends. She stands to loose a generation of trends. She may never be able to catch up again!

Why people need pirated software?

2006-06-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

There is this student called Venkat. He is a gifted artiste and visualizer. Some of his design works are outstanding. He is passionate about his abilities and wants to continue this as a profession. Flickr and Google inspired him to design something for the Web. He wants to combine his designs with the Web and create neat user experiences. Most of his works are still paper based. One of his friends suggested him to take up a computer course and learn graphics software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. That will put him in the right path to realize his dream of creating good user experiences in the Web. Without tools like these softwares it’s impossible to create something for the Web. But this is where the problem started. He hails from a lower middle class family and can't afford computer courses. They are expensive and will not allow him to spend as much time as he wants. He instead preferred buying a computer and practice at home.

The computer costed him 30k rupees. When he enquired about Illustrator and Photoshop, they were priced 22k (500USD) and 29k rupees (650USD) respectively. This was equivalent of his father's quarterly salary! He had already borrowed enough money from his father and knows his father can not afford any more money. There were more pressing matters than his software at home. Despite his problems, his father promised him to save money for this software. In the meantime, his friend suggested him to try GIMP. GIMP is an open source equivalent of Photoshop. He was really happy about this and started practicing his design work. But sooner realised GIMP was not meeting all his requirements. He had experienced Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop in his friend’s place and was happy about their abilities. He was in a dilemma at this point. Should he wait till his father saves him the required 51k? That would not happen for another 8 months. And by then he had to start searching for a job. Nobody would give him a job if he didn't know these software packages. Everything was in jeopardy. Or should he get back to his friend and ask him for a copy of Photoshop and Illustrator?

So, what should Venkat do now? Should he be ethical and wait till his poor father struggles to arrange money? Should he be patient when his other friends are overtaking him despite his natural abilities? Or should we say 'hey you can't afford these softwares and so you can't create what you want..sorry about it'?

Just because he is poor shouldn't suggest he doesn't have the privilege to learn the best software and chase his passion.

Anybody who has worked with GIMP and Photoshop will know that GIMP cannot come anywhere close to Photoshop. I have used both of them for longer periods and now settled for GIMP because I am not a designer. I just have to crop few images or pick colours from an image.

Scenarios like this are not uncommon. Bright kids struggle with command line compilers on slower computers when everybody else has the luxury of visual tools, faster computers and more productive programming environments. Having seen village kids from closer circles I know there are Venkats in every Indian village. I am not even considering urban areas here. These people do not know what open source or commercial means. They also have a dream. Who is NASSCOM to deny it?

There are a number of ways to tackle piracy than simply issuing press statements and creating flashy advertisements like "kill piracy". As a nodal body, NASSCOM and other such bodies can pursue product houses to release student versions or learning editions. This will help students to acquire necessary skills before they can enter the corporate world. Not many companies including Adobe have student or learning editions. Microsoft has taken some steps in this direction. They have released student/learning editions for a few of their products.

Alternatively they can create an eco-system to consume software like GIMP. That encourages the usage of open source systems and also creates demand for such products to sustain and mature as products with out costing any money.

When the world is advancing with technology we can't leave rest of the country behind us. They need some handles to catch with the rest of us and come along.

Organic meat

2006-06-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

I was running out of my groceries and toileteries (Currently I am in Sydney, Australia working for a software consulting firm). So I visited a nearby super market (Coles). I was a little surprised to see organic meat products. They had organically grown poultry and lamb meat.

http://www.organicmeat.com.au
http://www.freerangechicken.com.au

I was also surprised to see another product. Its a free roaming poultry. This is nothing but the country chicken in India. The difference is they had a nice way of packing and selling through good advertising mechanisms.

In general there were more varieties of meat products than I could find anywhere in the world. There were almost all kinds of meat varieties including tandoori, minses and the complete range of cut meat products. You can find Kangaroo, Poultry, Lamb, Pork, Beef, Fish and other seafood varieties.

Its easy to be noble when you have enough money

2006-06-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

It felt really great to buy Kill Bill DVDs. I was excited about all the features they can give me. I was feeling a little strange when I got back home. A few years back when I didn't have enough money to pay for all my necessities, I didn't really mind picking a pirated copy of some software. I was like...hell...how can I pay so much? I didn't really care to rip a copy of my favourite movie DVD. I had a good collection of most of my favourite movies and music CDs. All pirated. I was proud to own such a good collection. Whenever I lay my hands on a rented or a borrowed movie I'd make a copy of it.

