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Actual Petrol prices in India

Petrol Price at Vijayawada City of Andhra Pradesh (more in Mumbai) As on 25.06.2010.

 

Basic Price Rs 23.00
Central Excise Duty Rs 14.35 (Central Govt Tax fixed in Budget )
Education cess Rs 00.43 ( Central Govt Tax- 3% on Rs 14.35)
Crude oil Customs Duty Rs 01.15 ( Central Govt Tax- 5% on Basic Price)
Custums Duty on Petrol Rs 01.73 ( Central Govt Tax- 7.5% on Basic Price)
VAT Rs 07.59 ( A.P State Govt Tax- 33% on Basic Price)
Dealer Commission Rs 01.05
Trasportation Charges Rs 07.03
Total...............................Rs 56.33

 

 

Here what we have to observe is that the Cetral Government is collecting Rs 17.66 ( 76.78% on Basic Price) on 1 ltr petrole, Andhra Pradesh State Government is collecting Rs 7.59 ( 33% on Basic Price) total Rs 25.25 ( 109.78% on Basic Price). Actual Cost is Rs 23.00, Taxes are Rs 25.25. Because of these huge taxes Petrole prices are hiking.

 

 

Interesting:

In Real terms Government is not giving subsidy to the people on petroleum products. The Central Government collected in the form of Taxes of Rs 58,789Crs in 2002-2003, Rs 96,486 Crs in 2007-2008 ,Rs 84,298 Crs in 2008-2009 Rs 90,000 Crs In 2009-10 and Rs 1,20,000 Crs in 2010-2011( Budget Estimates)on petroleum products only. But the Government allotted to the petroleum Sector including subsidies Rs 57,535 Crs in 2008-2009, Rs 58,120 Crs in 2009-10, and Rs 69,495 Crs in 2010-2011.

 

EKM

·         Woodlands is good. That is close to Bimbis and on MG Road. 0484-2382051.

·         We stayed @ the Grand Residency. It is an average hotel. Rooms are ok. Families stay there. People may not find it posh enough though. 1000 for a/c room - 2 bed. 700 - non a/c - 2 bed. Manager - Martin; ph - 0484-2396995;2398081;2398182;4050973. This is near Ernakulam North.

·         Cabs can be arranged close by. There are 2 arrangements for local sightseeing - per hour 120 or 900 for the day as long there is a limitation in the kms. (60 I think). If that is crossed then for an indica - 9 rs per km

 

 

Mt Abu

Details of the Mt Abu Trip

 

·         Accomodation booked in Hotel Chanakya. Check-in 12pm - check out - 10am.

·         Paid 4500 for 3 days and 2 nights for A/C deluxe room.

·         Taxi - 500 + 1000 + 500 - pickup+roaming+drop. It is however advised to pick up local cars there as it is cheaper

·         Chanakya was an ok hotel. Sheet were changed and maintained well. It is worth staying if you have the help of Shyam Rathore (manager) or Sanjay (though he can't take any decisions).

·         Shyam Rathore - 9462127997; 9950006292; 02974-238154;235438

·         The food is quite pathetic apparently at the hotel. The guy who manages the food seems to be some sort of a cheat.

 

 

Indian Army's Mission Olympics

This is an article about Army having a "Mission Olympics" plan.

 

This is perhaps the only way that India will ever fair well @ the olympics

 

http://sports.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/oct/19/slide-show-1-indian-armys-mission-olympics-harish-kotian.htm

 

 

Amazing story of redbus

I liked this article.

 

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/oct/19/slide-show-1-the-amazing-success-story-of-redbus.htm

 

This is about an online bus ticket booking portal.

 

Mt Abu planning

Some good websites:

http://www.hotelchanakya.com/reservation.php

http://www.abusms.com/sms/Hotels/index.htm

http://www.mountabuhotels.in/

 

 

Details of hotels:

 

