Here in Noida

Hi all,
I've moved to Noida, and now will start my journey in this wonderful city, waiting to be explored..
First impressions of this city are that there are very few restaurants visible on the roads. Slowly, I've come to find out that most of the restaurants are nestled in Sector 18, or in the 3-4 malls.
Slowly, all the restaurants would be visited, and reviewed in my other blog: Noida Eat Outs.
Here, I'll discuss what I feel generally about the food scene in Noida.
So, wait for my next post..

Microwave Ovens in India

I own an Onida Microwave oven. I purchased it in Jan 2009. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. And the features were good too!

The honeymoon ended when it first started giving problems within 3 months of purchase. The inside light and the turn-table stopped functioning. After giving a complaint, it took 2 weeks for the service executive to come and identify that the PCB is faulty, and has to be replaced. It took one month after that and about half a dozen email to the customer care email ids for the PCB to be replaced.

That was not the end of it. The oven stopped heating a month after that. The calls started again.. This time, they took only one week to come and identify that the magnetron fuse was blown. The guy promptly replaced the fuse with a wire and told me that he would replace the fuse the next day.

Its been a month now, and still no on has come to replace the fuse. I've already called them 10 times..

I sometimes wonder why the service industry in India is so bad. Is it homegrown companies like Onida only, or others like LG/Samsung/IFB also are the same in case of Microwave ovens?
As of now, I'm confused which microwave oven is the safest to buy in terms of product quality and after sales service.

Can anyone advice?

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2) – 22 Tips and Tricks

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) Game, very much like any other tycoon game (see Lemonade Tycoon 2 NewYork Edition).. but different in a way that it has no competitors. The player plays against himself/herself as a competitor. The player has an objective to achieve and that makes it very challenging (although I do prefer tycoon games like Transport Tycoon any day!)

I think Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2) is much better than RCT1 and here are some of the tips I would like to share with you. Many of them have been collected from different sources, but I’m stating them out of my own experience.

1. Make a gentle ride sitting besides a big roller-coaster. That will make the guests feeling nauseated feel better.
2. Keep benches and food/drink stalls near the exit of rides.
3. Don’t keep all the refreshment stalls at one place. Spread them at different places so that they do not compete with each other.
4. Keep on tracking the profits of each stall time and again. Consider changing the position of loss-making stalls.
5. Keep more of merchandise stalls (T-shirts, hats etc.) near the exit and crowded places. They can command higher prices there.
6. In a scenario with a park-entrance fee and no ride fee, keep more of merchandise stalls with a high price (about $3-5)
7. Keep a lot of benches near refreshment stalls allowing guests to sit and eat.
8. Frustrated guests break benches and cause vandalism. Keep them happy to prevent vandalism in your park. Keep the paths clean. Keep some security guards roaming around. Assign ranges to handymen so that no path stays un-supervised.
9. Keep scenery or theme-objects under the tracks of the ride. That will increase the excitement rating of the ride by a little.
10. Make a footpath or queue-line go from under the rollercoaster track to increase excitement rating.
11. Take as much loan and build rides.. It is the rides which will attract more customers.
12. The excitement rating of the rides directly affects the park value. Also keep the loan taken affects it a little. Pay-back the loan in bits and pieces as fast as possible.
13. While setting the entrance fee of the park, give some time to it. There will be a price at which every new guest coming will leave from the entrance seeing the price. So decrease the price by $5. Again observe. Keep on decreasing the price till all 5 out of the first 5 enter the park. At this rate all guests will enter the park. Even at 4 guests entering out of 5, you will earn a few dollars more per guest, but you will lose out the huge entry fee the one guest not entering would have paid.
14. Keep on advertising. That’s a requirement. Use all the modes of advertising possible at a time. The combined effect is good.
15. Research on stalls first – with maximum funding. This way, you can avoid situations where guests start running out of cash and you still don’t have it in researched.
16. Build wider paths. This allows free movement of guests around the park, and their happiness rating goes higher.
17. Make use of the No-Entry banner wherever you don’t want the guests to enter.
18. One trick is to keep the no-entry banner on the Exit of the park so the guests won’t go outside the park. This is a crude trick, but it works especially when the game is during its last few months and you have a target to achieve. Mind it – this can have a negative impact on the rating of the park because of the guests who want to leave and are stuck because of it.
19. Replace any part of a ride when its popularity decreases. By doing this, guests are fooled to believe that you have made a new ride and they start moving to the ride again.
20. If the ride is very popular, and the queue line is very long, keep a TV near the tail-end of the queue of keep an entertainer with a range near the tail-end to keep the guests happy.
21. When placing any object, select where you want to put it, however before you click, hold [Shift] and move the mouse up or down. Click when you have the preferred height.
22. Charge 10 cents for all bathrooms and they can sustain themselves without reducing the favor of your park.
    

