Loved the dance steps. I wish I could do them too.

I am getting married tomorrow and I am posting all the updated of my marriage on my wedding website - www.shellyravi.com

There has been talk these days about the bad behaviour of citizens in Delhi. Recently our Home Minister P. Chindambran and Chief Minister of Shiela Dikshit has appealed to all the people in the city to improve their behaviour. I am happy that both of them have raised
this concern about the "bad attitude" of Delhiites. I think we really to improve the rude behaviour of people to make it truly a world class city and Common Wealth Games could just be an excuse to start working towards this "Attitude Makeover".

I decided that I will do my part by contributing in whatever way I can to raise awareness and I will be posting series of blog posts with the tag "Attitude Makeover".

To start with I will start with a very common problem in our city that we all face on a daily basis and it seems that we have started living with it, and that is "Nuisance of Auto drivers". We all know that most of the Auto drivers harass people. Their meter don't work, they over charge, refuse to go and misbehave with the passengers. Yesterday I was watching one talk show on NDTV channel where Kiran Bedi mentioned that anyone can lodge a complaint against the Auto Drivers. We all know that there are laws but we are either not aware of them or don't want to take the pain to get into the procedures.

If we just crib and do nothing about it then things will never improve. If we start bring the change now then may be in 5 years or 10 years things will get better! I searched on the internet and found Delhi Traffic Police website and I came to know that lodging a complaint against Taxi and Auto drivers is as easy as sending an SMS. Yes, as simple as that.

Lets see how to send that SMS. There are four different kind of complaints that you can lodge. Here are them.

1. Refusal

REF [SPACE] VEHICAL NO. [SPACE] LOCATION [SPACE] TIME OF REFUSAL

Example: REF DL1RF1234 DHAULAKUAN TO GO TO RK PURAM 3:30PM

2. Overcharging

OVC [SPACE] VEHICAL NO. [SPACE] LOCATION [SPACE] TIME OF OVERCHARGING

Example: OVC DL1RF1234 DHAULAKUAN TO GO TO RK PURAM 3:30PM

3. Misbehaviour

MIS [SPACE] VEHICAL NO. [SPACE] LOCATION [SPACE] TIME OF MISBEHAVIOUR

Example: MIS DL1RF1234 DHAULAKUAN 3:30PM

4. Harassment

HAR [SPACE] VEHICAL NO. [SPACE] LOCATION [SPACE] TIME OF HARASSMENT

Example: HAR DL1RF1234 DHAULAKUAN 3:30PM

Send SMS to 56767

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I just bought a bicycle and now I have big plans to take it to many places. I don't have a car or motorcycle so my cycle is gonna be my vehicle. I want to use it for both exercise and traveling but after riding it yesterday I realized that it is a little dangerous to ride a cycle on Delhi roads which are ruled by blue line buses and always-in-hurry people. I was wondering why can't we have dedicated bicycle tracks on all major roads in Delhi. If you have ever traveled on BRT from ITO to Khan pur you we see that there is a separate track for cyclist. Not only it is safe for them, also they can't disrupt the fast traffic.

I think at least major roads like Ring Road, Outer Ring Road, NH8 should have cycle tracks. It is too dangerous to ride cycle on these roads along with the traffic. My office is 35KMs from my home and I would love to commute by cycle. I would be awesome to travel 70KMs daily on a cycle. Not only health wise but also it is good for environment.

I am a member of Delhi cycling group and I must say that by seeing so many people taking part in cycling events I got inspired to buy my own cycle. A normal healthy person can easily ride 20KMs daily but still everyone use their cars. If someone wants to travel to a far location then may be they can travel half the distance on a cycle and remaining on public transport like Metro or Buses. Besides cycle tracks, government should also focus on building parking facilities for cycles.

Daily I see trillions of cars on Delhi-Gurgaon highway, it seems that everyone on earth has a car except me :) I feel there should be a law that should punish all those people who are traveling alone in the car :p Each car should have at least 2 people, else give them a challan for causing traffic on roads. I feel this is just my wild imagination, this can't happen in India. We people are too used to luxuries and comfort of life, moreover people will never trust strangers to give to lift or car pool.

