My Thoughts! - by Prakash G.R.

Prestige is one the biggest real estate promoters in Bangalore. They have been operating for a long time and have always created posh residential and commercial buildings. I guess their biggest project is Prestige Shantiniketan, which is right next to ITPL. It spawns more than 100 acres. Its a mini township project and has both residential & commercial buildings, a huge swimming pool, Radission hotel, Forum mall, everthing you can think of. Its under construction for a very long time. Yesterday evening, when I was coming back to home from office, there was a huge crowd in the road. I first thought it might be an accident, but it turned out to be the crowd looking at one of the buildings, which collapsed. I thought this is going to be a big buzz, but when I saw the newspapers this morning, there were no enough news except in The Hindu & Times of India. From the news, they claim that there was some work going on in the top floor and it collapsed first. Then few minutes later, due to the weight of the collapsed floor, the floor below that collapsed. And then the one below. Finally all the floors collapsed and it took around an hour, so every worker in the site were miraculously escaped. Only four got injured, that too because they fell down while running away from the site. When police arrived at the site, all the 100+ workers and engineers were already taken to a "safe place". This includes the injured persons, who got treated in near by hospital as out patients. Even before preliminary investigations begun, the Prestige group says that there were no damages to the super structure and no loss of life. The first one is a lie, as I can visibly see at least 3 pillars in a bent position. You can see one of the pillars in the below image from The Hindu:

The second one also could be a lie, because I don’t believe that only 100 people will be working in that 100 acre project. Now this raises few questions. Why were all the eye witnesses removed from the place immediately. They were able to find the reason and blame the Malaysian company as soon as the building collapsed. They never did any investigation. How did they arrive at the decision. Now that we know that if a contractor gives a product, no matter the quality is, they will simply use it. There is absolutely no quality control. What about the buildings which are not collapsed? They might collapse as soon as someone move in?

Its not just the building that collapsed. Its the trust on the Prestige Groups that is collapsed. I guess it will be tough for them to sell any more high rise buildings. The ones that are already sold out, might be coming for a resale at a very cheaper prices and there will be no takers. This will propagate to other high raise buildings as well.

Irony of this is looking at the site plan, they have named this building as "World Trade Center, Tower B"

written by Prakash

Yesterday when I came out of Bangalore Airport, I saw a big advertisement for a residential apartment. It said about a free gift with every purchase and a jackpot prize for one person.  What’s surprising in that - you ask. Well the free gift is a brand new BMW Car and the jackpot prize is a personal jet or a private island! I was about to fall down and then read the whole advertisement. The ad was by Damac and property is in Dubai. Hmmm, Ok. Bangaloer is real estate prices are under controlor is it that Bangalore people decided that the prices here are too high and started investing in “cheaper” ones like these?

I had my camera with me and took few snaps in the return journey. While my flight was waiting to enter the runway, another flight was landing. With the evening sun in the backdrop it came out as a nice snap. Check it out

written by Prakash G.R.

Working from home has one good thing - no commuting. No traffic jam, no bumpy roads and no dusty rides. However, I’ve other type of commuting - not daily, but twice a month and sometimes every week, from Coimbatore to Bangalore. What I hate about the travel is that I’ve to wake up at 4 AM to catch the morning flight, that too on a monday morning. What I love about the travel is the return journey. The scheduled time is at 6 PM, but mostly the flight takes off at 6.30 PM. Once it goes up above the clouds, its heaven. Clear blue sky above the golden colored clouds, it a wonderful view. Every time I wish I had a camera. This time, I had. Few snaps:

written by Prakash G.R.

[Cross post from my Eclipse blog]

Eclipse Demo Camp is coming to Bangalore on 10th Dec. Looking at other Demo Camps, Bangalore might be the one with highest number of registration (around 50) - and its still growing. In case you wish to attend, do register here.

Yup, I’m working on a presentation on GEF. Meet you all there.

written by Prakash G.R.

