Once Upon A Time in Mumbai - Review

This is a story of a time when Peru (Guava) used to cost only 25 paise.

Sultan Mirza a person who had come from Chennai aka Madras that time to Mumbai made sure he made friends instead of enemies in his line of work which would make it easy for everyone to work. He was one of those guys who did not like bad things to Mumbai aka Bombay.

Then comes in Shoib Khan who with the attitude it is "My Way or the Highway" wants to reach the top and want to go there fast by hook or crook.

That is the background of the main character, now the movie well I was expecting some fundoo action or else some smart moves by main characters but what I got in the initial part was a Love Story of both characters which was totally baseless in the movie. What I think is director was short of story and wanted to add glam and bore the audience added Rihanna and Mumtaz. Well Rihanna aka Kangana does not know how to act (this is her first movie which I have seen) and Mumtaz aka Prachi Desai was really OK!

In second half, I thought more action would be on the way but no it was just same boring stuff and then the expected happened Shoib Khan goes to rival gang and does not like what Sultan does to him. To all fairness what Sultan did was slap Shoib, I thought now some gangwar will happen who will have the upper hand etc etc but no, Sultan wants to do a rally, I mean wtf yep he did give a good speech but no use sir.

For the background score Mr Pritam just ripped of Marlyn Manson Beautiful People song and songs were not required in this.

So all my hopes got dashed where I was expecting to see a good movie but it ended in a duh! and Bore! and and...the movie could have got over in one hour if the romance would not happen.

Visapur Trek - How to reach there?

Not going to dwell on the history of the place called Visapur which is a fort next to all famous Lohaghad and Bhaje Caves. But here, will be giving you the details on how to reach there and what to do.

Best Option: Take a car and drive down towards Lonavala, take the second exit of Lonavala and move towards Pune you will find a Junction on the right is Malavali Station, go towards the station and drive down to Bhaje Village where you get an option to Pay and park.

Good Option: Take a Intercity Train from Dadar at 7 am, make sure you do the booking and get a reserved seat because it is one big problem in General will not cost more that Rs. 60 from Dadar to Lonavala. If the train is on time you should reach Lonavala at 9 am. Get down at Lonavala station and from there you have 2 options
Expensive Option: Well this one is a faster option as well, take a rickshaw from the station and they drop you near Malavali station (which is 12Kms from Lonavala Station) at Rs. 150 for 3 seats or if you want to continue take the same rickshaw to Bhaje Village which is another 4 Kms and charges will be crazy.
Cheaper Option: This one takes time because you will have to wait for a local train which runs between Pune to Lonavala every hour. Take one at 10:05 am, tickets will not cost more than Rs. 6 and in 5 minutes you will reach Malawali Station

OK Option: Take an Asiad or ST from Dadar station and get down at the junction of Malawali, which god only knows how long will it take and then take Rickshaw till Bhaje Village from the Junction.

On reaching Bhaje Village which is 4 kms from Malavali station you have lots of option to eat and drink like tea, coffee, misal pav, vada pav, bhaji pav which are very decent. There are no big restaurants but small ones which will serve you the basic.

Right now the actual trek starts, there are two ways to reach Visapur one is via Patan Village which is short but more tiring and other is via Bhaje Caves, longer but faster.
Via Bhaje, till reach a point where the trail to Visapur and Lohaghad changes it is a very simple route just and zig zag incline walk for which you can take shortcuts which are small and bit tiring but you reach faster.
After the new trail starts it is a very simple walk where you see on your left the massive Visapur fort.
There will be a small left on the way to Visapur top where you have to pass through a jungle which is a 20 mins walk up and then reach a point where water is flowing. This is tricky part where one has to be very careful of not putting your feet on the loose stones and taking care of the moss. Reaching the top from the start of the waterfall is around half an hour in good weather (which means sun is not shining hard).

The fort itself is so huge that you will need atleast an hour to survey the surroundings. You can also just relax and have lunch on the fort itself.

Coming down is a tricky part again you have to come down by the same route and be sure of your footings and look out for moving rocks. Once you are down you can go towards Lohaghad and there are many many eateries outside local people house and they you awesome food.

Coming back: If you have a car then just go back the way you have come. Other options are go to Lonavala Bus Station and get anyone of the bus which goes to Mumbai. Or go to the station and get into a train which is coming from Pune like Intercity but they arrive very early around 5:30 pm something or hire a cab, if there is a group of 7 or 8 you will get a Sumo @Rs. 1500 till Sion.