Now I don't have any pirated stuff. All my collection is genuine. I can afford all of my necessities including software and music. I try to think that people must have worked really hard to create a music CD...put in a lot of hard work to write software...must have spent a lot of money to make a movie....we should respect people's intelligence and time and money....blah blah

There is so much of talk about free stuff on the web, DRM, open source, commercial software, war against Microsoft, intellectual property, being ethical....

Its really easy to keep our morals and ethics when we can afford what we are being ethical about. I guess this is how a normal person behaves at two different situations. When you can afford and when you can't.

Food miles

2006-04-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

When we buy vegetables or fruits we don't really care where they are grown. Those items might have been grown in different parts of the country or sometimes they might have been imported from other countries. All we consider while buying is the price, the freshness in their looks and the availability of a particular item in the market through out the year. We wouldn't mind paying more price to buy mangoes if they are available off the season.

In reality what happens when we ask for mangoes after the mango season is over? This puts pressure on the market and the market players tend to source it from other places to meet the demand. Another motivating factor for the suppliers is the extra price they get from selling items in off-seasons. These food items have to travel long distances to meet our off season demands. Food miles is the distance travelled by a food item to reach the consumer's plate. It's often referred as 'from the plough to the plate'.

A report published by The Guardian newspaper found that a selection of 20 fresh food items purchased from British supermarkets had travelled an average of 5,000 miles each. Look at these numbers: grapes had travelled 7,247 miles, carrots and peas 5,979 miles and Apples had travelled 10,133 miles before being consumed by people. In the USA, on average, each food item travels 1,500 miles before arriving at consumer's tables. This travel burns huge amounts of fossil fuels. Farmers also employ inorganic ways to improve the travel life and durability of vegetable and fruits. Sometimes this comes at a cost of the quality and taste of the food item. This report gives some astonishing facts.

It's not this worse in India though. But any travel by a food item is a waste of energy.

Radish is probably the most consumed vegetable in Madras due to its importance in making a sambaar. But a large volume of radish consumed in this port city comes from a village called Sheegehalli in the Kolar district of Karnataka. On average this village transports about 4-5 lorries of fresh radish to Chennai everyday. This radish travels around 270-300 Kilometers and takes about 7-8 hours approximately before being part of the delicious sambaar.

I also know a few places who do intelligent sourcing. For example FoodWorld in Bangalore source baby corn from Hosakote which is about 25 Kilometers away and just takes about 1 hour to reach its stores. Most of the vegetable shops in towns and villages source their vegetables from local farmers. Even if we are buying less good looking items from these shops at least we are sure the vegetables we are consuming are not emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. They are genuinely fresh looking as opposed to chemically fed containers during the travel.

While travelling we must have seen the roadside vendors selling vegetables and fruits. This is the freshest quality we can get without burning a single calorie of fossil fuel as food miles.

Next time when I go to the vegetable shop, I am thinking of asking him how far a vegetable has travelled before reaching his shop and what was its place of origin!!

Saving Tank Water From Evaporating

2006-04-21T22:18:00.001-07:00

I visited a colleague's home for the easter weekend. He has a lovely house in the Manly suburbs. We had a very long break for work. He was very kind to invite me. Otherwise it would've been really hard for me to spend the 4th day without doing anything. I took a ferry from the circular quay to Manly. Its a great experience to travel in these ferries.

My colleague's house (he is my CEO!) is well equipped with all the needs. While surveying the house I noticed their swimming pool was covered in a blue rubber sheet. When I asked him why they covered it, he mentioned they had limited supply of water. If they fill the pool and leave it for a couple of weeks, all the water would evaporate and they had to fill the water again. Then they found out this solution of covering the whole pool with a rubber sheet. The local water bodies gave them this solution. This rubber sheet would look like the waste left after making hawaii chappals. This solution solved their water evaporation problems completely apart from protecting the pool and water from dust and waste material. Whenever they need to use the pool they just remove the cover, use the pool and cover it back again.

