Two eyes, One world, Added lens

Datsun redi-GO - The sleek and peppy urban-cross

2016-06-03T15:48:00.002+05:30

The other day while driving down to the airport to pick my parents, I noticed a huge hoarding of Nissan’s Datsun’s redi-GO car. In the current times when all the hatchbacks are hitting the market with almost the same looks, redi-GO with its fresh bold looks immediately caught my attention! The strong character line running all over the body of the car is a definite wow! It definitely is a brave move from the designers of the car to make it stand out from others. The car looks very sporty and stylish with premium accents, all in spite of being an entry level car!

Before deciding on whether to test drive this beauty, I sat down to check the overall features from Datsun's website. I should say, am definitely impressed with its specifications! With price budget of under 4 Lakhs, we hardly have any cars in the Indian market currently to match such attractive sporty looks that combine features of a crossover in a compact hatchback. redi-GO looks beautiful both from the front and back, with the sculpted rear holding the boomerang tail lamps and the attractive nose adorned with a pair of beautiful long headlamps and the chrome-infused hexagonal grille, which is Datsun's signature! And as I already said, the bold character lines definitely complements and adds to the overall charm of the car! India's dynamic youth are sure to fall for its looks.

With redi-GO just being the third successful offering in the Indian market, Datsun already seems to have read and understood the mindset of the entry-level Indian segment very well! The features are simple and no-nonsense to clearly suit the potential entry segment that prefers premier looks and a comfortable driving experience without needing loads of cluttered features. When I first drove my new Sedan to the old city of Hyderabad, it was a plain nightmare navigating it across the narrow roads with never-ending chaotic traffic from all directions. I thought I would never drive down to the old city ever again for the worst driving experience I had in the first place. But with redi-GO, I think I am ready to reconsider my statement and take it for a spin around the old city with some of its interesting features!

First of, I really love the sleekest looks of redi-GO! While the sporty look of the car is sure to turn heads, the short turning radius is a blessing when it comes to navigating sharp U-turns and crowded turns, especially like in the old city of Hyderabad. I recall how I easily created a traffic jam near Charminar when I had to take a simple U-turn! In no time, it was a nightmare navigating out of the situation. I think with redi-GO, I will easily breeze out such situations happily.

Secondly, most entry level cars don't have an adjustable steering wheel but at the same time, they also lack in the height of the driving seat. One of the most important things I like about redi-GO is the heightened seats that will come handy while both members of the family have to drive the car. The high driving position is sure to come handy to my wife who always complains of bad road visibility from her seating position in my sedan. This would easily translate to freedom and more confidence for her while driving!

Thirdly, even with a peppy 800cc engine to provide smooth performance in the same economical price tag, redi-GO doesn't compromise on the cabin space! This is a definite plus because there seems to be more than enough cabin space for 4 adults to sit comfortably and a 5th person can be squeezed with slight packing. With amazing ground clearance and suspension, the drive is guaranteed to be very comfortable even when the roads are strewn with potholes and crazy speed breakers like here in Hyderabad!

Overall I am now more than keen to take Datsun's redi-GO out for a spin to unleash its power. With no-nonsense useful features, it is sure to attract and complement our stylish youth that always like to be on the move!

Fun. Freedom. Confidence. The ultimate Urban Cross - Datsun redi-GO - the capability of a crossover with the convenience of a hatchback.

One Zippy Car !

2016-02-21T18:44:00.002+05:30

On a hot sunny afternoon, as I was waiting in the signal at Cyber Towers I casually looked at Tejaswi Motors on my left. This was my regular route for work and as the signal turned green, my bus started off. But there was something at Tejaswi Motors today which caught my eyes.

After a lot of thought, I decided to go and check Tejaswi Motors myself. On entering the showroom, my eyes fell on a sun burst orange coloured car. It was the new peppy zippy hatchback launched by Tata Motors named as Tata Zica. From that moment on, I was keen to get hold of this car and enjoy a fantastico driving experience.

