Kalinga Samaj, Hyderabad - Address & Map

The Hyderabad Kalinga Samaj is located in Banjara Hills, Road No. 12.

Kalinga Cultural Trust
Kalinga Cultural Centre
Plot No 1269
Road No 12, Banjara Hills
Hyderabad - 500034
Phone: 040 - 23303889

Map, with directions from Panjagutta Circle. Jubilee Hills Check Post is also visible in the map and directions from there are self evident.

The Kalinga Samaj office is located in the same building. Membership forms are available there.

The new Shri Shri Jaganath Temple is under construction and is located right behind the Kalinga Samaj building.

TinyMap - Homes of my parents & In-Laws in Bhubaneswar, Orissa

I love the TinyMap service!

I created a new map of Bhubaneswar, Orissa, showing the location of my parents house in Sahid nagar and my In-Law's place in Vivekananda Nagar, along with the route.

TinyMap - A Google Map Based Service

Today I found TinyMap, a web site powered by Google Maps that is different! TinyMap allows you to create a map, save it and link to it from anywhere you like. Really cool.

I create a small map of Hyderabad, India. I pou two POIs or Points of Interest. The first is Steel & Mines Complex, Srinagar Colony where we stay. The second is Taramandal Complex, Saifabad, which houses the offices of CMO, SAIL, where Padmaja works as a Marketing Manager. Then I created (Connected) Waypoints between these two POIs showing the shortest route betweel Srinagar Colony & Taramandal Complex. Saved the whole thing as a map. Done!

Here is the map link. Check it out!

CDisplay, The Comic Viewer

I can't believe I have never written about CDisplay, my favorite Comic Viewer. The original software is no longer actively maintained but boy is it a neat piece of software! Somebody going by the name megatallica is however maintaining another web site http://www.cdisplay.net/where they release Unofficial versions of CDisplay. The current version is CDisplay 1.8.5.1.

CDisplay is a no frills comic viewer that can handle JPEG, static GIF & PNG. Images are automatically ordered and presented for viewing one at a time or two at a time. Images can be read from an archive (zip, rar, ace, tar etc) without having to extract the files. CDisplay works in full screen or windowed mode and has a number of configuration options to customize your reading experience.


A screen shot of CDisplay in full screen mode. By the way, the comic is Tolkien's Hobbit.

Paying The Piper, Credit Cards in India

Rediff.com's Get Ahead Money section published a good article on Credit Cards in India on Feb 5, 2007.

I have heard of Credit Card issuing banks like ICICI, HSBC, CitiBank, etc harassing customers but I haven't had that experience. I use a number of cards but I use them for their ease of use, never for credit. I always pay the full amount pending on my cards at the end of the cycle. Credit Card interest rates are much too high for my pocket :-)

Anyway, the article in question ends with four points:

1. Always ask questions to anyone who offers you a credit card, bank loan, personal loan, etc.
2. Ask them about the finer points. More often than not, they may themselves don't know about it. In that case, ask them for their product's official brochures.
3. Don't sign blindly on the dotted line (remember Amit whenever such an impulse strike you!). Scan through the various clauses under which you are putting your signatures.
4. Finally, read through the fine print on your own. No one else can do this for you.

I agree. A credit card is a financial instrument. Treat it as such.

I have heard agents say - "Just sign Sir, I will fill in the rest"... No way buddy! I will read all the stuff, fill in the details myself and only then do I sign. I strike off all sections that I don't want. The auto debit part that the Rediff article speaks about for example.

Secondly I don't provide any more information than is strictly necessary. For example my car and other stuff like that. The credit card company does not need to know that. Fill in the bare minimum and strike out the rest. And make sure that the strike out is clear. Nobody should be able to put a tick in a box you don't want checked. An acquaintance of mine took a home loan from ICICI Bank about 3 years ago. The agent who came to his home to get the signatures etc forgot to get his signature on a particular document. My friend later found out that some bank official had forged his signature on the said document!

Opps!


Credit Cards are nice to have. They are easy to use and relieve you from the need of carrying lots of cash. But remember that if you use the credit part of the card, you must pay the piper.

Gold Bars from Kotak Bank

Kotak Bank is offering 24 carat gold bars (99.99% purity). ICICI Bank sells gold from the same source (PAMP of Switzerland).

There are two differences between the two banks.

1. Kotak Bank's web site has a link to their gold page right in the middle of their home page. ICICI Bank's Gold Page is hidden in the Investments page.
2. Kotak Bank publishes the day's gold rate on their gold page. ICICI Bank does not. You have to call the nearest branch of ICICI (if you know somebody there and have a phone number) or actually go to the bank to get the gold rate. I end up calling my private banking manager whenever I want the rate.

I will check out Kotak's product soon and will write about it again.

Hyderabadiz 2.0

ONCE A HYDERABADI IS ALWAYS A HYDERABADI.

So claims Hyderabadiz 2.0, a neat blog about all things Hyderabad. I couldn't agree more. I first visited Hyderabad in Dec 1995 and fell in love with the city. I have lived here since May 1996 and while I fluently curse the other idiotic maniacs who are always trying to overtake me on the roads, I still love the city and it's people.

I Found A School Chum Today

Or rather he found me :-)

I had this nice email from Praloy Roy a.k.a "Anda" (Egg in Hindi), in my Yahoo account this morning. We had a Kid's day at Oracle today & I took Padmaja and the kids to Oracle Campus in the morning. I didn't see my emails till after lunch and was pleasantly surprised to see Praloy's email.

Called him in the evening and spoke for a while. Praloy is married now and has a child. He works for Reliance Industries in Delhi. He got my email address from Sandip Mishra, who he got in touch with via Sudhir Prasad, another school chum.

Praloy is the 5th school friend I am in direct contact with. Sandip of course works for Oracle (HR), Sudhir is also in Hyderabad. The third person is Sanjay Kumar who is a Doctor in Mumbai. Last but not the least is Y Krishna, or as he prefers to call himself, "Why Krishna". Krishna is currently in London working for CitiGroup.

The others are scattered around the world. A couple I have contacted on Orkut. No idea where the others are.

Some names I remember (Class of 1988, Ispat E.M School, Rourkela):
Debashish Bhatacharya
Rakesh Shahay
Arindum Mukherjee
Vikas Singh
Arun Panda
Arnab
Vivek Pant
Jhilmil Mohanty
Supriya Roy

Will add more if I remember...

If you know anybody from this class, please drop me a line at gautam (AT) satpathy (dot) in, or leave a comment on this post.

Looking for Chiradeep Chatterjee

Chiradeep Chatterjee from Rourkela left a comment on my old blog. He states that he is currently in Hyderabad. I would love to meet him. Unfortunately he did not leave an email address or web site details. If you know him, please leave a comment on this blog.