its tough.....

talking about its being tough another thing that comes in my mind is the MTV Roadies 5.0 auditions.....the judges Nikhil and Raghu are literally kicking some serious a**es. I get goose bumps while watching every episode.

Reason: Some real dumbo candidates....and two really pi**ed of judges.

I actually saw a signboard in the delhi audition episode or i think it was kolkata...it was placed right outside the audition hall and it said "Beware, judges are in a bad mood today!!"....seriously...the craziest thing to do right now is to show up in a roadies audition right in front of Nikhil and Raghu!!

More Auto Expo Coverage

A little bit more of Expo

National Institute of Design showcases their designs.

Image Courtesy: A very dear, sweet, young lady..!!:)


Rahul puts up his pics taken from his N series nokia

Expo ..reloaded

I have been to pragati maidan before in the last international trade fair.so i knew it's a tiring task to visit a big expo there. I parked my car at CP's MCD parking and took the metro to pragati maidan...considering the traffic jams that any kind of event triggers at pragati maidan. i was there from Gurgaon in 45 mins...a good start!!

Looking for pics?...they are right here!! Tried my best to get close shots everywhere and somehow managed to achieve that. However quite of few of them were blind shots luckily coming good. My personal favorite is the angle i got for the MT-01's dashboard. Again, there sre some pics in portrait mode, please flip them to see becuase that was the only way i could have got what i wanted in the pic.



all-in-all a nicely managed expo considering the daily turn-out there. TATA's pavillion was raising hell as expected.

Talking about TATA and NANO, here's what i have heard ....a survey was conducted with Auto-Rikshaw drivers/owners, most of them said, if given permission they would like to replace their Autos with Nano. The reason, an auto rickhsaw costs around 3 lakhs(i wonder how) and this car goes for 1 lakh, with seating capacity a bit more. Now did i hear someone say "Nano..The People's Car" :))!!

Skoda and Chevrolet did some nice presentations, Hyundai was spot-on and meant business, Maruti was a bit messy but it was really nice to see M800 phoenix.....they are raising it from ashes or what?? SX4 sport is really sporty.

No one was allowed inside BMW area...touch me not huh?....anyways..nice cars!! Volvo cars with their really heavy duty engines are making inroads for sure. Mahindra goes for an automatic transmission scorpio.

Honda was good and nicely arranged. Hero Honda pavillion was a bit strange ..and kind of disappointing....bajaj was quite modest but right on...suzuki, yamaha, honda all went all-out on bikes.

Mahindra and Renault were doing quite good....The long queue for GM pavillion was awesome...and they didnt disappoint once you are in. Missed the Yamaha Roxx concert..it went house full in a jiffy.

Royal Enfield's Small outdoor stall fitted right in the Enfield Spirit with dirty and rugged looking bikes put on show.It was nice. I'll wait for the day when Harleys make their debut at an Auto Expo in india.

I was supposed to visit the expo on saturday itself but some work popped up in office for saturday. So re-planned it with Rahul and Nishit for sunday. Will share more pics as both of them put their cell phone cams to good use.

Ads ....without stars....

now.... on TV nowadays its pretty hard to find an ad jingle without a Movie or a cricket star in it..so when you actually come across such ads (without any star).....you actually cant help noticing it. I came across a couple of them recently..and they made me realize how we blindly follow stars and whatever they say in those ads. They become icons through them and what they do for us ..is actually make us buy those stuff and add some overhead on our monthly budget.

First one:

Its new on-air and has that indian appeal and emotion blended in it..in short ...the right stuff for indian masses. There is another interesting thing with this jingle...many reliance mobile users were surprised one fine morning to find this jingle set as the dialer tone for their numbers. Many liked it ...some got annnoyed..but a nice marketing idea!!



one of the finest jingles ever...i'll put it right next to the "Humara Bajaj" and Cadbury's "kuch khaas hai" jingles.

Second one:

This one traces back to 2006 and was termed one of the funniest ads ever..a must must watch....!!

Nano technology

well..well...well!!

there goes the neighbourhood....

....india now has a car with ex-showroom price of 1 Lakh. Now thats some Nano technology.

Ratan Tata drove this baby in front of a packed media crowd at Auto Expo in New Delhi. An emotional Ratan Tata drove the car to the podium and said, “This is what I have for you. A promise is a promise, it will cost Rs 1 lakh ex-showroom.”






3 variants: 1 base model which actually costs 1 Lakh and 2 Deluxe models.

three-cylinder 624-800 cc petrol engine with 33 bhp of power.

30-litre fuel tank and four-speed manual gearshift.

air conditioning, but no power steering.

front disk and rear drum brakes.

The company claims mileage of 22 kmpl in city and 26 kmpl on highway.


