The Mayhem so far....

Well.... its been happening in bulk lately result of a doldrum called recession. It started long back but the real trigger happened with Lehmann Brothers episode. It has many names: job cuts, layoffs, downsizing etc..etc..

Bodycount so far:

Pepsi Bottling Group: 3,150
HSBC: 1,100
Citigroup: 52,000
Fidelity Investments: 3000
RBS: 3000
Sun Microsystems: 6,000
BT: 10,000
Morgan Stanley: 19% of 44,000
Virgin: 2,200
Nokia-Siemens: 1820
Volvo: 6000
DHL US: 9,500
NNC: 1,300
GM: 3,600
Ford: 2,600
Corus: 400
American Express: 7000
Bank of America: 7,500
DBS: 900
New York City: 3000
AMD: 500
Goldman Sachs: 3200
GlaxoSmithKline: 1000
Jaguar Land Rover: 400
Nokia: 600
HP: 24600

TCS: 1000
IBM: 700+
Wipro: 1000
Hewitt Associates: 200+ (rumoured)
Accenture: 150+
Capegemini: 700

The list is long.
Survival of the fittest as they say...!!I Hope the situation improves soon.!!

A star has arrived.......

Maruti Suzuki launched an i10 & swift cross with a price tag between 3.47-4.12 lakhs, named A Star. Powered by a 998cc K10B petrol engine, it has looks very similar to i10.

Initial reviews on different TV shows are pretty much same and from inside everyone is saying that its too cramped space wise..but alot is being said about its almost 1000 CC engine.



It looks very different from the concept that was showcased at Auto Expo earlier this year. The most sad part of the car so far..the rear door windows!!

Well..this one might qualify for a test drive :)

F1 at Rajpath

The occasion was the world famous prestigious ING-Renault Roadshow.

The Venue was Rajpath, New Delhi.

The stars were Nelson Piquet Jr and fellow teammate and test driver Luca De Grassi in their F1 cars, the special Renault Megane Trophy cars, the icing on the cake was the Renault F1 cars setting the tarmac on fire at over 300 km/h on the same stretch of road.

Well, there has been many speculations about the stretch on rajpath that goes right through india gate and turns near Rashtrapati Bhawan being considered as a F1 track as and when F1 debuts in india.

I gave the event a miss considering the fact that there were traffic diversions for the half marathon as well on the same day. Here is what i actually missed :(



There was one hugely popular stunt done by Piquet where he just jumps out of the F1 car waving towards the crowd leaving the car burning the track on a 360 spin and then jumps back in it and drives away.

I hate the damn marathon!! :(

Solace...

QOS starts from the point where CR ended, Bond introducing himself to Mr.White, and it starts on a very high speed, a car chase with an aston martin and and a alpha romeo tearing each other apart. The intensity ends only when the movie ends.



Daniel Craig lives upto the expectations but the line between Bourne and Bond is getting thinner with every bond movie.

3 Years

Its been some time since i last posted. I had to do this today as it is an important day for me. Recently i completed three years here in down town Gurgaon. Its been quite hussled up three years, lots of goods, quite a few disappointments...success...losses....victories..defeats..everything. So what next?
Next can be anything!!...last three years have been very fruitful and learnt alot..personally and professionally. But a time comes when one needs to move a bit to the next step..move ahead and i think i also might get the urge to move on for better things..for more stuff to learn..for better future for me and my life partner. Its just a little thought in a corner of the mind right now..but might grow big and become a decision.
I might sound like...i have changed or something..but am still that irritating one with a special attachements with Bikes...with a special liking for cars.....with an unbeatable inclination towards chinese cuisine....with an attitude that sometimes crops up (no regrets on this).
And with that ...on this important day on behalf of everyone i know...i wish myself..a very happy birthday!!

And here is another 4 wheeler that i test drove in recent times...

Dont ask about the top speed, the mileage and the horse power. it just had 4 wheels a steering and a crappy engine!!

