clubhack 2k7 .... India's own International Hackers' Convention

DISCLAIMER-:
This blog entry is absolutely based on my understanding about the topics. It is advisable to go through the presentations available here. You can also contact the respective speakers if you have any questions or need more information. I will not be held liable for any decisions made/ misunderstandings based on this entry.

after the barcamp, it was clubhack. this season is full of events :) and it only gets better and better. barcamp was an unconference whereas clubhack was more of a well organized conference. well that doesn't mean that barcamp wasn't well organized but the two were certainly different. in terms of content, clubhack was all about security. Officially put "ClubHack is one of its kind hackers' convention in India which serves as a meeting place for hackers, security professionals, law enforcement agencies and all other security enthusiasts". speakers included professionals from various fields like legal, security, telecom and even foreign nationals. sessions were started as two parallel threads. it was held on 9th December 2007. i know its been late already but then i was occupied with couple of other things so couldn't blog @ it.

the first session i attended was about hacking the firefox using the extension vulnerability bu Sunil. it was good and pretty scary as he showed a demonstration that data passing over https can be captured if the attacker manages to deploy his malicious extension into your browser. so the point is stay away from exentsions from unknown sources.

the second session was by Chetan Gupta (he is a symantechie too :D) he works for incident response team in Symantec. he showed us lot of tools to dig up data as a part of forensic investigation of any (cyber) incident.

third session i attended was by Rohas Nagpal. he is the president of asian school of cyber laws. it was also an interesting session. he mentioned 7 best cases in cyber crime. he gave us lot of knowledge about cyber laws in india. he spoke about the bazee case, the recent orkut case etc. the bottomline was beware of your rights and more importantly responsibilities of being a indian citizen. even the stupidest attempt to hack into your friend's mailbox can lead you into jail and of course some fine too :) best is stay away from the legal hassles :D

then i attended the crazy toaster session by Dror Shalev. it was real good as he actually showed the demo of hacking into network using a toaster connected as device onto a network :) the idea was how our home devices connected to the network can be used to compromise security. it was quite interesting though frankly speaking i am not sure if i got it right entirely ;) nonetheless it was really cool.

after the crazy toaster, i attended hacking web 2.0 session. personally speaking i found it ok types as it sounded more like a theoritical session or whatever. there was some useful info but not as good as others. then there was this VOIP session where these fellows told us about how VOIP if deployed incorrectly can cause security issues. they also gave us lot of demos which were cool as well. but unfortunately i could not figure out the exact weak point meaning where things went wrong.

presentations are uploaded on the site and can be found here (ref clubhack).
overall a BIG THUMBS UP to the event and of course to the co-founder Rohit Srivastwa. my bits of snaps can be located here. hope to attend more such events in the coming year.


- signing off
ameyas7

Test

yet another Barcamp (Mumbai) ....

yet another eventful weekend. saw bhool bhulaiya, laaga chunari mein daag yday (will talk @ it later ;)) n the big event ofcourse was BarCampMumbai2 after i missed BlogCampPune, i simply cudn have missed this 1 :D the venue was obviously IIT Mumbai campus. i just love to visit this place.

the camp was focused more on strart-ups, enterpreneurship and various technologies. the campers outnumbered the capacity, so they had to maintain a wait-list. there were large number of turn-out. so the event started a bit late at around 11:00 AM. the whole idea of barcamp is to move around and pick things that u like and walk-out if it doesn't interest you much. the first talk i attended was by some representative from Sun. it was for an undertaking by Sun for potential start-ups. The project is a good initiative ... chk out if u have a start-up or plan to open one. then there were some talks about issues that start-ups face, the general pitfalls etc. although it was a good session but i beilive that if you have an idea you are passionate about, if you are reasonable, it will certainly be a hit sooner or later. i know i am not the best person to comment on al this ;) but just trying to put my point across. next interesting talk was on storage topic. he covered RAID, DAS, SAN etc. the talk was by Mr. Bhavin Turakhia CEO of DirectI the topic and the content was good. although no rocket science but good deal of information .... some redundant .... but from the industrial perspective.