Well this is it...Visapur

Two Songs you should wake up to

In this life we always want more and more, if we have a Mercedes we want a Ferrari and if we have a one bhk in the crowded Mumbai suburbs we want two bhk in upscale Bandra complex.

These two songs which i think everyone should wake up to, yes i know it is not the ideal world but the words are so simple and surely it can make you smile through the day.

Good Morning World by Dean Martin:


Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin

(could not embed) the video

Two of my all time favorites......which is a must on Monday Morning!!

Have a great time

INCEPTION - No Review

There are 1000 post and blogs flying around the internet praising the movie and the director, well most of them had to praise about it because at one point of time even the actress in the movie got confused on what the hell were they doing and whose dream were they getting into.

I really loved the movie in one sense which is something never tried before and this has got lot of people thinking and talking about kicks, dreams, sub consciousness, limbo etc etc. What is interesting is how the concept got flowing and how it had being created into one of the masterpiece of the year where lot of people will still talk about it.

What more interesting is you can dream in a dream which people do talk about but they have taken it to another level.

Indian movies have done this a very very long time back if you do not believe me check this video out



I hope you get it what I mean here....our own Hrishi Da the legendary film-maker has thought about this even before Nolan started to learn how to pee in the loo all by himself

Power The Hotel - Eat for Free

Article taken from BBC World website.

A Danish hotel is offering a free meal to any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator.

36% of Copenhageners cycle to work each day

The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen says the idea is to get people fit and reduce their carbon footprint.
Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity - roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness.
The hotel already produces renewable energy with solar panels on its facade.
Guests staying at Plaza Hotel will be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros; £23) once they have produced 10 watt hours of electricity, hotel spokeswoman Frederikke Toemmergaard told the BBC News website.
"Many of our visitors are business people who enjoy going to the gym. There might be the odd person who will cycle just to get a free meal, but I don't think people will exploit the initiative overall," she added.
The bicycles will have iPhones attached to the handlebars measuring how much power is being generated for the hotel.
The plan, a world-first, will be launched on 19 April and run for a year, the hotel says. Only guests staying at the hotel will be able to take part.
Copenhagen has a long-standing cycling tradition and 36% of locals cycle to work each day, one of the highest percentages in the world, according to the website visitcopenhagen.dk
"Because Copenhagen is strongly associated with cycling, we felt the bicycle would work well as a symbol of the hotel's green profile," Ms Toemmergaard said.
US environmental website treehugger.com recently voted Copenhagen the world's best city for cyclists.
If successful, the electric bicycle meal programme will be extended to all Crowne Plaza hotels in the UK, the hotel said in statement.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8621038.stm

White Water Rafting - The WoW Experience

Was always thinking of going to Kolad, near Mumbai for Rafting in the dam released water but luckily had some project in Gurgaon for more than 2 weeks and as weekend was inbetween the work days, me and my colleague decided to go to Rishikesh for the real deal of White Water Rafting in the Holy Ganges.

Rishikesh a small sleepy town on the banks of Ganges which is around 224 KMS from Delhi ISBT (Inter State Bus Terminus) is where all the major activities of White Water Rafting takes place. Now I shall describe on how we travelled to Rishikesh and what were the day schedule.

We decided to leave early in the afternoon, left around 12:30 Pm after having a good breakfast at Haldiram's in Gurgaon. After 60 Kms ride through New Delhi and Old Delhi we reached ISBT in one and half hour. Entered the massive ISBT and were asking people where will we get buses for Haridwar or Rishikesh also deep in our heart we were hoping we get a Air Conditioned bus but then we hear a sweet words "Haridwar Rishikesh Haridwar Rishikesh" from a torn down bus conductor. We ask him once and hop on.

Note: ISBT is one those massive bus terminals whe breuses ply from Delhi to almost every city 500+ kms from there. You can reach anytime and you can get a bus to anywhere 24 hours. And it is the starting point so you do get a place to sit also.

The bus had cushion seats and like an idiot I selected a window seat on top of back wheel. So could not get good leg room. Note: Always sit next on the first seat next to the door has ample leg room. The tickets cost Rs. 177 only and after 7 hours running through wrong side and off the road we reached Haridwar.

Our trip was taken care by The Great Himalayan Expedition and as we reached late we had to take a car for Rs. 600 to Marine Drive (one of the sandy beaches on Ganges). We got off after 25 Kms ride to the beach and a raft came to ferry us on the other side. Where we see lots of tents and people joking and singing and drinking.