That’s it! Do post in if you have any other tips/tricks. Keep reading for more tips on games.

Technorati tags : Roller Coaster Tycoon Tycoon games Tips and Tricks

Chinese Restaurant in Pune - China Gate - A Review

China Gate
Food - 7/10
Service - 7/10
Ambience - 7/10
Price - 8/10

Overall rating - 7.25/10

I recently had dinner at China Gate...
located on JM road.. just besides Smokin' Joes, opposite Portico's Icecream..
Overall, i would say it was a good experience... excellent food... good ambience... best thing - not very crowded.. even on weekends...

What i had - ... Read more on my blog on Pune Restaurants

Lemonade Tycoon 2 New York Edition - Tips and Tricks

Well, recently, I've been fond of this little business strategy game. And believe me - it's really addictive!! Download it and play for half an hour.. and you're gonna love it..



What's it about?

You are given some dollars, a lemonade-stand and a single staff to sell lemonade. You have to decide the recipe of your lemonade and the price at which you are gonna sell it based on the area in New York where your stand is located, the climate of the whole day, the time of the day (morning, noon or evening. Nights are for planning for the next day.) The decisions can be dynamic.. you can change your recipe based on the customer feedback, which you can see from the comprehensive reports generated. You go on earning profits and buy more and better lemonade stands/trailers for you to reach your destination of being the Lemonade Tycoon!
All in all, its a great game.. just try it!

Tips and Tricks

I would suggest you figure out these points yourself by playing for a day or two. That would be much more fun..
Anyway, if you choose to do it otherwise, here are the tricks:

1.
Always keep your customers happy. Look for the snapshot report for the feedback. Don't worry much if they find your lemonade costly (because that's how you are going to earn profits). Just keep the taste of your lemonade good and your customers will come back.

2.
Recipe which I found worked best:
Temperature <50F : 8L 3S 2I (8Lemons 3Sugar 2Ice)
Temperature >50F and <65F : 8L 3S 3I
Temperature >65F : 9L 3S 4I
Go for less ice if its rainy.

3.
For each stand, you should have atlease one upgrade for Customer Patience, Service time, Popularity, Visibility, Basic Staff Training and Weather.

4.
Buy stock only as much as required (based on your recipe). Don't buy according to the capacity of your stand.

5.
The best way to play is to set the recipe and price (keep the price a little high.. can go upto $4 for a stand in the Times Square) of each stand at night based on the forecast for next day, and Fast Forward the day. Go on with the same meter of recipe if you earn profits. Try and increase the price to see the profits increase.

That's it!! Do post in any other tips/tricks which you have for Lemonade Tycoon 2 New York Edition.