post this we headed for our lunch. the food (lunch as well as snacks) was simply good as usual. lunch sessions in such camps are meant to interact with other ppl while u hog upon the del.icio _us items. u get to meet lot of exciting ppl. most of the junta is geek types. post lunch, i got to attend this safe netizen talk by Rohit Srivastwa. it was quite an interesting session. just few months back i had found a vulnerability on a reputed cinema hall's website and had blogged about it (click here to read) so i was curious to know what should one do if he/she encounters such a vulnerability/ loophole and if he/she wants to be a responsible netizen. he gave me his blog entry (steps that he follows) click here for details. he happened to mention that always copy someone who is into legal / cyber department while dealing with the vendor as u never know when things turn back to u. for the movie hall thingy, i had actually preserved all the packets which showed the card information in plain text as an evidence but fortunately the vendor simply switched to secure policies and all was good :) but one certainly be needs to be careful in such matters coz even if your intentions are "good", u (might) need to prove that. then there was a launch of a site Bloozle which is about bloggin 2.0

after this we attended CreativeCommons session. we cud only attend last few mins but the concept sounded good. then we had somemgmt session n last but not least, there was a talk by Mr Rohit Nalawde on start-ups. he told us his story ... how things went for him. it was nice to hear it. overall thumbs up. coincidentally IITians also had their techfest today. it was nice to see the robots fight in the competition. you can spot some snaps in my picasa stream here .... snaps from my cellphone so do not show TRUE COLORS ;) .... apart from this, there were sessions on nokia developer forums, mobile video streaming compression techniques bla bla bla but i didnt attend them so not sure how well did they go.

having said all good, the closing session brought out some negative points about the way things were organized. i completely agree that there was a slight feeling of disconnection as the rooms were spread across two floors (unlike last yr's) also that there was lesser technical content this yr than last yr and some element of marketing propoganda was also observed. but then it din ruin the good things. also i disagree on some other points like having theme based content etc. cmon u guys, barcamp is meant to be unorganized. just gather n have fun. dun expect too much ;) also i must give credits to the volunteers (U GUYS ROCK!!!) keep up the good work. n hey .... if u missed it, theres gonna be another one in around Feb 08.

thats all for now....

signing off
- ameyas7

green green green ....

sounds like the F1 lights going green to indicate start of the race and yes lot of things are packed with the same excitement these days. talk about stock market, cricket, rupee appreciating against dollar. india is going green in so many ways.

stock market hits all time high (although this isnt news anymore ;) it happens almost every quarter) just when fed rates were cut by 0.5 % markets were soo bullish giving lot many opportunities to book profits and many did. although the best strategy would be getting rid of those low (or non) profitable stock, book some profit, increase the liquidity while staying invested in more profitable stocks so that just when the correction follows, you have enough liqudity to ride on the rising wave (followed by correction). i know its hard to hold on when you have reached this highs. also get rid of IT stocks, for sheer appreciation of rupee against dollar. you can expect some more appreciation before it stabilizes (before RBI takes some action). i know it is very scary especially for ppl working in IT for various reasons including job security but at the same time i'd love to see rupee rise :) .... enough of financial talks now.

circket .... i know this is not my cup of tea but this is currently the HOT topic especially the 20-20 world cup (well not for me ... i have stopped following cricket since longgggggggg). it is interesting to see the new 20-20 pattern. i guess they have realized that ppl dont have that much time so they cut down it in half ;) but yea the grand finale is gonna be very exciting, where india meets (head-on with) pakistan. ppl (all over the world) have always enjoyed india - pak matches.

and last but not least green is the color of the season. lot of eco-friendly campaigns are gaining momentum. channels like cahnnel [V] are already providing tips on issues like global warming and other environmental issues. you can also find eco-friendly consumer durables like air conditioner, refridgerators, cellphones or even your furniture :) in your regular stores. i have come across so many products in last few weeks which are (claim-to-be) eco-friendly right from the paint used for painting the walls to organic items like soap, cereals and blah blah blah. you name it, they have it with an eco-friendly touch. and of course it is really a good thing for sure. after all we belong to the earth, the earth does not belong to us (quotable quotes ... wasn't me ;) ). just few months back i joined the "Ban the Bulb" campaign when Greenpeace volunteers had come to our company for awareness (and fund-raising). i know it is difficult to get rid of all bulbs in the house and put those expensive CFLS but any single ordinary bulb replaced with CFL will take a step towards the end goal. and when billions of ppl step forward, the journey becomes so easy. it is like that giant flywheel effect where it takes lot more strength for the initial few pushes but once the wheel gains the momentum, it is all set to run by itself.

well thats all for now .... i'm off to bed .... have to get up early n leave for pune.

- signing off
ameyas7

online security ....