We were assisted towards our tent which had a big cot and blankets. After having dinner which had veg and non veg fare was quite good. After relaxing a bit by the river we went off to sleep

Note: Things to carry, hand sanitisers, soaps, tissue papers, torch and medicines and top of the list should be alcohol (if you drink)

Got up around 7 am and we were told the next raft moves out at 10 am while we did our morning stuff and had a hearty meal. We were introduced to our Leader, Ram Singh who was going to guide us on the rough and beautiful Ganges.

We were first told all the things about the raft, the oar and what are the different terms.

There are around 9+ Rapids on the 25 Km Rafting trip, will try to name each of them
- Balance : one of the easier rapids where we were told to stand on the raft edge and it was pure fun to hold your balance
- 3 Blind Mice: 3 rapids one after another with difficulty increaing on each one.
- Back to Center: Another simple one with bit of bump inbetween.
- Roller Coaster: The big Daddy of all if you are right in center of it you can be hit by huge waves on your face and at times lose your balance.
- Golf Course : Similar to Roller Coaster but a bit smaller we missed out on the main surge.

There are 4 more which I currently cannot remember the name of. Icing on the cake would be the 25 feet clifff jump where we saw lots of guys reaching the edge and backing out.

And the end of the day after paddling forward and backward and swimming in the river made us a tired bunch.

The total cost for us was Rs. 1600 for Staying and rafting, traveling was around 1000 from Gurgaon to Gurgaon and all the experience was priceless.

Tel Aviv - City of

First of all thanks to the company where I work for giving us an opportunity to go to Tel Aviv in Israel for training purpose.
When we first broke the news about that we will be going to Tel Aviv initial response or knee jerk questions from colleagues and friends were:
- Make sure you get yourself a bullet-proof jacket.
- Get some bullets from there.
- Take care don't go out much you might never know where a rocket would come from.
and few more which I don't remember.

So we take an El Al Airlines an Israeli National Airlines (it is not run by the government) where we have to reach the airport 4 hours before our flight which was at 11:35 PM. As we all know about the famous Israeli defense system and their security checks, we reach there by 7 PM.
Four of us together from same company were told to go in together and were separately asked questions by the El Al Airline Security Team.
Question set were as follows:
- So tell me what do you do?
- Why are you going to Tel Aviv?
- How many days you are going to work there?
- What is your role in the company?
Now things start to get weirder
- What is the role of the person standing right of you (pointing at my colleague)
- Which development tool he will work on ? (what do you know about development tools)
- How long do you know each other?
- Who are you in contact with in Tel Aviv?
Now some eyebrow raising stuff
- Can you show me the mail of your training itenery?
- Can you open the doc from this mail?
- What is a QA Process? (wow he looked at a word in a document and ask me that?)

Note: A lady next to me going back to Israel had gone to a trip to Goa (yes everyone goes there) and she had bought a pack of sausages and wrapped them very well the security made them open all the wrapped stuff....at times they can be ruthless and also they checked out her photos from the camera.


So let us get back to my trip, after the questioning the security people go over to each other and cross check if the things match and I did a small screw up saying that the laptop was mine which was not and then after few more questions they were satisfied they let me in for the boarding pass.
Then the regular stuff till we enter the plane, immigration, late Dinner at the airport, a bit of shopping from the duty free shopping.
And we enter the aircraft at 11 PM and got the back row seats, we settled down and after half an hour delay the flight takes off. We were served drinks which included alcohol/juices/wine etc and then the dinner which boiled chickpeas, chicken gravy, steam rice, bread and sweet to know more check out my other blog.

Landed half an hour late and we got off the airport pretty smooth, except for one small mishap where I thought I kept my camera in the Red Channel of the customs and it was in the bag so all in all a stupid first mistake there. Company where we were going for training had got us a car which dropped us at our apartment.

The backstory of the apartment: In Tel Aviv lot of places you can rent an apartment for a week or 2 by giving certain amount per day which depends on where you stay and how big is the apartment. You can get a studio apartment from $90 a night to $300. a night with swimming pool and other things included. The apartment we stayed in was a 3BHK near the center of the city and it was in the basement. Place was clean, self sufficient with basic things such as fridge, microwave, stove, washing machine, water heater etc etc. 