Now this is supposed to really put some black clouds over new upcoming hatchbacks and small segment cars like Skoda's Fabia. Maruti already looks like surrendering, Huyundai is strangely silent and bajaj has already announced a similar concept car. Now thats quite a hussle!! Whats gonna happen to 2-wheeler market is hard to imagine going forward. What i can imagine is that every "second" car if there is any in any indian middle class home will be the Rs 1 Lakh Car. There will always be a doubt in anyone's mind whos planning to buy a two wheeler or a 150-200 CC segment bike, whether to buy the bike or go for the lakhtakiya.

Image Courtesy: http://www.zeenews.com, http://www.rediff.com

Wanted!!

A sheep or a wolf!!??



Love the swinging bullet sequence!!...Amazing!!

Suzuki.....bringing it on...

Now Suzuki goes the yamaha way but with a different attitude.....the CKD approach.....hmmm...interesting...
Read more

Coming soon...2008!!

Its 1.00 AM, 31 st december 2007, when am posting this on. In all probable cases this is the last post of an eventful and fruitful year 2007.
Achievements wise the year went by quite nicely. Work has never been an issue for me so professional achievements take care of themselves. But the actual achievement is felt when people around you at workplace look upto you for guidance, advice and help. This increases reponsibilities but i think you need responsibilities to keep raising the bar.
Another small achievement is actually related with this Blog. Its now over 2 year since it went online. 2 year and 4 months to be more precise. Wow!!..it survived the lack of creativity that i usually suffer with.
The year actually flew by, very fast. A home, a car, increasing responsibilities at work, feel like everything just pounced upon me. Still, there is a feeling of restlessness...may be there is more to achieve, more to conquer.
Talking about the car...first 400 Kms went by pretty smooth. No hastles, no fuss. Got the registration no. couple of days back. The driving experience is amazing, specially the electronic power steering. Fuel consumption is pretty neat and the car as whole is living upto my expectations so far.

Watching heads turning towards the car is becoming a daily routine, since the model is new on india roads. A couple of days back i was waiting for my turn on a fuel station and a girl waiting in the next bay was looking quite curious about the car. she got off her santro (same company, different model), walked upto my car and asked about the fuel efficiency of the car, well..she got the answer but that was just one of the incidents. There have been quite a few of them and everytime a new question from every person. One funny example:

the person: How is this car doing?
me: very good
the person: shall i buy one of these?
me: what are you waiting for...??!!


Now few questions:

1. Do you follow Formula-1?

2. If you follow, then do you know there is now and indian team on the circuits?

If you dont know then you should know and be prepared to back

force-india in the 2008 season.

Wishing everyone a very happy new year!!

COMING SOON, YEAR 2008!

Splash

Maruti is launching this in the upcoming Auto Expo in January:

Its named "SPLASH". There is also another concept car launch from Maruti itself. Its Called "A-Star".



Its an A-segment five-door hatchback equipped with new Euro 5-compliant 1.0-litre aluminium petrol engine with CO2 emissions lower than 109g/km.

The production is scheduled to start in October 2008.

Now!!Do i see some "inspiration" in SPLASH?, i mean something like this is already on indian roads!!

taare zameen par

Planned to catch a movie yesterday...and had options like "welcome", "jab we met" and "taare zameen par". Picked the last one and i really didnt regret choosing that when i came out of the show. For the first time i saw some other actor really acting much better than Aamir himself and that also while acting opposite Aamir, a child actor, Darsheel Safary playing the character of a dyslexic boy named Ishaan Nandkishor Awasthi. Hardly any masala and pure touching emotions with a very sensitive theme.

The songs are good, and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy does a kickass job, as does lyricist Prasoon Joshi. One can actually feel the frustration of little Ishaan when he goes through his daily ordeal while the song Maa plays in background, touching really touching!!

No wonder there was a small round of applause from audience in the end!!

Aamir the Director actually makes the audience wait for Aamir the actor and then he bursts on the screen with Bum Bum Bole. Not bad!..not bad at all!!

This one is going for Oscars...and i cant help being a bit over-optimistic..TZP can actually bring an Oscar home!!

w00t!!

Thats webster's word of the year!w00t!

used very heavily by Gamers and originally has the meaning as "we own the other team"!

2 Bikes....Indian Roads.....and The Indian Pocket...

I can easily say now that hitting the top gear will never be the same again.....or..?

Yamaha in a desparate effort to really have a firm ground in the passion and emotion driven indian market, unleashed its two warriors on indian roads.

The YZF - R1 : Talking about expert opinion, Rossi tested the 2007 R1. And you can't have a better expert than the "Doctor" himself.