DISCLAIMER:
following entry is written with the intent to warn the users to be cautious while providing their sensitive information like credit card details while shopping online. all the analysis and judgement is absolutely based on my "current" knowledge about the whole concept and the readers are requested to make decisions based on theirs.

just few weeks back i was trying to book a movie ticket online and i realized that the site was not secure enough to provide sensitive information (credit card details). i realized that the form was being submitted over plain http instead of secure (https) protocol. my obvious attempt was to manually hit the https version of the URL but it failed. it took me back to the http form. i had to back off the booking plan .... i just prefer to play safe .... not that my credit limit is too high ;) but why take a chance. the theater was one of the reputed ones. i was really surprised coz it had the "Verisign Secure Site Safe Scrypt" logo on it. i clicked on the logo just to verify things, it lead to some auto-generated page for that site which said the site was authentic so that i was guaranteed that the recieving party (for the card information) was the one to whom the site belonged to. but it had some clause at the bottom which said "All information sent to this site, if in an SSL session, is encrypted, protecting against disclosure to third parties." what it implies is that if its not over SSL, you may not be guaranteed security against eavesdropping. that is very convinient, isn't it? this is obviously my interpretation of the statement and everything rest is based on this "assumption".

it is pretty much scary just to imagine that your sensitive information is going in plain text over wire. on second thoughts, i thought probably they must've used some new kinda technology which would encrypt and send even though it appeared to be plain http. i also thought that it could be the case of http upgrading to https (thats possible with http 1.1 though i could not entirely understand how it works) but then i tried submitting the form .... still there was no sign of https.

the only option left was to try capturing the raw packets just before they leave my machine. i verified that the information was going unencrypted by capturing few packets using a packet sniffer. well i wasn't much surprised to see the information flowing in clear text in the request packet .... i was expecting it, but just wanted to make it sure. its really very dangerous. i immidiately sent mail to theater authorities but there was no response. as far as the logo(certificate of authenticity) issuing authorities are concerned they have clearly mentioned that if not over SSL, it may not be safe. now usually anyone wouldn't look into details once we spot the security logo. but then its our mistake that we simply assume that everything is safe.
also i feel that the authorities should have issued certificate of genuine party / authenticity but safe scrypt could be misleading.

well is it the user , is it the certification/ logo authority or is it the theater authority to be blamed ... im not sure but the user would surely suffer if somebody exploits such flaws.

so before you provide such information, always ... always watch out for
1) https protocol
2) certificate information (giving public key of the party)
just to make sure its safe, at least going in the encrypted form.


- signing off
ameyas7

google on my cell ....

no no no this is not yet another google oriented blog (actually even the earlier one wasn't but if u felt so :p)

ohh before you begin reading this entry, FYI ... i changed my blog template so now you can listen / watch any song from my playlist (its just few of my fav picks) while you read this space. i wanted to put this at the end of the entry but.... by then you'd almost be done with it so you would'n be able to enjoy the songs :) n hey i've also added "track your visitor" map at the end of the page. so now even if you dun put a comment i can see traces ;) its kool isn't it?

recently i downloaded google maps for my cell. its really kool. especially for ppl like me who lack road sense ;) ye i have hard time figuring out roads n maps not that im a traveller but even the city alleys can be confusing considering im still new to pune :) so hopefully this will make life easy. hehehe although i wont be using this thing often as i can afford to get lost n pay for the cab than to see those GPRS bills ;) lol just kidding. but this is really cool stuff. using *i-fi makes you feel good. i still remember i bought my old nokia 6610i with an intent to develop some j2me apps but that was way back in 2004 but unfortunately i cud not really nurture the idea. n today i have a much better cellphone but i still lack the dedication to make productive use of it. anyways someday ill write my own utils. as of now lets jus download n hav fun :D

just when i was finished with google maps exploration, i started searching for random apps / utilities and i found whole bunch of them. i found small utils right from some office apps, converters bla bla bla to some hacker stuff like discharging the cell battery, using the light to dim-bright n exploit the battery. of course i did not try those as my cell is too precious to test all these nifty little utilities ;) if u wanna try, lemme know ill pass on the URL. (disclaimer: try this at your own risk) even today i dont own a 3G phone but EDGE works for me. not all that bad. so if you are checking the real-time satellite images in the google maps it may take a while before it actually shows up but that's ok.

this mobile market is goin crazy. especially with such a HUGE customer base in asian countries, all the n/w providers are making loads of $$$$. imagine countries like india, china, japan singapore, malaysia they can provide GREAT market potential. that is why you can see all biggies entering this segment already. even yahoo has launched Yahoo! Go. you can expect some tie-ups with the mobile manufacturing companies. you wouldn't even imagine the amount of money these telecom providers make just with those stupid SMS to some 4 digit shortcodes for some contests, votes etc. well lets keep all that aside considering the positive aspect that its helping (contributing) in lot of other ways including economical growth.