I asked an executive there about the features of this zippy car. Seeing my interest he started to explain me in details starting with the distinctive attributes of the car. He described the technical specifications of the car and also what makes it stand out. The look and feel of this car makes it very different from the regular TATA cars.There were many new and exciting aspects which look very promising to me. With TATA, we can always expect trust and new innovation in their products. As the design of the car plays a key role in the decisions relating to purchase, this model launches what is called the IMPACT design introduced by Tata Motors. Keeping in mind the new requirements of the new generation and their youthful, energetic needs, Tata Zica is sure to have a lasting impact on the customers.

The second new aspect that I liked is the new Turn-by-Turn Navigation app. For someone like me having a bad direction sense or trouble remembering routes, this app would work like a charm. Like any other regular map, this app syncs your phone with the car's screen and when connected via Bluetooth helps with navigation. However what when you run out of battery or in bad network areas. But the difference between this and others is that this app comes to the rescue in those times with the offline download feature which helps with navigation during network issues. Each time you approach a turn, it provides an indication along with the distance for taking the turn and time to reach the destination.

The third best feature I liked is the entertainment in the car. Tata Zica exhibits awesome music system from HARMAN having 4 speakers and 4 tweeters. This is designed to give a fantastico music experience for all music lovers. Another interesting feature I happened to notice was the Juke Car app which makes effective use of.mobile hotspot and creates a virtual network. This will then help to serve as jukebox and as a main service sharing the list of available songs. For someone who frequently goes on road trips, this is simply a boon as it helps to keep playing peppy new songs and not get bored out of hearing from same playlist.

All in all, I can say that Tata Zica is the right combination of energetic car for the new generation and the youthful customers are going to have a fantastico experience with its impact design, peppy music, incredible navigation features.

#TataZicaMarathon
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

~ Way around ~

2015-10-14T12:04:00.000+05:30

How much ever we intrude their space, Nature seems to have a way around everything! :)

Airtel 4G - to cruise the information highway!

2015-08-21T14:39:00.000+05:30

Really gone are those days when people used a slow dial-up network via their landline phones to access the Internet. I still remember how it used to take forever to download a mere 2MB song during those times! Text chatting was the only option for voice chatting had worse latency period compared to STD line of those times. In fact, just half a decade ago I used to download all my favorite songs to my hard disk to listen continuously, as streaming was never a good option. Watching videos over the internet meant watching the annoying progress bar rotate more compared to the actual video, and that, required a lot of patience!

Today the world is moving in a hyper-fast information highway. No one has time or patience for anything that is slow! Also, the number of devices that connect to the Internet has increased manifold in a short period of time. The amount of information on the Internet is growing rapidly and there is a growing need for more speed to access such volume of information on the move.

Airtel as a telecom service provider has been a front-runner in this domain and has been providing great Internet connectivity over years. In the times when 2G network is no more 'satisfying' and 3G has been providing great connectivity and groundbreaking improvements in the way we connect and share information, Airtel has gone ahead of the lot to launch 4G services in the country! With the Internet speeds that are 10 times faster than 3G, now the world can access information at up to 12 Mbps speed while on the go!! This is unbelievable at a time when people are still using much slower Internet speeds via the broadband connection.

Access to such high-speed Internet will open up a lot of new avenues for accessing information on the go! As a traveler, I can do a lot of research on the places I travel right from my mobile! With pages loading instantly, I will have access to the data instantly. Accessing maps for direction will be faster and precise. No more carrying bulky books and tourist guides for this purpose. I don't have to think twice before uploading a bulk of my travel photographs to the cloud, worrying how much time it would take. With incredible speeds offered by 4G, it should complete ridiculously in no time. I will not download a song anymore to my hard disk for I can stream very high-quality songs without streaming woes. No more downloading a video or movie and painfully transferring that to a mobile for watching later during the commute. I can watch my favorite TV shows or movie as I like, at any time I want! I can stream the ones I want directly from the Internet in nothing less than HD quality and enjoy my commute happily! With more and more cloud-based services in operation today, I don't have to invest in more hard disk capacity. Rather I will put all my stuff on the cloud and access them anytime anywhere, as speed is not a concern anymore!