Gurgaon - Agra - Gurgaon

Me and Eva drove for a weekend trip to Agra, actually original plans were a bit different but eventually in last minute decision we switched to this one and we just drove off. The drive plan was basically Gurgaon - faridabad - Mathura Road - Mathura - Agra and included one tea break in between. The Gurgaon - faridabad leg took some time as it was a working day and morning traffic was still on, plus the roads in faridabad are no better than gurgaon. Once we crossed faridabad and reached NH 2 it was pretty smooth with very good road conditions.
The stay in Agra was nice, thanks to May and Man, Eva's very sweet friends, who made sure that our stay in Agra remains hassle free and very pleasant :)
Taj Mahal and Agra fort were the first two things early morning next day and we really enjoyed the early morning atmosphere and we were back before the heat gets going. Some typical evening hanging out at the nearby sadar market and the dinner at the fast food joint in the market were real fun.
We decided to visit Sikandra on our way back. An hour or so there and after that it was the drive back to Gurgaon which was also pretty smooth and hassle free.
Overall a fun filled drive and a very pleasant stay at Agra.
Also, technically the drives so far on my i10 has been without a single glitch, touch wood. Looking forward to some more of such drives :)

When the sun goes down....

The lights go up and the Marina Bay Street Circuit is set for the first ever night F1 race. Italian Giancarlo Fisichella steering his Force India car onto the streets of Singapore started free practice session followed by his team mate Adrian Sutil.Now the drivers will get to know what happens under street lights specially when its raining :)!

Delhi...

Delhi got shaken and stirred last evening with 5 bomb blasts within 30 mins at top notch places like barakhamba road, ghaffar market, central park, GK1 M block market. After bangalore, jaipur, surat and ahmedabad Delhi was always on radar as suggested by earlier alerts sounded in capital. On that basis, it was about time!
Heart goes out for family members of those 30 who are no more and those 90 injured, who will think more than twice before entering any market place.
Get going Delhi!!!You have done this before!!..question is how many times you need to do it all over again!!?

Rock On concert...

The FM channel BIG 92.7 decided to cash on the mania and organised an all star concert of Rock On at Select Citywalk, Saket this Staturday. Got to know about this on Friday only since am not a regular listener of 92.7, so obviously didnt get hold of those " entry passes", however on the concert i realized that it would been lot more frustrating if we had passes, because there was some major miscalculation from organizer's part and many people with passes didnt get to enter the designated area. Now since the whole thing was open air, the balconies and other places were put to good use, and Eva actually got hold of a really good place with a good enough view on the front balcony.

It started with Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy getting the crowd on their feet and then the start cast joined in. As expected crowd was going nuts for Aditya, Joe, KD, and Rob :). Every inch was jam packed and in that Eva somehow managed to capture some videos and pics, everything shaking though, and i dont blame her, you cant get a stable video or a pic if you have jumping and screaming and dancing guys and gals around you. The above one is the only "still" picture available :P.

Over all a fun filled evening :)

Rocked...Totally!!

If you ever liked Bon Jovi with long hair, with his guitar on full song and fire blazing in background on a high mountain and singing blaze of glory, go watch this movie.....
If you ever enjoyed Bryan Adams putting that guitar to good use and creating an all time smash hit, Summer of 69 , go watch this movie...
If you ever enjoyed banging your head up-down on realy hard beats of Limp Bizkit, go watch this movie...
If you ever enjoyed Dil chahta hai, go watch this movie....
If you ever enjoyed real campus flavour rock, go watch this movie...
If you ever liked any kind of freshness in any movie ever, go watch this movie.....


Go watch this movie....and you will start believing in Magik...
I bet you will come out of theatre humming...tum ho toh

Rock On!!

R1 - Dreams

when u were a kid u wanted to fly
u wanted to go faster
u dreamt of speed
of wind and know how one can touch it
when ur young ur told to stop dreaming
but you still dreamt'
now u've grown up
and all those dreams have got u this far



where you go now is upto you!!

Coming soon..Fireblade

India Debut in Honda Showrooms...Q4 2008. R1 should watch out.

Bad Review

I have never written a bad review ..ok let me rephrase this as , i have never written any review if it is bad but i have to write this one and i will keep it simple...
Don't watch Mission Istanbul, its horrible!!
Thank God my card gave me a 100 Rs discount on the tickets.