yesterday i saw Die Hard 4.0 ... what was that? i mean c'mon have they started immitating bollywood ? hehehe. seriously it started out pretty well. it was al about cyber attacks into the public services. it wasn't all that unrealistic but later on it completely turned into the typical dumb movie. pretty sad huh. it was good to see F35 take off ;) but the whole concept was stupid. F35 tracing a VOLVO truck wow looks like choppers do not excite the general public anymore .... action effects are good but again some are really illogical. there was some guy who was even swifter than spiderman lmao. why cant we have some intelligent action movies. keep it simple but logical.

well thats all for the action this week ;)

- signing off
ameyas7

garaj baras saawan fir aayo ....

well this week was a little hectic @ work. but it certainly ended in a pleasant way.

saturday morning i was reading this book called "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. this book is based upon various case studies performed by the research team consisting of top graduates from B-schools and the author himself. i'm not really fond of reading books but i have enjoyed case studies, philosophical, management related text. well this book was lying with me for almost a year and a half now but never thought of turning the coverpage :) actually i got this book as a prize for being a topper in the ITP training programme at Tech Mahindra. just few days back we had Tom Kendra visiting Symantec's India center and his talk sounded on the same lines of this book (i had read few pages just when i got the book and i could easily relate things almost instantly) . it created a spark and finally i'm reading it. i'm not done with the book yet. might write a seperate entry on it after i finish. the electricity went off in the noon and i had nothing to do so i was just passing the time by playing games, listening to songs on my cell.

at around 2 pm ijoe called up and told me that lets go out. we had absouletly no plans where to go but we just wanted to do something. jassi and hari had also come. ijoe and jassi were my NCST mates whereas hari lives in ijoes's apartment. it was raining heavily and we wanted to enjoy the rains and the obvious way was to go on a bike ride. so we started at around 2:30 pm. just 5 mins away from our place near shoppers stop we found that the LBS road was closed , the mall was flooded with water and they were actually using the pumps to get the water out as fast as possible. unfortunately the other side of the road was lucky and was not blocked. so some people actually smashed the divider and let the water flow on the other side. we also saw 1 maruti zen slipped into gutters. looked like the driver could not see the boundaries of the road, gutter or not sure what went wrong there but they had called for fire brigade to rescue.

while some people were stuck at various places, some were trying to reach home as early as possible, we were out enjoying the rains and we decided to head towards the cyprus (near yogi hills) just about 15 mins away. when we reached cyprus, loadsa ppl were on the road enjoying the climate. it was a nice experience. we had vada-pav and then we decided to climb up the hills. this is the same hill which seperates the mulund-thane area from the western suburb borivali. you can also see The Sanjay Gandhi National Park sign boards in this area. we reached the first level of the hill. this is a place from where one can get the hilltop view of major parts of mulund-thane. now they have made a official base like structure so even civilians visit this place often and is quite easy to reach here. the view was damn good and the rains just doubled our joy. i wish i had a waterproof camera so i could share pics coz im really not that good at describing things. it was good but we wanted more :) so we decided to climb up some more (to the 2nd level as we called it) it was little difficult .... sort of small trekking experience. but it was worth it. we could see all the greenery and not just the concrete jungle. it was really good. we had 1 more level to make it to the very top but we left it for some other time sake :) rain started slowing down n so was our enthu level. we slipped 4-5 times while getting down, there were no injuries but climbing part was comparitively easier. we got down, had another round of vada-paav and cutting chai then we decided to go towards airoli-vashi side. we were completely drenched already. i mean we have been enjpying raing since almost 2 hrs now n still we were feeling the rain showers hittin us on the way to vashi. it was pretty chilled. climate was good we could see some part of nahur village (near the eastern express way) all drowned under the water. the rain drops were hitting our faces so hard but we were still enjoying it. then we reached airoli n some took a halt for 10-15 mins on some newly discovered road. we had a chit chat for while then we headed back. i finally reached home around 5:30 pm, hit the showers, had another hot cup of tea. felt sooooooo good :)

evening was nothing special. just watched TROY and went to sleep. got up late today. it was still raining. it just wont stop. there was no electricity today as well for quite some time. not sure whats the problem these days but apprarently the power shedding has been stopped.
saw 300 today evening. these movies have their own charm. i have already seen it in theaters but still enjoyed it again. great leaders, great men and great skills. it is quite interesting to learn about the ancient war techniques. they all had their own unique style. discovery has showcased many shows on this topic.

offnote iPhone was launched this Friday and im sure it mustv'e sold million pieces already. its definitely on my wishlist, so if you don't know what to gift me for my b'day, heres a hint :p (in your dreamsssss ...ohhh i could hear that) ye ye i am too sleepy already. hopefully it doesn't rain tomorrow morning. i have to catch intercity @ 7:15 am. i dun wanna miss that else it becomes hectic and definitely not a good way to start a new week.
phew ... too many things packed in one entry :) but can't help. i get to blog only on weekendz.
thats all for now.