Thanks to such incredible speed that 4G offers, the world will now comfortably move towards accessing information anywhere anytime, instead of waiting in front of a loading page!

With Airtel offering the 4G data at the cost of 3G, there is absolutely no point thinking when to make the switch. After all nobody wants to lag behind when the world is moving ahead in the jet speed! I already got my invite to go the 4G way, did you? :)

Honey diet, healthy diet!

2015-07-10T14:13:00.001+05:30

Health is wealth. We all have heard it right from our school days. That is right! A healthy body is 80% healthy food and 20% workout. Since the major portion of a healthy body is to do with having a healthy food, it is essential that we follow a proper meal plan.

Eating healthy food helps to keep out so many health problems. A well-balanced diet includes a meal for filling our body's nutritional needs like a variety of natural fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. There are also many benefits to having honey in the meal. Having a honey diet in our food can be a baby step towards a healthy body!

Consumption of regular healthy food in our diet has a lot of benefits like:

It helps to stay healthy and fit - Eating good food along with regular exercise can help us avoid weight gain and leave us being fit and healthy.
Makes us more energetic - When you eliminate processed and sugary foods from our diet and replace it with healthy food, we automatically tend to feel less lethargic and have more energy, confidence and enthusiasm to tackle our day!
Boosts our metabolism - A combination of the healthy balanced meal along with the commitment to including physical activity in our lifestyle leads to improved digestion and our metabolism is certainly boosted.
Best of all it helps to control unnecessary weight gain and keeps us away from many health complications!

Today's fast paced world makes us lead sedentary lifestyles. We are attracted towards anything that is fast and we are tempted towards fast results. We choose the fast food than cooking our own meal. We easily tend to skip meals due to work pressure and tend to hog on available food. During the month of summer, we love to have chilled soda than water! All these fast food are filled with processed sugars which can easily make us unhealthy. Constantly consuming these foods will lead to weight gain and unnecessary health issues. People then immediately look for crash diet for quick ways to lose the excessive weight. We all love finding shortcuts to success and are very much attracted towards these. But what we fail to realize is that these diets come along with so many disadvantages and health issues associated. Prolonged consumption of these diets is very dangerous for life. Some of the disadvantages of crash diet are:

Deprives us of important nutrition
These diets keep us restricted and we tend to crave for food all the time
They offer fast results which are only temporary!
It slows down our metabolism.
It increases our stress levels
Leave us with constant mood swings

Additionally there is much research proving to stay away from crash dieting and choose the healthy way for losing weight. 95% of people who start a crash diet end up gaining the weight back that they lost within two years. Instead of starting a diet or trying to starve oneself or thinking it's a temporary thing, we need to create healthy habits and make healthy eating a lifestyle change. So although it will take time and be hard, having a balanced diet is more beneficial than the compromises of having a crash diet!

Traditionally honey had been part of the meal in the olden days but these days we seem to be missing the point and fail to see its benefits big time! There are many honey based daily food that we can include in our meal for a healthy life. For more details, please check here - http://www.daburhoney.com/

Shake it for deals!

2015-05-15T13:28:00.002+05:30

Being an Airtel postpaid and broadband customer for a long time now, I am absolutely excited about the new avatar of "My Airtel" App that is released now. In the era of mobile phones, it makes a lot of sense for having a good App that simplifies the tasks we do regularly. Since I have been using this App for some time, here are some key features that I benefit from this App in my day to day life!

Prior to having this App, few things needed specific workarounds. First of all handling payment due date reminders. I hate to miss payment deadlines and pay my dues with fines. So I have specifically set up monthly reminders in my Google Calendar to remind me of my landline and mobile bill payments. On the specific due date, I would promptly receive an email and SMS alert reminding me of my payment deadline. Now I don't need such workarounds anymore! "My Airtel" App does the job for me. With its push notifications, it promptly reminds me of my payment schedules, allowing me to pay my dues properly on time. No more missing schedules or paying fines! Such a handy little thing!

