Ravi's Blog

Its just about 4 months since I first visited Goa, stayed there for a week, and time has come for me to plan my next trip there. During the season, which is during December. I have been celebrating my birthday alone for the past few years, and this year too I have planned to pack my wife away to her home for a month during December and settle myself in Goa for about 15 days from November 28th to December 13th. The bloody airfares have gone up, and I guess I will have to travel by train this time and save about 8000 bucks.

I will not be taking a hotel reservation this time. No online booking or nothing. I plan to land there and change rooms every 2 days across every part of Goa and enjoy the whole of Goa. God a budget of Rs 50,000 all inclusive. A jeep would cost Rs 1000 a day, thats Rs 15000, stay would cost another 20,000 in total, and beer would cost another Rs 5000, then the remaining would be for food and fuel. That is a lavish budget I guess, for a man traveling alone to Goa, and that too a low profile Indian who has to blog for a living, and design websites once in a while.

Huge super markets barcode their products at their end to make billing easier. When a customer brings his shopping cart to the counter, all the clerk has to do is to pass the bar code strip stuck to a product across the scanner, and it recognizes the item number and fills the bill with the appropriate values from the database, such as name of the product, price and stuff, and the quantity might need to be entered manually if the customer has taken more than 1 of the product, and the total is printed by the computer, and the whole process should last only a few minutes, and this way a lot of time is saved by the super market.

A smaller store that is budget minded might not be able to afford the barcode printing hardware and software, and their right shop should be zebra s4m , which is a printer for printing and publicising their products at the point of sale.

When you are in a country such as India, you will have to depend entirely on Paypal or other gateways such as moneybookers, 2co etc. And without a credit card, there would be nothing much that you could do to get transactions done. And all these gateways are expensive and at the end of the financial year, you will realize that you have ended up in spending a lot of your money on these payment gateway service charges, which you could have easily evaded if you had a bank account in the US so that you could use a down to earth payment gateway that charges you only about 2.2% for all your credit card transactions.

When I searched for an offshore bank account in the US or in any other country, a lot of Account Opening Kits, with which we could open an account with just a copy of our passport. And these kits costs anywhere from $10 to $250. If you think of buying that, you would get nowhere. And thats what google is all about isnt it? Just promoting spam contents like this.

So how do you open an offshore Bank account? The best thing to do would be to visit that country where you would like to have the offshore bank account with all documents that you have got. If its for business, that would be the best and would provide more value, however, you might have to register a company in the country if you want a business account there.

If its a personal account that you require, just give them a passport copy that is notarised by a local lawyer anywhere in the world, and you can open an account in any bank wiht your home address anywhere in the world. Find the best bank that suits your requirement, say something like 0 initial deposit, unlimited outward swift transfers and unlimited incoming transfers, and a good looking check book.

It is as simple as that. But if you cant visit the country, or think its a waste of money or if you dont have a budget, you could get someone to do it for you who is already there in the US, someone whom you would trust.

I am not sure about the tax stuff, like in which country it would be applicable and all. Please check that for yourself, as I would not like to comment on that.

Loads of companies assemble the PCs themselves, lock the box and ship it to you. You never know whats inside, if its screwed properly, or has rusted due to the humidity in your place. And, branded PCs are always expensive. It is a good idea to get the components that make a PC yourself and put them together. It is no big deal. The PC comes with about 11 components, and all you need to do is to plug them all to the motherboard, and when you switch it on, you could install the Operating System, either Windows or Linux, and start using your PC.

But if you dont know how to do it, where and how would you buy the components? How would you find out the list of stuff that you need to go for? I can ofcourse give you a list of things that you need to by, but I canot tell you the best product thats available in your local market that comes with the best price as well. In India, Mercury is the cheapest and best motherboard, but if I have the budget, I would definitely go for original Intel or Asus only. So, it would be a better idea if you could get your computer parts in a kit with which you could build a PC with just a screw driver. You will find it amusing when you see what you ca build, and this way, you wil find that you would have saved a lot of money from a Branded PC.

I spent about a week in Goa, all by myself, with no family, no friends, no travel companion, or any friends made there. I spent my time as I liked, did what I liked, went where I liked and when I liked. There was no one or nothing that influenced what ever I did. No one who said that it was boring that that we could do something else, no times up and lets get to a bar, or I have a hangover so we’ll go out later n stuff. It was my will and wish for everything that happened during the week, and there was nothing that damped anything in getting the best out of my vacation.

You will like this series of posts only if,

1. You prefer to travel alone rather than traveling with anyone else atleast once in a while.
2. You do not intend to meet up with people and look around with them.
3. You are a lazy goon who does nothing with order, but still manage to look around all place capture stuff on your camera, drink lots of beer and eat a lot.
4. You are not looking at travelling to Goa for Women or Drugs.
5. You have got a pretty decent budget. Nothing big, just about $1000 or Rs. 40,000/- for everything including the hotel stay for 7 day, vehicle rentals, petrol, and your air ticket within India.

If you are looking at landing at the Mapusa railway station in a 2nd class coach with about Rs 4000 or $100 in your pocket looking for 2 days of cheap fun, please close the window and get back to google to search for something else, as if you read this, it might make you feel a bit depressed.

If you have a bigger budget, I am sure that there are a lot more things to do in Goa, but I dont know what all, so my posts might not interest you, but you could get a very basic idea on what is what in Goa if you have never been there.

During my week long stay in North Goa, I have traveled thru each and every road that is laid there, and I have it all mapped in my mind, and particularly to the beaches, the temples and various churches. Unfortunately, I will not be able to name the roads correctly, since everything is in Portuguese and I have the vaguest idea about the language and the pronunciations and spellings. But I shall try to do my best.

Travel from Pondicherry to Goa

On the night of the 1st of May, the taxi operator to whom I regularly go if I want a car (I dont own a car you know) had called me and told me that the 2nd of May had a Bandh declared by BJP against price hikes and inflation, and there might be problems in reaching the Chennai Airport the next day, and he advised me start early, at about 8 AM from my home, for a 2 hour 30 minutes drive to the Chennai Airport, for my flight which is scheduled to take off at 3.50 PM, and I had to check in at around 2 PM. I just said Ok, but was worried if I would miss my flight, and my vacation. I was really looking forward to this vacation and was hoping that nothing would be there to stop me.

The next morning I was a bit apprehensive, and was calling everyone everywhere I knew on how the bandh was going on, any voilence, are the busses plying and everything, waking up everyone who had decided to wake up late on that day.

The car arrived, and the driver was sounding very excited about getting me safely to the airport. And since I told them that I had to get to the International Airport and not to the domestic airport, they might have assumed that I might be travelling to some international destination, but it so happens that I am travelling to Goa on a plane that is bound to Kuwait, which is unfortunately the only direct flight from Chennai to Goa, and costs a bit more as well, compared to the other domestic flights.

The driver was super fast, and he reached the outskirts of Chennai at around 10 AM, with absolutely no problems, and negotiating with a lot of Trucks and Busses on the way as well. I just asked the driver to take me to the Vandaloor Zoo for a while, where I thought I could capture some birds and animals on camera since I guess it should be over 20 years since I visited any zoo. I shot some photos, killed some time, and was at the airport at 1 PM. Had my lunch at a restaurant there and waited there till the Indian Airlines Counter was opened.

Contd……….