- signing off
ameyas7

iGoogle Xperience ....

hello

yes this is my second post in a day. no i aint inspired from the blogcamp just that i've been customizing my google home since morning and here's how it looks now. it is lookin pretty fancy and ye it does its old job (search) too ;)

iGoogle has been here quite for a while. but it was only recently with the development of google gadgets that we can see it burst like never before. you can convert your google home into your personal portal for almost everything that you need is available in the form of gadgets. earlier google came up with the concept of gadgets for their google desktop product. (well actually AFAIK gadgets originated with apple's mac) gadgets are like small utility applications which one can use in day-to-day life. today google allows us to add these gadgets to your customized home page as well. In fact not only google but many leading portal containers have started offering Google Gadget Support. For eg: IBM's WebSphere, Apache's JetSpeed, Liferay all have come up with support for Google Gadgets in their portlet containers.

So basically you get all your utils handy with you on google page so you can add gadgets which give you stock updates, quotes of the day, word of the day, weather, gamse, wiki search even Bhagavad Gita. Also you can categorize these gadgets into multiple tabs. You can add your own tabs as per your requirement. Want more ... yes you can develope these on your own too. Although there will be some learning curve involved there. You can find more about Google gadget APIs here. You will need to learn some technicalities but once you know how to write these widgets, google will allow you to host them on their site. isn't it cool?

I agree couple of other portals have been already providing these things like personalization and stuff for longggggg time now for eg: Yahoo. But I feel this will be more effective as this will be more like community devlopment which has proved itself in many cases. And then it was interesting to see google turn (evolve) into a portal whereas Yahoo has alwasy been one. There's no denying that Yahoo has also started providing similar widgets thing but I beilive they are still only for desktop.They are quite cool as well but I wouldn't start on that now ;) and then no matter who gets who but as a user we will surely get to experience whole bunch of cool things.
well thats all on iGoogle.

- signing off
ameyas7

missed BlogCampPune ....

it hurts .... having missed the BlogCampPune 07 all i can say is that.

well ye i had registered for the event and was looking forward for it. but unfortunately i am in mumbai @ my home and writing this entry. wish i was writing this live from there :( well if you know me personally and if you read it carefully "unfortunately i am in mumbai" you will surely know how terrible i'm feeling :(

i'm sure this event will be a gr8 fun. its not just about fun, its really a good experience to meet such kinda ppl, share stuff and go camping. BarCamp hasn't been here since long .... just a year or two i guess. the topics were good but its lot more than that. you will only come to know if you have attended one. mine is purely based on my last yr's barcamp mumbai experience which was awesome!

for those of you who still doesn't know what barcamp is all about ... click here. In short, its an unconference where ppl voluntarily organize a (kinda) workshop. its actually a multi-threaded programme unlike typical workshops and one can participate, discuss, blog, upload snaps, feeds (do whatever you want) at runtime. but the interesting part about is the people you come across. some of 'em would be real geeks. that is why i said more than the topics, its interesting to meet such people (works for me). many-a-times pure spectators are not allowed but this was not one such.

I aint a hardcore blogger, I am more of just blog-for-me type. I prefer to blog whenever I have time and sufficient thoughts/content. its not that I was keen on attending for the list of topics (nor I was interested in "make money from your blog" ;)) , its really a wonderful experience. Also I have always enjoyed attending conferences, seminars, workshops. I really missed this 1 tho. unfotrunately there was no company as well to attend but the people there would easily accomodate you in no time so that was surely not the only reason. well don't ask me the reason why i couldn't attend. i've never felt this awful before (for any conference)

well thats all for blogcamp.

life is going pretty cool. not much of a pressure. very much keen on watching Pankaj Kapoor's 'DHARM' so you can expect some thoughts on that. he is one of those REAL ARTISTS and also the theme sounds interesting so definitely worth a watch and I am surely not going to miss it :)

- signing off
ameyas7

future is here ....

well this entry is gonna be about some technological updates. well i dont really like to blog about i-fi stuff. not that i don't follow technlogy news but I prefer to keep it away from my personal space. but last week I came across a news which I thought I'd share here and it is really an outstanding concept.