Paying mobile bills used to be such a key thing in my pre-travel checklist, especially when I know, I will not have access to a computer to clear my dues. After downloading this App, I don't have that tension anymore! With PCI-DSS certified gateway, this App guarantees safe, secure and faster mode of handling bill payments directly from the App instead of having to find a computer to access Airtel website and initiate the payments. In fact accessing the App is totally free of charge compared to accessing the web-based payment site that still accounts towards the data usage! Additionally with the new "I want to" feature, I have my frequently used features personalized and have it quickly available to me anytime I want to access them. Really serves the purpose of using an App and saves a lot of time in doing repetitive things!

Another cool feature I quite use is the real time bill tracking. Being a postpaid user, having a check on the bill is absolutely necessary. Earlier I had to go to the website every time to check my bills. Things are absolutely easy now with all my bill related information, past payment history, and data usage information accessible right from my pocket. These are the things I check the most and go to the website for. Now with information being accessible right from the mobile, it saves a lot of back and forth trips to the web site!

The new App also seems to offer a host of exciting deals specifically to the App users from time to time, by simply shaking the phone with the App window. This is definitely encouraging and a good reason for anybody to continue using the App! Though there are lot of deals presently for customers using prepaid network services, I hope things will extend for postpaid customers too in the future!!

So when things are made to make our life simple, why not? Did you download the App yet? :)

What the buzz?

2015-05-07T14:48:00.001+05:30

The legendary Indian Cricketer Kapil Dev made a lot of news around Indian Cricket League but after his resigning from ICL in 2012, he kept it really low and there was absolutely no news from him. But as they say one cannot hide the sun with the palm, the star is back with a bang!! He recently joined the micro-blogging site Twitter and from then on he is making huge waves among people with a coded announcement about a new league which he terms '#EkNayiLeague'! The topic has been trending on Twitter of late with everyone trying to make guesses about what this league could be!! Of course, coming directly from the champ, curiosity among people is very much expected! Interestingly enough, there is also a website that has been launched for this campaign and is offering a prize money of one lakh for those guessing about it correctly! Now that's a lot of money and a lot of buzzing!!

From the videos posted on the website, Kapil seems to point out very clearly that it is not something to be played with the heart but with one's mind! It clearly indicates this is something to do with the intellect of the person and not playing blindly based on passion alone. Generally in any sport, one has to play with a lot of passion for winning it. But the way he clearly indicates to top people like Dhoni, Sania and Kapil, he clearly intends it takes a lot beyond passion but talent using one's mind to emerge as a winner in this league! Thinking of options, one such could be playing with money perhaps? Where people don't just go by their blind instincts or passion but really use their mind and invest a lot of time to understand things before investing. That way I think this league could be something to do with stock trading or playing with cash tools or investments!

It would be interesting if it is anything to do with trading like I guessed because this would be the first time there is a public call for playing with financial instruments. Not many are into stock trading or risk investments. Even people who earn a lot just resort to saving their money silently instead of getting into trading for its associated risks. But I am sure people would be interested if tricks of the trade are taught to people before getting on the ground to play.

And again since Kapil has involved victorious people from different platforms in his videos, it gives a sort of clue that this game is not involving a specific group of people but is going to be diversified with people from different platforms competing against each other using their knowledge in the field! Whatever be the case whether it is going to be a real-time financial quiz or playing with the real money to win more, it is definitely interesting and one of a kind to throw positive light on the trading market. After all, it is who risks more always wins more! What do you think about all this? :)

~ Into the Wild ~

2015-03-27T12:14:00.001+05:30

Sometimes all you need is a relaxing walk into the wild ...

Nature trail at MacRitchie Reservoir Park, Singapore.

Click to view this photograph Large on Black canvas!

It's always food o'clock in Singapore!

2015-03-25T23:55:00.000+05:30

Going from a country where we home cook fresh food three times a day, seven days a week, cook, cook and cook all 365 days in a year, it came as a big surprise when I landed in the island country and heard people don't cook food at home!! Even more surprising was the fact that people prefer to eat food outside all three times a day, throughout the year! Initially, I assumed it could be because of the cheap food available outside that they don't bother to cook food at home. But later realized this has to do with the cultural origin of the country. The country started with the immigrants who were not rich enough to own a set-up to cook food at home. So they preferred eating outside in the mini-stall setups called hawker centers. This socio-culture is followed by Singaporeans even to this date that hawker centers and food are a part and parcel of their daily life! Variety of cuisines and low-cost food are only a result of this cool food culture!

