At last the goverment has decided to conduct the elections. Its going to happen mar 28, 2010l. Local elections are very important for the city. There are many events scheduled to help citizens make an informed choice. Here are some

1. Suvarna Bengaluru Pranalike:
   On Friday, 19 March @ Town Hall, JC Road (near corporation). The event will start at 6pm and three major parties are represented. Here is the copy of the invitation
2. TweetUP: I am with the help of other friends, organizing a tweetup on saturday.
   4pm to 7pm, @Matteo cafe, church street,
   
   
3. KYC: Citizen matters with Resident association is organizing Know your Candidate event
   On saturday, JPNagar
   On Sunday , BTM
   Check the invite for details

BTW I am interested in knowing

Here is the third installment of Outfoscions about which I was talking. After the first two technology ones, I am presenting you, next very tasty one called Potluck. Yes, the venture is called potluck and its an exclusive north Indian restaurant in Bangalore, started by B K Birla. Here I present small interview I did with Birla who is CFO, Chief Food Officer at Potluck. Thanks for the time Birla.

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[thej] How and when did you get this idea of opening a restaurant?
[Birla] I have been enthusiastic cook from an early age. In typical North Indian households, cooking is a necessary skill for girls and almost a taboo for boys. But in our family I have always seen my father and brother cooking good food and leo technoloarning cooking came naturally. After I came to Bangalore in 1995 I setup my kitchen within 2 weeks and cooking everyday became a natural habit for me. In fact the deal I had with my roommate was that I will do the cooking and he will wash utensils. Besides all this I always had 10-15 friends at my place on weekends and cooking for all of them was a very regular affair for me and I enjoyed cooking for all. Similar things continued during my Infosys onsite trips and it was always fun to cook for everyone.
Opening a restaurant was always on my agenda but while working at Amazon I came across a soft skill trainer who also runs a South Indian restaurant called Krishna Cafe. It was an inspiration for me and my friends at Amazon and that is the point where we started to think seriously about this venture.
On a lighter note if you have fed free food to too many people, you want to make up at some point J

[thej]How is it different from running a software project, I had to ask this?
[Birla] There are both similarities and differences in running a software venture and restaurant. The similarity is in terms of people and their aspirations. A BTech graduate coming from IITs and aspiring to learn new skills has very similar mindset to an uneducated waiter coming with pretty much nothing from places like Darjeeling and trying to become a captain (guy who takes orders in restaurants).
One of the main differences I see is in terms of the cycle times in creating a product and getting feedback from customers about it. In food business the cycle is compressed and the feedback is pretty much in your face. The other big difference I find is that in software or other white collar jobs we get used to a very polished language and environment. In food business or probably other brick and mortar businesses you come across all types of people.
Read the rest of this entry »

As promised I am starting the outfoscions series with Onze Technologies. With their first and primary product Latlong.in they are trying to decode the maps for the rest of us. Latlong tries to give you the information on the go, hence the best way is to deliver by SMS. But the biggest problem for delivering the route on the SMS is 160 character limit. Guys at Latlong came up with a plan of decoding the last ~5km route to destination. This is a brilliant idea considering most of the time users struggle in last five kilometers. Any detailed information from a known landmark in last five kilometers is the way we generally give directions to our friend. LatLong tries to do the same on sms.
You can start using by sending “help” to 90088 90088.
This Sunday I met them at their office. In fact I used their own service to reach their office. It was great fun talking to all the four (Sud, Rahul, Sairam and Pavaman) founders.
Here is an interview I did with them. I am not an interviewer as such. But I have tried to ask questions, which probably will help you know more about LatLong.in. Thank you Sud for taking time out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Woke up 4am on a sunday morning to go for cycling, with the thought it better be good, I have lost hours of sleep for this. After driving for an hour we reached Hesaraghatta which I had known only for two reasons a. Nrithyagram b. my father’s training there. Once we reached the place which marked the begining of our off-road cycling, I was happy. It was green, muddy and beautiful.

We didnt actually have any particular track in mind. We rode as we liked and ended up at Hesaraghatta Lake. We rode on the lake bund until we reached the end. Read the rest of this entry »

Actually this was meant for my twitter followers, But now its open to all my readers. I have Rs. 500 RangDe social lending coupon. Whoever answers this Bangalore quiz (easy) earliest with maximum number of correct answers will get this coupon. Using which you can lend somebody on RangDe. You will get the money + 2% interest once they pay back the loan and of course you will get some karma points.

Quiz:

1. Whats earlier version of M1A2 called? Ans:- Bangalore Torpedo
2. Is there a Gul Mohar Marg in Bangalore? Ans:- Yes. Inside IISc
3. Where in Bangalore you will find 3000 million year old rock ? Ans:- Inside lalbagh, the rock on which Kempegowda tower is built.
4. Which area of Bangalore first got electricity? Ans:- Cantonment
5. How much did Govt spend to construct Vidhana Soudha? Ans:- Rs 1.75 crore.
6. From where did the granite used to construct Vidhana Soudha came from? Ans:- Mostly from Mallasandra and Hessaraghatta
7. Before Independence Gandhi was asked to take rest in Bangalore, Where was it exactly? Ans:- Okay. It was both Kumara krupa road and Nandhi hills. I was expecting Nandhi Hills.

Go ahead answer them as comments. May be I will close it at 7pm?? closed.

Note: NO, this is not sponsored by RangDe. This one is out of my EB adsense money :)

Results: Raghava got it right second time. Congratulations. I will send a mail. Manoj and Fagun were very near. BTW where is that  city market building? Next time I will hide answers until I close the quiz that should make it more interesting.