M$ released their surface computing 'Milan' table top computer. basically its like a small coffee table with amazing features. check it live at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ it was really fascinating to see the videos. it looks like some mind boggling gizmo gadget from some beyond 2k (and we really are beyond 2k now, its 2k7 already ;) ) movie but its gonna hit the market soon. the best part is it recognizes almost anything. although i didn't come across any detailed specs (on their site) but their videos give that impression.

basically it works with human touch as input and that too multi-touch screen which means a group of people can use it simultaneously. it makes sharing stuff so easy that you can simply place your digital camera, cell phone or any other device on top of the table and it will pop a menu ... its really cool. all you need to do is simply move stuff around here and there with your fingertips. thats next level of Drag-N-Drop.

well we all had come across apple's i-phone which is also multi touch screen with similar features for zoom , pan etc but thats not it. the good thing about the computer is that it can let you do umpteen number of things, like you can connect several devices, download/ upload stuff, do some online shopping just by laying out your credit cards on the table.... how cool is that.
detailed comparison here. maybe initially the cost may be high and they may target public places more than end consumers. so probably you'd get to see more of these in malls, cafeterias, pizzerias, all entertainment zones etc.

having said all of that, it would be interesting to dig more into multi-touch screen devices here. Also im not sure if this concept is originally from M$ or not. following links talk about some work on similar lines. looks like things like this existed since long. at least couple of yrs earlier.
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vm_FzLya8y4

so whether M$ came up with the concept first or somebody else , we may not know but all I can say is future is good and future is here.

well thats all for the Milan. life is going pretty cool. I am having a great time in the new office. lotsa play + work. our whole team is planning yo go out for lunch on monday and we'd also watch pirates of the caribbean 3 post lunch. its gonna be fun time. monsoon has already hit here. so the weather is really very nice most of the time but then you really dont feel like working ;)
just kidding. ijoe (my ncst pal) might come over to pune next weekend and I might not come back here. so we(me, ijoe, prashant, ashwin and some of ijoe's friends) might chill out next weekend. lets see.

thats all for this time.

- signing off
ameyas7

living in a metro ....

last week i visited a property exhibition in thane. the rates are giving tough competition to the skyscrapers. rates have increased by more than twofold in the past 2-3 yrs. although everybody knows that this is pretty much inflated price (especially in exhbitions and all) but people are still buying it. and the scary part is the minimum area is 2 bhk. although they claim that to be 2 bhk the actual carpet area comes close to 1 bhk in an old construction, as there is minimum of 25-35% of loading. so basically you end up paying that much extra. i understand that most of the projects which were put up in the exhbition were from some of the good quality constructions but still there is no way the rates can be justified.

frankly speaking there is not much of a difference in the buying capacity over the period of time. only the numbers are high. so if the income levels have gone up by X times, so have the property prices, in fact even more. the dream house still remains dream for most of us ;) although the availibility of loans and the general tendency towards taking loans has gone up and hence on an average people can buy their house (mebbe or may not be the dream one ;) ) at the age of 30
there is soooo much of demand. its totally seller's market as of now. the buyer has a very little say.

In india, there is sooo much of difference (in every aspect of life including standard of living, facilities, opportunities) between metro and non-metro cities (or we can say few good cities / states and other cities / states) that most of the population will try to migrate to these cities to make their dream come true. although i do not have the opinion that one should restrict these people, of course this is their country as well (in fact i'm a strong beiliver in one-earth, although that seems to be a dream thing). instead we all should try to improve all other cities /staets just to make them close to metros (or developed states). the govt. should make serious attempts in creating enough opportunities in such states. obviously one can't expect such changes in 2-3 yrs but at least some measures should be taken in that direction. this would help in several ways and the best is the country can grow as a whole rather than the growth being concentrated in selected few cities. also the NRI investment in real-estate could be one of the strong reasons for the prices to take a steep rise in the past 3-4 yrs.

there have been news about real estate market expecting a slow-down in around 2007. but i sincerely beilive that this will not happen at least next 2 yrs. only if the finance minister comes up with some stringent policy to discourage investment in real-estate, we can expect sudden drop in prices but that doesn't seem to be likely.

i have been thinking about investing in the real estate since last year but that time my capacity wasn't enough (rather it was too short) so i chose (did i have any other option ;) ) to wait. now that i can get reasonable amount of loan, i still can't afford to invest, as the prices have gone much higher than increase in the earning capacity. and i beilive if i don't make a move in the next few yrs, the gap might remain forever ;) just kidding. but yeah its always better to invest in real-estate as early as you can as the prices will keep on rising. very rarely we get to experience the downfall (last was in 95 if i'm not wrong).

well apart from all this, life is going pretty cool. i feel like i'm settled in symantec ;) its been 6 months already. so far so good and the future looks good as well :) having good time at work. started playing TT ocne again after long time. its great fun. its been long since i catched up on any latest movies. but would be going for spiderman -3 and Metro (im dying to see this one) hopefully it wont turn me down. the power shedding has reduced in mumbai. although recently pune has been experienceing power, water shortages. man ......... it's really sad. in a country like india and in cities like mumbai, pune there are power cuts for sevreal hours daily. well the issue deserves a seperate blog but probably some other time.

thats all for now.