Displacement 998cm3
Maximum horse power 177.5 bhp @ 12,500 rpm
Maximum torque 112.7 Nm @ 10,000 rpm




There is a certain buzz in the air about both of the machines. I would say a good catalyst that was much needed for indian market which was waiting for something like this to happen to really get going and really get at par with the 4-wheel market.

The MT01

Engine type Air cooled 4-stroke,OHV
Cylinder arrangement V-type 2-cylinder
Displacement 1670cm3
Maximum horse power 88.9 bhp @ 4,750 rpm
Maximum torque 150.3 Nm @ 3,750 rpm




Talking about high expectations, both of them have already been termed "flagship" ones for indian market as far as Yamaha is concerned and are supposed to change the face of the 2-wheel market, or at least try to do that. Technology wise, you can hardly quetion Yamaha's specifications..both having displacement range of 1000+ CCs and everything that a indian bike enthusiast dreams of having in his/her machine.

Now here comes the ultimate factor that eventually drives the market, Price Tag. Both as far as i know have a 10+(Lacs) Price tag on-road. Now,what instantly flashes in anyone's mind is that "Bloody Hell!!in 10+ one can own a Honda Sedan or a Hellraising SUV!!" Again, as far as am concerned, buying something or even planning to buy something of that range is out of scope. Even for buying a small car with an on-road price half of my annual CTC, hell lot of planning goes in. But being a biker at heart, i would still make an effort to someday own one of those pieces and that will need saving over the savings.....sigh!!

Even after buying one of those...its hard to think about the effort and money that will be spent on maintenance. This makes me think, is the indian market ready for theses machines?, well..you would say, Hell Yeah!!....But still you might rethink on it.

So to really buy one of these, as Rearset once said...GO OUT AND MAKE POTS OF MONEY NOW!

dhan dhana dhan...goal!!

Hardly had any expectation from this movie, i guess thats why i really liked this one. Two lead characters..an indian and a pakistani......a team consisiting of indians, bangladeshis and pakistanis fighting to save one football club, a coach with memories of a horrible night before a final....nice mix for a good movie!! ......


Go catch it!!Halla Bol!!

Think!!

Think slow..!!

Slow is smooth!!

Smooth is Fast!!

Think about it......

Dodge this!!

One of the 2008 models is actually named "Dyna Fat Bob".

i10 Magna

Had a test drive this morning on this little powerhouse.




This one is already been said as a replacement to Santro and i think Hyundai might close down shutters on Santro eventually. i10 is really interesting: a little lower on RPMs and higher on torque in comparison to Santro xing and almost at par with Getz 1.1 GLE. Wheelbase and height is more than Getz and body is much lighter also. the catch in the end is lower RPMs and higher torque, and it actually showed up when i tested it. I also tried a tight U turn with it and it actually made it clean without any stop-back-stop manouver. Electronic Power steering makes it even more effortless. The mascular and sporty looks are creating quite a craze.

Overall....quite a Car and is priced interestingly too.




Only problem with this beauty is its Website. A bit too flashy i guess.

ENGINE - iRDE 1.1

Configuration
Displacement (cc) - 1086
Maximum Power (ps/rpm) - 66.7/5500
Maximum Torque (Kgm/rpm) - 10.1/2800
In-line, 4 cylinder

Old Old...Classic Rock

Irritating camera angels, irritating hair styles.....but some really cool music....nothing 2 minutes of pure fun!! thats Creedence...

Happy Diwali

A very happy and rocking diwali to everyone

Thats the diwali snap-shot from my floor. Actually that was the day before diwali.

And this one is my favourite...

whats the point?

Hero Honda rolled out "Hunk" from their stables......

a 149.2 CC air-cooled engine...

alloy wheels...

front disc.. rear drum

5 speed manual

hydrolic shocks....

what comes in my mind instantly is..."whats the point?".....i wud call it a twin to CBZX....the only "old is gold" factor comes into play when you actually get the 2-1 combo of speedo- rpm-fuel gauges...no not the digital ones...the dial ones!! its a different feeling looking at the dial going wild on a twist of a bar in your right hand!!

prices around 55,000 INR.....will there be many takers....when we have CBZX (which is altogether a different mistake from HH stables) standing next to it in the showroom??!! look wise it reminds me of P200 but its hard to beat P200 designs.....

really..."whats the point?".....

talking about P200..a collegue in office bought it the other day and in the morning next day whispered in my ear..."dude...there is a P2....down at B3" ...in my biker gang we actually have short names for bike models..P2 = Pulsar 200, P1.5 = Pulsar 150..getting the drift??

it was time for a mandatory welcome ride on the high way.it was my third ride on P200..after the ride....i realized...its a biker's bike...you really need to know each other well..to ride well. That friend of mine is already worried about "winter morning blues"...lets see how the winter goes on P2s.

Descend

Love this sequence.....specially the background score....