Rain @ Home

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Jerry

The last time i was at home the rain gods were not so merciful. I’m not saying that it didnt rain at all, but it didnt rain like the way it used to rain – hours and hours of rain.

Well, my wish was granted today. It started raining at 12 in the noon and as i’m typing this the rain hasnt stopped. The only good cam at home was my brother’s Nokia ExpressMusic 2MP phone-cam. Something is better than nothing, so started clicking…

[album: http://jerrymannel.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/blog/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Rain Home/]

Enjoying rain @ home …

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Jerry

Have you ever felt the need to recognize a person from you locality for his or her contributions to the society, may that be big or small?

Have you felt the need to recognize a Govt. employee that goes beyond his duties and sets an example by outright commitment to his work?

How about recognizing an NGO for its public service or a Residence association for its diligence in waste management, maintaining the greenery or its initiative in having a rain harvesting project?

Bangalore is a city that is vibrant because of its people that make so. There are ordinary people among us that do extra-ordinary work to help the society and each other. How about recognizing them? Wont that be an inspiration for them to continue doing what they were doing and for others to come forward, making The Garden City, truly a great place to live in.

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 is aimed to do that.

Straight out of their site -

An initiative by Member of Parliament and Convener of ABIDe – Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Namma Bengaluru Awards is launched with the vision to inculcate a sense of optimism and interest in the minds of the common man and bring to the limelight ordinary citizens for their extraordinary contributions, recognize exemplary contributions made by individuals who have contributed to Bengaluru’s developments, for those who have enriched the lives of common man, to the ordinary citizens for their extra ordinary contributions and to create Ambassadors of best practice who set standard for the rest to follow.

The citizens of Bangalore will be recognized under two major categories -

Namma Bengaluru Awards for Public Officials and Agencies – To recognize public officials and government agencies (Like MPs, MLAs, MLCs, Officers & Staff of Civic agencies like BDA, Bescom, BBMP etc)
Namma Bengaluru Awards for Private Citizens and Institutions – Aimed at recognizing efforts of citizens and private institutions including NGOs, RWA, Companies, schools and others

I know what you’re thinking. Why would you ever want to recognize anyone from BDA, Bescom or BBMP or any Govt. Official for that matter. Thats where you’re missing the point. Inspite of the fact being that we all hate the govt. officials and brand them as lazy 9-4, job secure, bribe-demanding people there are some really gem-of-a-characters among them. Why cant we just recognize them? Why cant we honour them? Dont belive me?

Well if u ask me i would love to recommend the BMTC Volvo bus drivers and conductors for their courteous behavior. Every time i have travelled in one of them, they have always had service-with-a-smile motto. Same goes with the Bescom guy who turned up on a Sunday evening because there was power out-age at our area.

Last day i was at Namma Bengaluru Foundation‘s office, which is more or less the same as Mr. Rajeev’s office, to be briefed about the whole initiative. I was joined there by Balu and we were both surprised with the magnitude of responses that Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 has received.

The nominations were opened on 14th of October and closes on 14th of November 2009. Guess how many nominations they got till now. Well Balu and me guessed somewhere around 250-300. No, they have so far got close to 2000 nominations. Yes thats right – 2000. And in one case, all the students of a class wanted to nominate their teacher for the award. Thats the beauty of this. Only two categories, Govt. or Private sector and you can nominate anyone!

Go ahead Nominate! Spread the Word!

Things i noticed in 3 days in God’s Own Country (Kerala)

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Jerry

kerala alleppey2 Things i noticed in 3 days in Gods Own Country (Kerala) There is no point in me saying – ‘most part of my life i have been a mallu’. It doesnt really make any sense. I’m a mallu and i’m damn proud of it. But over the last 4 years i have stayed more in the garden city (Bangalore, you jack-ass!!!), than at my home town Kayamkulam (we proudly say that we are from the place of Kerala’s most famed highwayman Kayamkulam Kochunni). So now i’m not a Kannadiga (yet), but has been away from home for quite long enough to notice the subtle things about my place, that i wouldnt have noticed otherwise.