Technorati tags : Lemonade Tycoon games Tips and Tricks

Summers at Riot-stricken Bangalore

Hi again.. what am I doing these days? I'm at Aditi Technologies, Bangalore, doing my summer internship.. Am here since the 3rd of April.. and will be here till the 3rd of June.. About the place i am located - sadashivnagar in bangalore, which ia a little off-beat place.. away from all the fun.. nothing around here.. nothing means literally nothing.. i cant get a proper bread here.. i ask for bread and i get a question "Sweet or Salty?" .. now what do i say? there are a few "Sagars" nearby, so i manage to get something nice on weekends when the office canteeen is closed.. and YA.. there is a pizza hut.. its like got sent it here for my rescue.. but alas- havent yet got a chance to visit it.. its no fun going there alone and having a pizza.. me and abhijit (my batchmate) hardly are together as he is placed in a different facility.. so we do meet at the guesthouse where we play TT and then watch some tv before we go to our beds in our individual rooms!! and ya.. there was one supermarket near to my place but it got all smashed up and empty (people stole everything) on the day when Dr. Rajkumar died..
and this brings me to another story.. he lived in the same lane as my guest house.. just a few houses away.. and that fateful day, we were suddenly told in the afternoon that this particular person has passed away.. so we rather move away from this place.. so me and abhijit happily decide to go to MG road as he had never been there before.. we reach the bus stop.. no busses.. no rickshaws are even waiting.. they are running as if the world is going to end.. and we still do not get the severity of the situation.. i mean .. this great artist has just completed his life.. and he has lived his life fully and wonderfully.. and why do the ricks need to run?? also, my spice phone connection had gone all crazy.. so finally, we decide to walk down.. its about 8 kms to mg.. and we do walk down.. we reach there and fine all shops closed!! so we head back walking again.. and finally we reach our place to find people rioting!! never in my life i had been in such a situation!! all of them suddenly came running towards us and we were confused, we also started running.. but they were too fast.. glass bottles showering from thin air.. people breaking the bus-stand, banners, throwing stones at buildings.. and we were in between them as we just had no place to go.. a person even caught hold of abhijit's collar and said something in kannada.. and abhijit out of sheer fear shouted "Rajkumar ki jay" and miraculously that man let him go!! we finally got into a lane out of the mainstream of rioters!! and waited there till everything was quiet.. and then we reached home... just to be locked in there for the next 2 days!!

Technorati tags : Dr Rajkumar Bangalore Bangalore riots India

The Grand Mysore Trip

We all reached (in two parts - me and the rest) the KSRTC bus stand at 6:15 AM on sunday.. (i was there the earliest!!) .. saw a volvo standing there and a biiiig line.. all i could do was go and stand in the line.. and all i could see was a few people eating a sandwich and walking away from the counter taking the tickets...!!!
then after about half an hour, ratika, pragya and suruchi arrived.. that brought a smile to my face (good to see that now i am not alone.. and now someone can go and get some food!! .. jus kiddin!! ) .. finally we get tickets for a volvo at 7:30.. and we rush to the volvo standing there.. we see that the whole bus was full.. so we rush out as there were two more volvos standing behind it.. we nicely go and take some nice seats in the almost empty volvo.. now comes the ticket checker.. or conductor or whatever!! .. he asks for the ticket, and i proudly put my hand in my pocket and give him a printed ticket.. the conductor looks at me as says "Five!!!" .. i said.. "yes.. we are five" (There was Ms. Chulbul, ratika's colleague, with us also).. his expressions changed and he angrily threw the ticket on me.. i was really confused and looked at the ticket.. and it actually was a Rs. 5 ticket (instead of the Rs. 700 ticket i just got)... now i understand why Mr. conductor got so angry.. i had come to the ksrtc bus stand by bus in the morning.. there also, i had got a ticket for Rs. 5 for myself.. that explained it all...!!! i grinned.. and took out the other ticket lying nicely in my pocket.. and gave it to him smiling.. but instead of getting a smile back from him, all i got was an angry look.. and he pulled the ticket from me as if i had stolen it from him!! .. and the next thing i see is the rest 4 people staring at me in awe!! i had to explain everything to them to bring shouts of laughter out of them!!
thats not all for the beginning..
the conductor comes again.. this time, with a printed sheet.. he takes my ticket and tells us to get down!!! and explains me that the ticket with 5 seats which i had - it was for the previous bus.. and it has to be that way.. now the bus had gone.. and we cannot board this bus.. as this bus has its own quota of tickets already booked!!.. Now, Suruchi didi came into picture.. the conductor was not ready to listen to me.. he atleast calmly listened to what she said.. and we came to a solution.. he said that the ticket booth will write something on the backside of the ticket and we can board the next volvo..
finally, all said and done, we boarded the volvo, and didnt breathe till we were rolling!! phew..!! good start that was!!
the subsequent two days went by soo fast.. we did a lot of sight seeing.. nidhi and kishore joined us later that day.. and chulbul left us as soon as we reached mysore.. I must say she was pissed off with my pjs ;) ..
the best that i liked was the waterfall in which we walked down the croocked steps.. it was too good.. and the round boat ride (the boat which is there in the Roja song) .. food was not so special.. but ok.. vrindavan gardens were also cool..
overall, a good experience, and a good change from the routine!!

Technorati tags : Mysore India South India travel