A nice 2 BHK house is available for rent. Independent house with two floors. House owner stays in Ground Floor and 2 portions in First Floor. House is in Vignan Nagar, New Thippasandra. It takes 10 mins to Marathahalli, 10 mins to Airport, 15 mins to Indira Nagar, 15 mins to K.R. Puram and 45 mins to ITPL in my bike during normal traffic. The house is situated in a 35 cents plot area, in which most of the space is for the garden. From the terrace you have a nice lake view (though half of the view is blocked by an apartment). I’m staying here for the past one and a half years and faced no water problems. A biggest plus would be a very very nice house owner (If not I wouldn’t write this post) Rent is resonable. Only drawback is the half km road that connects the house from the main road, which is very bad.

The house is available from 1st of August. If you are interested, you can send a mail to my gmail id (grprakash), I will put you in contact with my house owner.(Didn’t want to publish their house number in the net)

written by Prakash G.R.

Yes, its May and Bangalore is full of May Flowers. I got to see a tree in full blossom. Thanks to Raja’s Digicam, I can shoot it and upload it on the same day

From Flowers

Related Links:
February flowers

written by Prakash G.R.

I’m already seeing ads for apartments & housing projects in Hosur targetted for the people working in Electronics City. Commuting between Bangalore and Electronics City is a painful task. So what do people do sitting inside the bus/car? They go creative. I’ve got an email forward today with some nice cartoons. Ensoy!

As a person who travels around 6 kms in a road without signals and reaches office in less than 15 minutes, what should I say? I’m feeling lucky

written by Prakash G.R.

Mayflowers trees (aka Fire of the Forest) are beautiful during the month of May. The tree will have very few leaves and will be full of those red flowers. Other months those are simply just an other tree.

February Flowers falls in the same category. There were lot of these trees in Bangalore and till Jan I didn’t knew about them. In the past few weeks, they have become beautiful and got my attention. They are in different colors. Yellow, Blue, Pink, etc. Mayflowers at least have few leaves, but these trees are full of flowers. Raja has taken some snaps of these flowers.

Check this, this and this.

BTW, does anyone know the real name of these flowers? I didn’t know the real name, so I call these February Flowers

Related links:
May Flowers

written by Prakash G.R.

I really wanted to attend this show, but cudn’t
Raja attended this show this year also and has taken a lot of photos. He has uploaded a few.

written by Prakash G.R.

Actually the final judgement was not as bad as the Kannadigas think. The interim award was 202 TMC. Now its some 20 TMC more thats it. 419 TMC is not the actual water to be released from Karnataka. It includes the rain fall captured in TN as well. Without realizing it, there were a lot of comments in rediff today. A few, I found to be, hmmmm, funny. Read thru them. The last one was really, really, really funny:

Karunanidi and DMK have the ambition of Independent Tamilnadu.The Tribunal Judgement has created doubts in the minds of kannadiga’s that justice can not be expected from hindiwallas who are very much afraid of karunanidi and DMK.Karunanidi with the help of italian Lady has driven the first nail in india’s coffin.

This verdict has sowed anti-india sentiment inside karnataka. thats true. Aug 15th is a black day for kannadigas till we get our cauvery other wise we will make out state a independant and sovereign country.

Lets make Kannada a international language. Lets make Karnataka a sacred country of its own. Lets start our independance struggle against bulshit indians. (After this verdict i dont want to be called as INDIAN anymore.I am ashamed to be a indian now.Proud to be kannadiga).

We kannadigas are the forefathers of indian culture. We dont need to give facts about dams. Just give about kannada.Thats enough. Kanada is the great language. HINDI should not be used in karnataka. Lets abolish hindi.

Telugus have provided the bulk of all IT professionals in India. Dont even think of kicking Telugus out of Bangalore, it will become a city with no industry and no water. We are the brains behind the IT industry. You provide the land and other resources. We can work well symbiotically but don’t think Hyderabad cannot take over the IT industry in India

This happens only in India and pakistan.
We need help from American and Bush.

written by Prakash G.R.