Happy Birthday Jim

To Someone who lived under the shadow of man-eaters and enjoyed it....
Happy Birthday Jim Corbett !!


A click from my last trip to JCNP

The Great Road Trips

My plans for road trips...well..i always planned..but somehow-someway...everytime at the last moment roadblocks appear. But there are many people who actually succeed and hit the roads for a trip...a road trip..long one.
Was going through the XBhp site and found these three fascinating triplogs:
The Great Indian Road Trip 2006-
18,780 Kms, 108 days, 4 bikes, India all the way.

This pic is my personal favourite
The Great Australian Road Trip 2007-2008-
3 Indian, 2 Bikes, 1 Van, 20,500 Kms, 72 Days
The Great New Zealand Roadtrip 2008-
23 Days, 1 Bike, 1 Indian

Talking about plans...there is one more roadtrip planned with a friend in furure..lets see how that goes.
Image Courtesy: http://www.xbhp.com/
Links Courtesy: http://www.xbhp.com/

why so serious?...

Have been in a unsettled frame of mind lately...so decided to unwind a bit and we decided to catch "the dark knight" on sunday.
It turned out to be one very fine Batman movie, and i think the best i have ever seen.


Heath ledger raised the bar significantly as far as "Joker" is concerned, infact the person sitting next to me in the theater was talking to his friend and i overheard it, he said "Jack Nicholson is nothing", and i second that. Jack played the "Joker" last time the character appeared on the screen.
Action sequences are getting better and better on Batman standards and that was awesome.

Rock On!!

Was listeing to the songs of "Rock On!!" last night. Its a Farhan Akhtar movie...this time he is Producer/Actor of this movie not director.


Two songs caught my attention.."Rock On" the title song which actually reminded me of the rock climbing sequence of Farhan's Hrithik Roshan movie "Lakshya". Another song was "Yeh tumhari meri baatein". These two songs actually score higher than the "janne tu..yaa jaane naa" soundtrack for me.
Lovely!!

Parking...going hi-tech

necessity is the mother of invention.......

Problem: too many cars..space crunch in the basement parking of my office building!!

Solution: increase parking space...

How:

They deployed these!!
these are six slot two level parking bays. One unit provides 5 parking bays as one slot is blank to move the cars around...yes...they can move the cars around in a circular fashion. it is similar to that number shuffler we used to play with in which one slot was always empty.

What they achieved:
Now we get 10 cars parked in a space of 6 cars. There are slots of separate dimensions for large sedans. SUVs dont fit anywhere..so they go on different basement level. Small cars like santro and i10 with extra height go in the middle slot or on the upper level of the unit.

Peregrine Falcon

It is a bird capable of achieving speeds over 200 mph (322 km/h) -- and predator of (perhaps not coincidently) the common blackbird. In japanese its name is translated to Hayabusa. For our reference we will take it as suzuki hayabusa.
Now what about the blackbird?...
well that was clear reference to Honda's hawk models and this war goes back to 1999 when hayabusa was launched and it overtook Honda CBR1100XX Super Blackbird as the fastest production motorcycle. Now as Peter Parker says..."with power comes the responsibility"...and i rephrase it as.."with power comes the response". The power and speed war amongst the super sport bikes eventually led to Government response and that prompted use of timing retard and rev limiter to reduce the max speed and limit it to 299 Km/h from the earlier 319 Km/h (what!!!??..319??..nuts!!??). In 2008, competition again saw this falcon raising the bar and engine size went to 1340 CC from 1299 CC.

The Click from the auto expo:


The rivalry between the falcon and hawk..moves on.....but i must say one thing...people (including me) with machines in category of 125-225 CC....names like devils, hellraisers, beasts....doesnt suit on our machines!!

William Arthur....or should i say

From a really funny looking design in 1907



to a really serious design...muscled up and with lots of attitude..fat bob.



starting from 1902...William Harley and Arthur Davidson....105 years of pure genius...and glory....!!
That's Harley Davidson with 105th Anniversary!!