Singapore is a perfect "Rojak"! Different ethnic communities call it their land and live harmoniously celebrating each other cultures! This has given birth to a mix of a different kinds of food that one can savor in the country. With the mix of four different ethnic communities - Chinese, Malay, Indian and Peranakan, there are more than a dozen national food that is available on an any given day for anyone to taste! There are different areas for each of these communities where one can deep dive into the respective cuisine and enjoy guaranteed authentic food. But for a traveler with constraints, any restaurant would happily serve all these cuisines under one roof. Singaporeans love to cook food and more so they take pride and love to serve their food with equal zeal!

Even after visiting Singapore twice and trying all possible cuisines that are available, I still crave for their awesome "Hokkien Mee"!

It first happened to me coincidentally when I was at China town one evening. I was very hungry and I landed at a random food stall that was along the street. All I knew at that time was "Noodles". I ordered "Plain Noodles" but the person who took my order patiently explained about this fried noodles called "Hokkien Mee". I got curious and ordered it without any expectations. But it really turned out to be one of the best noodles I have ever tasted in my entire life! The fried noodles with all the sauce, seasoning, vegetables etc was cooked to perfection. Having tasted only Indian preparation of Noodles before, it tasted very authentic Chinese preparation and I totally fell in love with it! I made sure to taste this preparation at various places during my second visit as well :)

That's not the end of it! I also love the Malaysian preparation called Nasi Lemak, a flavorful preparation of coconut steamed rice. I love Malay cuisine for their wonderful use of spices and herbs in all their preparation. It comes very close to the Indian cuisine as well! It will be unfair if I don't mention my love for the toast! During my recent trip, I made sure to have toast with kaya or peanut jam every day for my breakfast! And my day would compulsory start and end with a strong dose of Kopi ;)

Singapore has so much variety of food, all thanks to their different ethnic people! When such variety of Asian food is available under one roof, who wouldn't look for a good opportunity to Binge! :)

~ Mountain Dreams ~

2015-03-25T11:11:00.001+05:30

When they call, one cannot stop dreaming about them! :)

This is a file picture from my last Himalayan trek in Uttarakhand, India. It was the last snow stretch before we descended down back to the civilization!

View this photograph Large on Black canvas.

When premium is affordable!

2015-03-24T23:51:00.000+05:30

Looking back at my transition from purchasing my first highly-priced mobile phone to using a smartphone now, I am dazzled how the mobile phones have evolved drastically over a relatively quick span of a decade!

I still remember how excited I was when I went to buy my first mobile phone, with my very first pay cheque! Those days mobile phones were a priced possession and not everyone was lucky enough to hold one in their hands. A basic one with a colour screen and polyphonic ringtone support costed me a good ten thousand rupees! I still remember how having a mobile phone that sings a polyphonic ringtone was a zing thing those days! It stayed with me for quite long before someone decided to make it their's, costing my negligence a good 10K!

Two eyes, One world, Added lens

Datsun redi-GO - The sleek and peppy urban-cross

One Zippy Car !

~ Way around ~

Airtel 4G - to cruise the information highway!

Honey diet, healthy diet!

Shake it for deals!

What the buzz?

~ Into the Wild ~

It's always food o'clock in Singapore!

~ Mountain Dreams ~

When premium is affordable!

Kellogg's Waale Nashta!

What makes me happy!

Together in every adventure!

Leave the mundane behind ...

~ Vasudevs of Pandharpur ~

Dry baby, happy baby!

~ Happy Holi ~

That Magical Moment!

~ Loi Krathong ~

Apno Ko Apne Dum Pe Jeena Sikhao

Upgrading Car with Quikr NXT!

~ Kecak Dance ~

~ A Little Piece of Heaven ~

Bedtime Rituals