1. The Beef Curry – If you are in Kerala, just drop into any of the road side hotels (as with all places, just look at the cleanliness part a bit before you settle down), order yourslef a plat of beef-curry or beef-fry with porota. Its one of the best combination of food and if have made the choice of place correct then 4 porota and a plate of hot beef-curry wont cost you more than 50bucks

2. Guys on bike – Ok here i’m talking about guys between 20-25 years. These jackasses dont know how to ride a bike and if i was here i would have ended up just like them. They start the bike, both feet are off the ground and its 10secs of front-wheel wobbling before they pick up speed and then later their balance. If anything fails in between then back to square one. They have been the biggest headache for me while driving.

3. KSRTC SuperFast Buses – The only thing red in the place other than the menacing CPM politicos are the state run public transport buses – The KSRTC. Starting their fleet from Ordinary, Ordinary Fast, Venad (white and blue), Limited Stop, Fast Passenger, Limited Stop Fast Passenger, Super Fast, Super Express (green in color) and the luxury Volvo (white). The best in line i say are the Super Fast buses. People prefer them for journey that lasts up to 6hrs because the buses make their own rules and the drivers, at any given point, are trying to do an F1 qualifier.

4. Auto Drivers in Trivandrum and Alappey – The best auto drivers are from Kozhikodu. That i dont know. But from what i know the best auto drivers are from Trivandrum and Alappey, they might ask for more, but ask them to go via meter, most of them will kindly oblige.

5. The choice of news – We prefer the local news of murder/rape/smuggling/hawala/suicide/accident/bribery/raid more than what goes on with the nation. I said we ‘prefer’, just that other news takes a backseat. We still have time to discuss about other things after we are done with the daily news analysis. After the Paul-Murder that filled the news, Sex-racket in Cochin is gaining momentum. And if not that then we will find something else.

6. Public Holidays, Celebrations and Hartal – Someone banned ‘bandh’ couple of years back and ever since its ‘hartal’ for everything. Last year my mom told me that there were 52 un-official holidays, thanks to the hartals. Hartals are treated a bit differently. The whole family is together, some good movie will be aired on tv, so it basically ends up having a semi-festive feeling about it. Hinduism, Christianity and Islam 3 major religions and hence we have 3 major festive seasons – Onam, Christam and Ramzan. Hinduism is not strict like its outside the state. The fact that has been proved with almost everyone having Beef (the meat of cow tastes better than the ox )

and i love it in here …

Recession At Its Best

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Jerry

Recession has forced companies to take serious steps towards cost cutting. People are left jobless and the ones with the jobs have their income so tightly squeezed that their is bare enough left even to buy a condom.

Under such situations, people will just do anything to hold on to their job. Even is that means losing the place where they rest their ass on ..take a look ..

kursi jaaye ya na jaaye, par hum tho kaam kareega…

What is DataPower and Why DataPower?

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Jerry

Straight from the IBM site, this is the definition of DataPower -

IBM® WebSphere® DataPower® SOA Appliances are purpose-built, easy-to-deploy network devices that simplify, help secure, and accelerate your XML and Web services deployments while extending your SOA infrastructure.

Lets stop with that and talk a little bit about SOA, the current architecture and how DataPower fits in.

The middleware infrastructure of an enterprise need to support XML and Web Services, since its emergence and popularity. This meant that the ESB or enterprise service bus had to support the emerging technology. This was proving to be an problem because of -

Traditional middleware installation has increased installation and maintenance costs
Operational costs involved in supporting the new data format (XML) and the existing formats (flatfile, cobol copybook etc)
Security – New forms of attack on the infrastructure

[1]DataPower SOA appliances address these three challenges with the creation of specialized, purpose-built, consumable SOA appliances that redefine the boundaries of middleware. As the “hardware ESB,” DataPower SOA appliances are an increasingly important part of the IBM ESB family.

As mentioned earlier DataPower is an appliance. So why exactly do we need an appliance what can it do?. Lets looks a typical infrastructure – (this is not how it is but helps to explain the situation )

Continue reading →

Jerry Mannel

Eternally alive on the Internet

Category Archives: Nation

Rain @ Home

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Things i noticed in 3 days in God’s Own Country (Kerala)

Recession At Its Best

What is DataPower and Why DataPower?