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Yesterday I bought Hero Hawk Nu-Age Racing cycle. I rode it today for about an hour in the morning. Here are my reviews of the bike and my experience.

1. The cycle is smooth. In comparison with MTBs this bike is much smooth and easy on legs. I don't have to stress much for moving ahead school kids and Rikshaw walas. I didn't ride it fast, just average speed.

2. Starting & Stopping the bike is difficult. I am 5' 10" and my feet were not reaching the ground while sitting on the saddle. So for starting I first put one foot on the paddle and while pushing it I sat on the saddle once the bike is in motion. For stopping I did the reverse. Though I can do it comfortably on empty road but I am still not comfortable to do this on busy roads with traffic. In Delhi you have to stop many times on the road and it might be tough for me. In MTB/ATB types my feets reach the ground and it is comfortable to start/stop. I need more practice for this.

3. Balancing is ok. This is the first time I rode a racing cycle with drop bars. I was able to balance is but I felt I was not able to keep it straight all the time. There were 3-4 incidents were I had to apply brakes to avoid crashing into someone. I think it will take some time, may be in weeks time I will be fine.

4. Looks are good. I am happy with the looks of the bike. Mine is a Black & Silver colored bike. I am planning to remove mudguards and carrier from the bike. It will look cool.

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Today I bought my first ever cycle. I have never had a cycle before. When I was kid I really wanted to have a bike but for some reason I never got it but today I bought it. Finally! It's a Hero Hawk Nu-Age and it got it for Rs 2750 along with the ring and lock. Its a racing type bike, black and Silver in color. I rode it for about 1 Kms and liked it a lot. The ride was smooth and the bike is quite fast as compared to ATB/MTB types.

I will now do more cycling and will share my reviews about the new bike! I am thinking of removing the mud guards and carrier for making it slightly light and it makes the bike look cool. The pump that comes with the bike is useless, you can just blow air in the baloons not tires.

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Picture clicked from the balcony of my home.

I saw Solar Eclipse today in the morning. Last time I saw it in the year 1995. I remember at that time the streets were empty and people were not out, but this time there were less people outside. In the park I didn't see many people. I guess they still scared of the eclipse.

No I am not smoking

Monsoon Cloud

Monsoon Cloud

These pictures of strange clouds where taken last week. These clouds were too big and the cloud in the second picture reminds me of the movie the Independence Day where a giant Alien's space sheep covered the whole city.

I wish I had an SLR camera for taking better pictures, but never mind one day I will it for sure.

Two weeks backs I installed Fedora 11 on my Compaq Laptop. I last installed Fedora 8 in May last year when I bought my laptop and ever since I was using it. In the past one year F9 and F10 also came but I was too lazy to install them. Anyways I finally managed to installed F11 and I m glad I did.

Good things
1. My Wifi card was detected automatically. In F8 I had to install madwifi to use wifi on my laptop
2. It boots in seconds!! believe me you will get the login screen in just 20 sec
3. It looks good. I am a KDE fan and I am happy to see major change in KDE after a long time.
4. Laptop keys for sound control works in KDE
5. Package Manager works well.

Bad things
1. Laptop Keys for brightness control does not work in KDE, it works on GNOME though. I am still finding a way to enable those keys. I found an alternative to directly reduce the LCD brightness. Just issue this command as root

2. There is no progress bar in the package Manager.

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Today we went to Indi joe for lunch. Rishi and Sudharshan took me and all the interns who worked on the PMTool. It was their last day in office today, their internship ended today. It was a nice outing. We all left the office at around 1 PM and reached Indi joe in 10 mins. It was a nice restaurant, though the music was a bit loud and we were not able to listen to others properly but the food was good. I had lots of butter chicken and biryani.

I don't experiment much with food when I see chicken :)

I am not feeling very nice today, I have been working with the 6 interns for the past 6 months and it was really a nice experience working with all of them. It is tough to see them go. I know that we may never see each other again, that's how life goes.