Back to the story, we were taken in a Mercedes at around 5 am in the morning, first things noted big roads, no potholes, beautiful view and empty yep it was 5 am. We reached our apartment by around 6 and as not everyone could sleep properly 2 went off to sleep while the other 2 were updating the Indian Team that we have reached safely.
Note: Everyone will convert your dollars to shekels I mean everyone from a Taxi driver to a small store just know how much is the current conversion rate and take it around that.

So 2 of us decided to get some breakfast and hoped to find some stores open and we did one which we bought milk packs, kellogs, cheese, breads for our breakfast and as went further down we noted that the beach is just a 5 minute walk. As we did not wanted to be late for our first day we rushed back had our breakfast and had a cold shower with temperature outside hovering around 16 degrees as we did not know where the switch was, later discovered it was near the door.

Went out called out the taxi which was VW Passat and took our first trip to the Oberon Media office in Raoul Wallenberg or Raul Vallenberg (there are places with same pronunciation but different spellings) we reached there in 20 mins through a sea of big moving traffic and as it is written in lots of website about the erratic driving, I must say they are really cool lane crossing was not that much just a few and drive was smooth.

Reached the office and did the initial greetings and it was all meetings and presentations.We were taken to an American Eating place which was just in the parallel street, place had a well stocked bar, sandwiches, pastas, salads, burgers were on the menu and each of us tried a different thing (well few got the same stuff).
Few interesting things you will notice in a restaurant in Israel:
- They will give you something to eat before you order anything like Garlic breads, pita breads, salads just to keep you going
- In the business time they give you special deals like Business lunch, mini lunch etc etc
- Food portions are huge
- Waitresses are hot (they may be college going kids but hot)
- Very efficient if the food is ready anyone will come and serve you
- There is different Menu Card for English and Israeli speaking people.

The road has all kind of restaurants Fish, Beef special, Thai, Italian, Turkish, McDonald and most of them are full during the lunch hour which is from 1 PM to 2 PM.  Well the cost and quantity go hand in hand huge quantity of food for around 60 shekels is a good deal make sure you tip the waiter as well 10% of the bill.

We asked about why the big quantity of food served in the hotel and our training head answered "In Israel we are generous with food to our guest so in a restaurant if you get a small portion of food that place would be called as cheap and no one would go there. So that is why the quantity of food is so much"

On our way back we took a bus run by the government and it is so similar to the AC busses which BEST have launched here super suspension, button doors but one thing is missing the conductor here pay the driver and they will give you the change back. The journey is so awesome where you see different kind of people going back home and we see the other part of the city which is like our suburbs but much cleaner. The cost of traveling by bus is also not that much way cheaper than the Taxi does take lot of time but makes you see new roads.

Important roads in Tel Aviv:
After I went there, I came to know English ruled Israel for around 30 years from 1918 to 1948 and that was the reason we found lot of English Road names such as King George, Allenby road, Gordon road, Tempeldor Street etc.
We stayed in Hevron/Hebron street which is connecting the famous Tempeldor street where there is graveyard of famous personalities of Israel.
Dizengoff Street: This is a shopping street where you will find super cool stores and good eating places. Also there is a big bridge kind of thing where people can relax and just gaze around. There is a flea market every Thursday and Friday
Allenby Street: This is called the Party Street, lots of clubs and disco added with strip bars and lots of pizza place.

Beach: It is a stretch of around 4.5 KMS approximately where you can just walk down or take a cycle and go till Jaffa aka Yafo. There are big footpaths where you can cycle your way and see the amazing views. On Fridays and Saturdays the beach is almost full and you can just chill where no one will come and tell you buy something.
Port: It was a real port once upon a time and then they shifted to a new place leaving this place barren but some wise people used the empty warehouse for restaurants, shops and clubs. The view is super awesome always windy and never empty. 


Note: There is a shop called AM PM which is open 24x7 and they have practically everything. You can buy a beer and can give them back the bottles where you can get 1.20 Shekels per empty bottle which is super cool.

People: As it is said People make the city and I found some of the coolest people around, you be from anywhere, wear anything, do anything (it does not mean running naked and hitting people) people do not care. They just go about their business and enjoy their life. The people like to eat and drink and also exercise so you will rarely find a fat man. Met a taxi driver who is 80 year old and still goes for morning walk without fail (which actually put all us young guys in shame).

For more photos check out:
Link 1
Link 2

Will update on Jerusalem and Jaffa aka Yafo