Hotel
Hotel Lake Palace	Not good place
Grandiose	Nopes. George Thomas - Mallu is the booking chap.
Udaigarh	Not getting through. Called so many times.
Kesar Bhavan	C.P Sharma - 97995 52358; 2950 - room; 3450 - bf; 4050 - +lunch;4650 + dinner 10% discount 3 days 1000 - pick up; 1500 - pick up and drop
Kishangarh	Kamal-02974238092 3000 - inclusive of taxes - 3 days 800 for pick-up
Chacha inn	02974235374 - 2700 - room - 4 days 15% discount 500 pick up
Chanakya	Shyam Rathore; 9462127997;9950006292 02974238154 1200 standard room; 1500 deluxe luxury 500 pick up ; package for 2000 3 days 1000AM checkin vegetarian food there
Mt Regency	02974238919 2550 - 3.5 days Pick up - 400
Savera	4 days @ 1900 - 02974235354; 10:00

 

Quotes by Intellectuals

1. UNIX is simple. But It just needs a genius to understand its simplicity.

- Dennis Ritchie

2. Before software can be reusable, it first has to be usable.

—Ralph Johnson

3. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

-Fred Brooks

4. It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it;

It's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.

-Steve McConnell

5. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are sure,

and the intelligent are full of doubt.

-Bertrand Russell

6. (This is the best 1.....)

If debugging is the process of removing bugs,

Then programming must be the process of putting them in..

-Edsger Dijkstra

7. You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic;

You cannot have both at the same time.

–Bertrand Meyer

8. There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third works.

-Alan J. Perlis

9. Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring

aircraft building progress by weight.

-Bill Gates

10. The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 10% of the development time.

The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

-Tom Cargill

11. Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs.

The Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots.

So far the Universe is winning.

-Anonymous

12. Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.

Practice is when something works, but you don't know why it works.

Programmers combine Theory and Practice:

Nothing works and they don't know why.

13. The Six Phases of a Project:

· Enthusiasm

· Disillusionment

· Panic

· Search for the Guilty

· Punishment of the Innocent

· Praise for non-participants

one more nice article

 

Do check up the latest post on this bog when you have the time (it is titled “Intent to Win”)-  http://saffronistah.posterous.com/  - like it!

 

Nice article

And this too..

http://www.livemint.com/articles/2010/08/17212401/Do-what-governments-do-use-in.html

Furniture ideas

Compilation of ideas on furniture..

 

Look at the sixth photo of the room with a sofa, chairs and swing…

 

http://rangdecor.blogspot.com/2007/09/please-take-seat.html

 

This is the kind of décor I had in mind when I said let us have 2 chairs or 2 bean bags in stead of a sofa…

 

The perfect pitch

The perfect pitch (Pitch yourself by Bill Faust)

 

Words alone won’t always suffice. How you deliver the essentials also helps create a demand for you.

Close to a decade after he co-authored the international best-seller Pitch Yourself, Bill Faust believes that the rules of the game have changed very little. The bottom line, he says, remains the same: You are the product and you are just as good as your ability to stand out in a talent pool. Faust was in India last week for the first time to deliver a series of lectures organized by Stellar Search, an executive search firm. Edited excerpts from an interview:

You coined the concept Elevator Pitch almost a decade ago. Do you feel things have changed since then?

I would say that the basics behind the concept haven’t changed at all. The only difference is in the delivery and the media today. These are changing all the time. Take television, for instance. It didn’t kill cinema. When we look at communication, we look at delivering the message and newer ways to reach the customer and negotiate. We need to make people understand what differentiates me from you and you from everybody else. You must make people understand what the differentiating factor really is. It doesn’t matter what we are going to say, but fundamentally, you need to think about two things: “Have they bought me?” and “Have I created that buyer?” A majority of people don’t think about their style and just concentrate on the product and service. This is where it is essential you understand the value of 30 seconds.

How do you market yourself without sounding pompous?

The answer is far simpler and mundane than you might think. This goes back to what is marketing. Fundamentally, marketing is understanding the needs and motivation of a buyer. You’ll be in a scenario where you only give the buyer the information they require. But you need to remember that you are helping the buyer. Marketing is all about creating a demand of all sorts. In order to do that, you have to create, build and maintain relationships.

What is the Career DNA Bank strategy?

It refers to the library of your transferable assets, substantiated by a list of examples that prove each transferable asset. First of all, you have to understand what you have to offer and what makes you different from others. For Pitch Yourself, we developed the Career DNA Bank. This strategy helps to identify and evidence what you are employed for and helps for the rest of your life. Pick 10-15 examples from your career where you were successful. You don’t have to remember them all, just a few key words will remind you of these since they are already in your cognition. It is basically coming up with your best ability, which is demonstrated by a story. You need to concentrate on the analysis that you’re thinking of. You have to look at things from the buyer’s perspective and not yours. When you’re creating a Career DNA Bank, you pick your most relevant abilities and the more you put in, the more you get out.