After college I have met many people in my professional career and it is true that you do get attached with the people you work. You may not like them or you may not like the way they work but still you start missing them when they are no longer working with you. I don't know why it happens but I guess it is human nature.

You can't hold on to everything in life, you have to let go things.

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Last week I took part in a running event organized by runningandliving.com

Here are some pics

Monsoon has finally arrived in Delhi on 30th June. It rained well yesterday and now Delhi people can get some relief. I hope rains will also reduce the electricity problem in the city.

BTW I am blogging after so many days, I think almost after a month. I don't know. Last time I decided that I will at least write one blog daily, but I failed to keep my promise. This time I will not again any more promises. I will blog whenever I feel like.

I am feeling really very sleepy right now.

Lot of exciting things are happening in my life right now, I will share all those thing in few days.

Bye for now

In my earlier post Now and then I wrote about my first school. I went there after more than 20 years, met old teachers. Saw my old classrooms where I used to sit. A lot of changed there, along with the usual charts on the walls of the classrooms the LCD screen also share some space with the blackboard. Everything seemed to be upgraded there. Kids studying there get introduced to the technology much earlier.

Today I will write about on incident that happened with me long long time back in the Junior Wing building of our school. In fact it happened on the second day of my school life.

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I still remember I was in third standard when one day I forgot to carry my lunch to school but I was not worried. I never liked eating "tinda", "ghiya" and other such green vegetables that my mummy used to give me everyday for lunch. I was actually happy that day because I escaped the torture of eating my lunch. Mummy used to get angry if I carried the unfinished meal back home and it was against my morals to throw away food. So I had no option but to eat whatever I got. My favorite dish back then was chholey. I don't like it much these days but I loved eating it when I was small.

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The first and probably the last time I scored full marks in exams was 18 years back when I was in fifth standard.

It was 1991 and our teacher announced the result of the 1st terminal Maths exam. "Ravi Sagar! 25", at first I thought she is saying the total marks but when she gave me my paper I realized that I scored full marks!! I can never forget that moment in my life. I was sitting in the middle row on back benches everyone in the classroom was looking at me in an astonishment. I must admit that It feels great when you are in the focus.

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I took part in the Cycle ride organized by Delhi Cycling Club on Sunday (7th June). I rode it for a total of 24 KMs from Pragati Maidan to Ambedkar Nagar and back. It was just amazing.

The weekend was too good because of this activity. I am now planning to buy a bike for myself. I will go to Chandi Chowk to buy a bike.

Today I made a confession to update my blog daily. Well it is nothing difficult, I am not much of a writer and I don't need to write anything great. I can just summarize the days work and whatever comes to my mind. So today was just an usual day in office with nothing great, same work, same excel sheets, same people and same stupid meetings.

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I am writing after so many days. It's been more than 15 days when I last posted a blog. Let me think of all the things that has happened in these days.

I am working on the business plan and refining it. This is the first time I am actually writing a plan, in fact I don't know what all should I write in it. I am just writing about all the aspects of running a company. Defining all the processes, Marketing, Advertising, Financial aspects and 6 months road map.

Writing a business plan is a good experience. It helps me think of lot of things that I could have missed. I would suggest everyone who wants to start a company to write a business plan. Share it with other who can give you their feedback and can help you achieve your goals.

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Back to the Primitive

Pic was taken in Kufri

It was beginning of August in 2007 when I reached my office. I used to reach office at around 11:30 or 12:00, yeah odd timings but that's what our timings was in Kaplan. We were in the Product Support team and had to stay till 8:00 PM in the office. We daily used to have tea together in the morning, actually afternoon. We were discussing the usual stupid guy things and suddenly an idea came to my mind that lets plan a trip to Shimla. All agreed but they wanted to late in August. I insisted that we should go this weekend. To avoid any change in plans we just booked 6 train tickets within few minutes. Thanks to the online booking system of Indian railways!

We had amazing time in that trip. It was my best experience. Toy train, Kufri and Mall road of Shimla. I really want to go back there once again.

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