-signing off
ameyas7

just another weekly journal ....

wow again a months gap between two blogs :) am i getting really busy ;) ? or am i being lil lazy :)) ? or mebbe theres nothin much happening here.

again an end of another weekend. tom is (in fact its already) MONDAY. time is ticking out. days are passing by so fast. i cant beilive this month end i'll finish 6 months with symantec :)
past week was lil hectic. i missed my train (to pune) last monday ... i was at the (nahur) station on my usual time and i was waiting for a slow local to thane but man no train came for almost 15 minutess and by the time i reached mulund, intercity had crossed us already :( i was stunned for a moment. actually lotsa ppl missed the train that day, we could make out that when we reached thane but the worst part was i had the tickets for sabu and mehul, they had the printout but the identity was on my name ... fortunately they reached safe n sound :) luckily there was one more guy in my compartment who missed it as well. we had to take a bus to pune. he was working with IBM. we had a good time. but it took us around 4:30 hrs to reach n we touched down pune @ 12:30 pm. it was so damn tiring. i missed utkarsha (he usually takes us in his car but he had to go on sunday for some urgent work ... and luckily tom i'll be goin with him :) ) great way to start the week. the week as such was pretty good. i am now working on another product for some time. so have to sit late (till 9-10) for conf calls but this will be done only in the initial stage, 1-2 weeks later we'd be back to normal timings. hopefully this change turns out to be +ve for me. n i am quite looking forward for this. lets see.

Ashish (my Tech M friend and Abhishek's bro) is in town. he joined TIBCO recently and will move with us soon. Abhishek (my roomie) left for Singapore yday nite. i, ashish n abhishek watched Bheja Fry on thu night. it was a premeire show :) ... it was damn cool. AWESOME expressions by Vinay ... Ranvir has been given some weirdo look. he has done well but he cud have done gr8 with natural looks as well :) both are amazing actors. its such a low budget movie but is really cool. its been a longggggg time since i saw a good movie. while coming back as well i had tuf time. i reached here at 1:30 am :( missed my last train so had to take an auto from chembur till home.

sat was pretty cool. had fun with RC waghya sutlej maggy mita. we played uno @ waghya's place for a while then we went to some dhaba .... i usually dun eat non-veg so theres no Q of me enjoying dhabas ;) but others were enjoying it. i came back late night. sunday whole day i spent relaxing, watchin tv, sleep etc.
well thats it for this time.

- signing off
ameyas7

Pray For Me Brother ....

in the past 2-3 days i have come across incidents which inspired this blog.
i'll particularly talk about the inequality in income distribution in india. of course there exists inequality in every part of the world but im jus puttin down what i saw.

i travel pune-mumbai every weekend. sometimes we come in Utkarsha's car, sometimes by volvo / train. this weekend we took the train and on our way back utkarsha bought some magnetic toy for his daughter. small kid arnd 10-12 years old was selling those items. out of curiousity utkarsha asked him that how much do you make by selling this. that fellow also innocently told us that he makes around 2-3 rs per piece and sales are around 15-20 pieces a day which comes to like 50-60 rs per day. and im sure there must be someone on top of him who might be eating the major share of profits (whatever that was). now thats really a meagre amount of daily earnings whereas everytime i come to mumbai my weekend expense (travel + entertainment) cross the weekly income of that fellow. i know its not a good comparison but the gap is just tooo high. i have seen ppl earning around 50k p.m. (well thats not my monthly income in case if you were thinking ;) .... just fairly common range for people around me with 3-4 yrs experience). utkarsha n i were just discussing how these people might be earning their living.