Minimise the cooling of the pool by stopping evaporation and convection heat loss. This occures mainly during the night when the ambient air temperature drops below the temperature of the water in the pool. By creating a barrier between the water surface and the outside air, these losses are virtually eliminated.

By keeping evaporation to a minimum, you not only save water, (approx 1.5 metres per year in the Sydney Metropolitan Area), but you also save on the cost of chemicals as you dont have to re balance you pool after topping up. It also reduces the amount of chlorine lost to the Suns’ UV Rays.
Blankets keep the pool cleaner - about 80% to 90% of debris is kept out of the pool. This reduces the work load of your pool cleaner. Most types of pool cleaners will work quite happily under the blanket.

Reduces pool heating costs by up to 50%. Even the cost of running solar system pumps is saved by reducing the amount of heat loss from the pool. Effectively 90% of heat loss is from the surface of the pool. By using a blanket in conjuction with Gas, Electric or Solar heating systems, significant energy cost savings can be made.
Extend the swimming season. Even without other forms of heating on the pool, the addition of a pool blanket can result in a temperature increase of from 6 to 8 degrees in a pool that has a sunny aspect.

All these benefits are pretty good to the swimming pool owner.

But covering a pool with these sheet is an expensive affair. It costs considerable maintenance costs as well along with the high initial setup costs.

At my village we have a borewell and my father pumps it into a storage tank so that he need not depend on electricity to water his crops. But what he hasn't realised is, he is loosing huge amounts of water to evaporation and ground percolation. There are other problems as well. Most of these problems are same as the swimming pool owners. However, they have a solution now.

How about making this an expensive solution, alter it suitably to suit Indian conditions and apply it to my father's farming storage tank? Well I am working on that will post as soon as I have a workable solution.

Alternative agriculture practices - Skyscrapers and Underground crops

2006-02-26T22:04:00.000-08:00

I was very impressed by the following article published in Wired.
No Green Acres? Try Skyscrapers If this technology can be made a little more simple it can be revolutionary. By simple I mean it shouldn't need a brilliant computer scientist to maintain the farm.

Another Wired article about what pharma companies are doing to grow their genetically engineered crops. Though its expensive they can be assured about the yield and they need not worry about their crops contaminating other crops.
Underground crops

Rain water harvesting for large irrigation

2005-12-11T22:27:00.000-08:00

A thought!

It has roots in my discussion with a friend of mine. His name is Bharat, a structural engineer now researching in agriculture. He has an idea of rainwater harvesting for poultry farming. He wants to use inexpensive ways to store water. I am thankful to him for sharing his ideas.

Ok now onto my idea.

I have..oops sorry, my father has a land of 15 acres in one plot. We have planted mango trees in this area. The trees depend on rainwater for their water needs. Annual rainfall fluctuates considerably, drought years being frequent. As a result the yield is average. I think my father is contented with the current yield.

But what I want to experiment is this. Convert the whole 15-acre farm into rain water harvesting region.

The system what I want to build goes like this-
1. A system that catches the rainwater before it reaches the ground levels.
2. Since it's a huge area, I cannot store the water in tanks or storage areas immediately after catching and at once. These have to be put through some kind of piping system and later channel them to a storage area.
3. Design a storage area that can store the rainwater.
4. Distribution of the stored water to irrigation. Normally, farmers use pump sets to distribute the well or bore well water to their farms. Though we can use the same system, we have to consider a farmer who doesn't have such a facility.

This stored water then can be used to irrigate the mango trees or use it to irrigate some other crops. We can either use drip irrigation or conventional methods to irrigate the land.

This whole system can be mapped to a river system analogy. Let's take an example of Cauvery river.

1. First, there are some specialized areas called as "catchment areas". These areas will catch the rainwater.
2. After the catchment area catches water, the water is channeled to dams through naturally formed canals (not sure if artificial canals are being used).
3. Dams are huge storage areas that can store the rainwater. Now, rainwater is successfully stored.
4. The stored water is distributed to farmers for their irrigation through artificial canals.

My idea is to develop a similar system to benefit a farming facility. But I am sure this is not going to be an easy task. Each step above throws up challenges. Apart from the immediate challenges the idea throws up, I am foreseeing a few higher-level challenges. These immediate challenges can be like designing a storage area that can store huge amounts of water without requiring considerable investments.