Is your CV your only chance of finding a job?

In terms (of) the entire recruitment process, it’s a strategy. No, it is not your last chance. It can be seen as your first chance. It’s all about understanding yourself first and what differentiates you from the other person.

Do you see any difference in perception between employers in India and those in the West?

I don’t. On the marketing side of it, we are talking of different cultures. In India, people are more than happy to talk about themselves. We in the West are slightly more conservative in the way we project ourselves. It doesn’t really matter how excited, conservative one is, as long as you hit the right points. Once these are done, it shows that the product is really you. Grabbing is about managing expectations and speaking the buyer’s language.

Electricity through sand

WASHINGTON: An India-born rocket scientist has lifted the veil off Bloom Box fuel-cell, a revolutionary new technology that holds the promise to supply the world with abundant clean, cheap energy.

"The core of our technology is simply sand," said K.R. Sridhar, 49, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy at Wednesday's unveiling of his invention in San Jose, California on the campus of eBay, one of Bloom's first customers.

The sand is the raw material used to make wafers that can make electricity. Sridhar has persuaded some big names that by making them out of sand he can make fuel cells that are efficient and inexpensive.

Whereas other fuel cells contain polymers and platinum that make them prohibitively expensive, Sridhar said Bloom's consist of specially coated ceramic squares made from a common sand-like substance. Bloom's fuel cell works like this: Oxygen is pumped in on one side and natural gas on the other. The two combine inside the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. No burning, no combustion, no power lines from outside, as CBS puts it.

"The proof of the pudding is the reaction from the business people," said former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who joined Bloom's board last year, said at Wednesday's event that also included an appearance by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Will it work for 10 or 20 years without something going wrong? We'll find out," he added. Bloom Energy says the best proof that its fuel cells work is in the ones already working like those at eBay's headquarters.

Half-dozen big companies have already bought Bloom Boxes at a cost of $700,000 to $800,000. But Sridhar's goal is a $3,000 box that anybody can use to power their home though he says home use is 10 years away. "Don't start signing up for orders yet," said Sridhar. "This is a product of the future." "We believe that we can have the same kind of impact on energy that the mobile phone had on communications. Just as cell phones circumvented landlines to proliferate telephony, Bloom Energy will enable the adoption of distributed power as a smarter, localised energy source," Sridhar said.

It will allow customers, he said, to "lower their energy costs, reduce their carbon footprint, improve their energy security".  "What people need to understand is we are not building a company, we are building an industry," said Sridhar.

 

Regards,

Ajay

Ajay Krishnan | Consultant | IT Governance & Process Consulting| 022-6718-8782

Oracle Financial Services.Software Ltd.

Mumbai, India

 

Bihar Girl Makes it to the UN Calendar

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bihar-girl-makes-it-to-UN-calendar/articleshow/5434847.cms

 

Inspirational story of a girl triumphing over circumstances

 

Her orthodox father wouldn’t let her go out of home — even to school. She defied him, joined an education-cum-vocational centre in her

village and her impressed teachers prevailed upon her father to let her go out of village to complete another course. Today, a history honours student, Asma Parween is also a karate trainer whose success story will feature on this year’s United Nations Population Fund calendar.

A native of an obscure village, Sakri Saraiya in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, this 19-year-old blue belt holder has travelled to different parts of Bihar to train girls at camps organized by the government. She is also a member of Muzaffarpur’s district resource group which mobilizes children at block levels for admission to Navodaya Vidyalayas.

Her achievements have led to a perceptible change in her family’s outlook. “We’re proud of her,” her elder brother Shakeel Ahmed said. In between these engagements which “besides giving satisfaction to me, also fetches money for my family”, Asma continued to take karate lessons and is now set to get brown belt.

Asma’s journey to success began in mid-1990s when an NGO, Mahila Samakhya Kendra, set up the educational-cum-vocational centre for illiterate girls in her village. “Don’t dare go out of home,” her father Mohammad Yusuf, a petty utensil seller, fumed when Asma sought permission to join the centre. The gritty girl, however, stealthily completed the two-year course.