Posts Tagged "Mumbai"

Drupal Camp Mumbai 2011 – Day 1

November 9th, 2011
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I had an excellent time with fellow drupalars at Drupal Camp Mumbai held at IIT, Powai. It feels great to put faces to irc nicknames and meet the people for real. This always amazes me :) .

I was bit late hence missed drupal song ( which I heard was fun ) but reached in time for keynote by Dries Buytaert, original creator and project lead for the Drupal. Dries spoke about early days of drupal and how it has evolved into one of the successful open source project. He also emphasized on having a strong community and then shared his thoughts on drupal’s future.

Jacob Singh’s “How to have an open relationship with software (and still get paid) – Free software in material world“, mainly focussed on how each one of us can benefit by being part of drupal community and  in the process grow as a individual/company within drupal community. I really liked his presentation, especially self portraits :)

“Drupal Entities Unleashed – Create your own information architecture with Drupal” by Mukesh Agarwal was a good introduction to entities in drupal. He started with basic concepts and then went on to code level details.

“Drupal, Migrating to Drupal was never so easy“ by Piyuesh Kumar & Dipen Chaudhary demonstrated migration of ROR website into drupal using migrate module. They covered various features of migrate module and it’s integration with drush. It was a great mix of  code and actual migration process. This was followed by a good Q& A session.

This kind of summarizes my day at DCM and looking forward for tomorrow’s code sprint. If you guys missed today, don’t miss tomorrow, there are some kool sessions scheduled along with code sprint.

c ya tomorrow :)

 

Open Source, Technology , ,

Mumbai Meri Jaan: Shameful act at Mumbai domestic airport

July 12th, 2011
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Mumbai, what can I say about it. It’s been more than 6 years since I moved to Mumbai. I instantly fell in love with this city. I don’t know what I like about this maximum city, is it loving friends or ever helpful people or excellent public transport or good food ( a self confessed foodie that I am ) or good opportunities for career growth, frankly speaking I really don’t know. But there are few things that I wish were different/change in this wonderful city.

In this post I would like to bring everyone’s attention to the corruption/bribing issues at domestic airport. Besides buses, rickshaw is the most common mode of transport in Mumbai. So it seems like every time a rickshaw that goes to drop passengers at the airport has to pay 10-20 Rs. to traffic police officer at the exit. In fact now a days when you get in the rickshaw for airport, rickshaw driver will ask for meter reading + Rs. 20 extra which he need to give it to the cop. In my opinion this is ridiculous.

So basically at the exit of departure cop will stop the rickshaw and will ask for the license and other details. Eventually he will take 10-20 Rs. and let go rickshaw driver. This has happened to me atleast 2-3 times when I went to drop my friends at the airport. Everyone knows about it and nothing is done to stop it. It seems like now it is part of the system.

I am not sure if there will be any action taken against such corrupt cops/practices. But I just hope someday someone will stop this and make Mumbai even better place to live and to be proud of.

Life etc, Mumbai , , ,

Say “NO” to bribery!!!

November 29th, 2010
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This was a very interesting incident that happened during my recent travel from Goa to Mumbai. Alcohol is bit cheaper in Goa, so my friend requested to me get a bottle of “Feni” for him. If you have a permit you can legally bring in 2 bottles of alcohol in Mumbai ( this was told to me by a shopkeeper ). Our train was on time and arrived at 5.00 am at Thane station. Sometimes at the station there are railways officers to check bags for alcohol or any other non-importable goods.

I was stopped by two officers asking me if I was carrying any alcohol. So I promptly showed them the bottle along with the permit. In spite of this officer told me to wait on the side and they continued to check other passenger bags. Unfortunately for them they didn’t find anyone else carrying any alcohol. Finally it was me and those 2 officers left on the platform. One of the officers told me that it is illegal to bring any alcohol in Mumbai and I will have to pay a fine of Rs. 3000, followed by a court case. I will also have to appoint a lawyer and fight my case. They also tried to threaten me with jail sentence of 6 months. To by bad luck on the permit instead of travel to “Mumbai” it was written “Daman”. One of the officers read that and became more furious and started to threaten me with bullshit like your engineering degree will be confiscated, they will send a report to my employer and I will be fired from my job etc. By this time I knew that this officers wanted bribe from me. Indirectly they were asking a bribe of Rs. 3000.

I knew I had made a mistake of taking the wrong permit, so I was willing to pay the fine and refused to pay any bribe in a polite manner. In the meantime, one of the officers was checking my mobile phone. He asked me to remove memory card from my phone which he then inserted in his mobile and ( I think ) copied a few songs to his mobile. I wonder if this was a part of his duty :)

I was then taken to another platform for further action. I quietly followed them. While we were walking, one of the officer was still convincing me to pay the bribe and advising me not to follow legal procedures. But I insisted on paying the fine if they could provide me correct receipt. Finally in about 30 min, I think they realized that I was not going to cave in and they told me to go. Before I left one of the officers said politely “Give us some money according to your convenience” to which I replied “no, thank you” and I walked away. I don’t know if it was a lucky day for me or unlucky day for those officers :)

To be frank I was a bit scared in the beginning, but then I made up my mind that I won’t give any bribe and was ready to face any consequences. I did my bit to decrease amount of corruption in our country, so say “NO” to bribery!!!

Goa, Life etc, Mumbai , , ,

Shoe Polish Boy

February 8th, 2009
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Recently I had been to Pune to attend wedding of one of my closest friends. Considering it was Sunday I had done my reservation well in advanced. I had my booking for InterCity Express, which leaves Pune at around 5: 54 pm. Since I reached early I decided to board the train as soon as it arrived on the platform. I was the only person in my compartment.

Then suddenly I heard someone shouting Shoe Polish, Shoe Polish… This is very typical of Indian trains you almost get everything inside train. Since my shoes were dirty I asked price, he replied 5 Rs Sir. I said ok and gave him my shoes. Boy was decently dressed and was very clean unlike most of the hawkers that come in the train. Shoe Boy started to tell me his story. He told me he stays at the Station and he is very particular about cleanliness. He regularly takes bath at paid bathroom and makes sure his cloths are clean. He left his house 1 year back due to some family problems.

It was a very interesting conversation with this shoe polish boy, I think he was around 12 years old. He manages to shine 9-10 shoes daily which makes his livelihood.

I am looking forward for my next Pune trip, just hopping to meet this Shoe Polish Boy !!!

Life etc, Mumbai ,

Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire

January 18th, 2009
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Definitely one of the best movie in recent time. Everything about this movie is just right. A must see..

This movie revolves around life of an impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik, who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?”, wins, and is then suspected of cheating.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/

Life etc, Mumbai, Music/Movies ,