yesterday we had been to aamantraan (one of the good restraunts in mulund). we had gone there for wining n dining no occasion as such. actually my friend got his wife alongwith him so we had to choose a good quality family bar n rest. while we were having dinner some 10-12 kids walked in. all around 15-16 yrs old. each one had cell in hand alongwith some other flashy stuff. each one thought themselves as richie rich (lol i miss watching all the toons this wasnt my fav but used to watch it) it was someones b'day treat. we started discussin how we used to celebrate our bdays (if at al ;)). after the dinner we went to naturals (famous icecream parlour) and had icecream. swapnil called and he wanted to go to some dhaba (food joint especially for travellers / truck drivers etc.) we all went there ... me, RC, magrya and swapnil. i, RC and magrya were full, so we din have anythin much but swapnil ordered his food. these dhabas are very cheap but they make some of the tasty dishes. although i have never tried one as i hardly enjoy non-veg and i dont like unhygenic places (at least not anymore .... with an exception for pani puri places ;) ). we were having a gala time as we had met after long time. n while we were enjoying we just had a look around and it was majorly occupied with truck drivers n other ppl. again we touched upon the subject "how much these ppl must be earning on a daily basis" and especially considering the labour involved, long journeys that was hardly anything. but thats how it goes here. labour is dirt cheap here in india.
so the question arises is the difference in income distribution justified ? i understand that we are all educated people n we have earned our degrees n we do not fall into the labour category bla bla bla. but still from Rs 50k p.m. (again wasn't me ;) ) to Rs 1500 p.m. how can one justify that ? in fact at times i've felt that getting an education is also luxury for some people. we had a guy in our class who had to drop out after 12th due to family reasons and beilive me or not he was more talented than i was. but he had to take the correspondence route (for basic graduation) so that he could earn while he earns his degree.

we must admit that income inequality exists in every part of the world and prefectly equal distribution (if we can ever achieve it) would again be an injustice to life (thatswot i feel) but again the question arises "how much inequality is fair enuf?"

al that being said i wud say that these ppl are still far better off. recently i came across an NGO called wateraid(click here) which provides clean water to those who dont have an access to pure drinking water. these include africa and other parts of the world, some parts of india as well. this organization is dedicated to solving ppl's drinking water problems. clean drinking water is everyone's right but unfortunately its a luxury for some of them. its hard to beilieve but very true.

today i came across A R Rehman's new track "Pray for me Brother". he has shown his talent once again and came up with this album all by his own. this album supports a very nobel cause. He is a passionate supporter of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's), which is a set of promises to end poverty around the globe, hunger and disease by 2015. Hope we all can contribute something towards it.
originally i had thought of "income inequality ... how much is fair enough?" as the title for this blog entry but the rehman's title perfectly fits there :) hope he wudn have any copyright issues else i'd have 2 say pray 4 me bro ;)

now to conclude:
well most of you will criticise that its easy to feel bad but what have you done about this?
i'd say that if you experience this 10 times, probably 11th time it'd result into some action. and then i'd still refrain from donating to beggars across the road as there the genuineness of the whole situation is questionnable. so better donate to NGOs if you ever feel like.
and i'd also not say that one should feel contended with what he/she has. that will stop you from growing. but rather try to share some % (however small that may be) of your growth with the society and you will make the whole society grow and then its only human to urge for more.


- signin off
ameyas7

time to get back to work....

happy new yr to al of u al.
i know its been long since the new yr but better late than never
well i spent my new yr eve with ijoe, swati , ashwin n hari @ IIT campus. it was very unusual way to spend a new yr's eve but we had great fun. we all gathered @ ashwin's place. he lives in iit mumbai campus. after a while we had our dinner ... guess where .... @ IIT canteen n it was good :) then we just roamed around in the campus, visited the lake and took few snaps. smoe of them were orkut type ;) some were really good. then we visited some hostel roof-top where ppl were enjoying the new yr. we hanged around there for a while. unfortunately i had to resume office on 1st jan (we dint hav holiday on 1st :( ) so i left @ 2:30 AM others went to matheran (bike ride) to see the sunrise. i never thought they would make it till the top by the sunrise ;) but they got some proofs ... lol
then next week i had taken leave for my sis was here. we had blast. yash has grown up so fast :)
he is still sooo cute. we saw bhagam bhag ... no comments on the movie ;) we went go-karting, bowling ... in short had great weekend. then monday we visited my uncle's place.
on tuesday i was supposed to go back to pune. i had planned to come back on thursday n take off on friday but din work out well. so i cudn come back to see them off :( ... they went back on friday morning (dawn).
last weekend i saw guru with my parents. it is quite a good movie. it had to be... as ash was there ;) but i really din get if they were trying to show AB as good / bad. he just goes money money money all the time .... also in the end they have rushed up with the things. anyways it wasn't all that bad.
so all the fun time is about to get over and its time to put on the work pants ;)
next week we will be releasing the prototype of our product. but since we are on schedule so nothing much to worry about. so far soo goood.

well thats all for now. stay tuned for more.


- signing off
ameyas7