Higher-level challenges:
1. Cost is of the foremost importance. We need an inexpensive system.
2. Ease of implementation.
3. Reliability - The system will be deployed in rough weathers and will be exposed to all kinds of natural tests like wind, higher temperatures and severe sunlight.
4. Practical – I do not want this idea to end in a word document or a weblog. It should be able to reach the common men. Also, the idea is targeted at people who are mostly illiterate with little or no technical know-how.

As of now I am still stuck with the thought. I honestly do not know how to design the thought into a full-fledged idea and then into a practical solution.

If it proves successful, I can extend it to the remaining farmers around that area.

I am looking for ideas from interested people. If any of you have ideas on how to acheive this, do let me know. I'll be glad!

By the way, why do we have to spend time in rainwater harvesting if we can dig a borewell and extract ground water? Read the link below. It promts us to think about alternative ways to feed our hunger.
Eating Fossil Fuels

More on this later!

Straight from Paris!

2005-10-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

E-mail to my colleagues in India. Copy pasting it!
---------------
Hello all,

I know you are looking for some news and updates from France. Ok here it is straight from the capital of France, Paris.

Alright, the highlghts first:
- PARIS, by far the most beautiful place I have ever seen.
- Juliet said France is famous for wine, women and one more thing. I do not know about the other two, but the women are certainly beautiful. Sorry they are really really pretty. Believe me!

Now the details.
Our first day had been a memorable one. When pilot announced that we were about to reach Paris it was about 7:15AM. The immigration officers did not create any problems. When we thought we will buy some duty free liquor we were already out of the airport. So it started with a flop show. Matthieu was about to pick us up at 8:35 but he was a bit late. Till then we're enjoying our first glimpse of the city.

We drove down to the hotel only to realize that the room booked for us was not yet ready for occupation. The hotel receptionist asked us to roam around till then. Matthieu was determined to make our first day a good one.
So he took us to a place called Basillica church near the hotel. That place was really good. It was a huge building built between 1875-1914 and it is on top of Paris. We could see most of the city from that place including the Eiffel tower. Then we went back to the hotel, got freshened up and by the time we came out Matthieu had bought the city map, metro map (MRT or local train in other words) and a week's metro tickets for both of us. This costed us 30 EUROs!!! Do not try to convert it to rupees!

Matthieu then took us for a drive around the city and dropped us in one place for us to discover the rest and returned home. He had to catch up with his girlfreind's parents.

We were on our own in a place we didn't know anything about and a place we couldn't even communicate. By this time we'd realized that the women were really beautiful. More than that it's the way they carry themselves. That makes them stand out in the crowd. They are extremely fashionable. You can see best of the fashion in the streets of Paris.

Ok, I'll stop here about the women. If I had not started with this subject I am sure some of you wouldn't have read this e-mail;) So let's look at the remaining interesting facts.

Certainly there is life and excitement here. People jump signals. If you want to take a U turn from the extreme left or right, you don't have to show a hand also. Just go ahead and take the turn. Nobody will stare at you or no police will catch you. It's part of life. You want to throw a cigarette bud, no issues, throw where ever you want. You don't have to look like a thief to do that! When you are in a hurry, you don't have to follow the traffic rules. You can stop the flowing traffic and make your way. Same like Chennai!!

Let's return back to our favourite subject...girls!
Have you ever seen girls wearing bikini's in public parks? Atleast I had not seen. After our lunch, Betty and Gaelle took us for a walk to the nearby park. People were sleeping, sun-baths, games and most important, most of the women were in bikini's!! All this on a Monday afteroon.

Among other things, I found a clone of our bullock cart on the streets of Paris. Wondering what it is? (Sorry Sridhar, please blame Juliet)Fiat Uno.
Small cars are a big craze here. If you think Reva is a small car, then there are smaller cars than that too. In fact you can find cars half the size of a Reva.

People enjoy their lives here. There is originality. France and French people have a history unlike most of the other western countries and Singapore ;) Probably that's the reason why they feel French is superior to English. They don't feel sorry when they can not speak English (he he he ... unlike Indians).

Last but not the least. Everything is damn expensieve here. 6 pieces of meat and 2 fried pototoes will cost you 14 EUROS. One film role will cost you 10 EUROS!!

That's all I have for now. More to come later. Till then have a good day and enjoy!
-subbu