Ravi's Blog

Well, I guess the best example is me. When I was in school, I used to do a lot of cycling. A real lot. On weekends, I used to go cycling for 70 to 80 Kilometers. No exaggeration. Honestly. At about 20 kilometers per hour, I used to do 40 in 2 hours during morning, take rest for a while at the destination, and come back in the evening cycling for another 2 hours.

Then I bought a computer, and that put an end to my cycling. Absolutely no exercise since then. I’m neither fat nor slim, but I have no muscles (There is one muscle and thats big enough though, don’t want to talk about that in public). I tried to go to gyms here and there occasionally, but couldn’t stay there for long.

I have been reading a lot about these recently, and found out that physical fitness is quite important for keeping a healthy mind. And guess what, I’m seriously considering buying some fitness equipment already.

I guess Limited Visiblity is the term. India is a great country, but unfortunately it is a dirty country as well. How do you seperate the beauty from the dirty? Well, you need digital cameras to do that. You could do it with the antiquated film cameras too, but since you cant really process them digitally with ease, I guess it is not a good alternative to the digital cameras that we have on the markets today.

What are these banks trying to prove? Are they not happy with the new RBI policy of free Inter Bank ATM transactions?

I lost some money last week while trying to make a withdrawal from an ATM. I tried to withdraw money from an ICICI ATM close to my house from my UBI account and I lost the money and ICICI and UBI both refused to help me with it, and I shot a mail to ICICI support telling them that Chandra Kochar can utilize that money to buy some sexy lingerie for herself and they promptly replied saying that they did not appreciate my mail and that it was lack of professionalism. who is lacking professionalism here?

Today my friend had gone to an SBI ATM that is close to his place to withdraw Rs. 1000 from his ICICI account, and the same thing that happened to me happened to him too. Network error, money taken from his account, and he didn’t get the money, and as usual, just like everyone does, he threw away the slip that he got from the ATM. No proof that way. I guess his money would be gone too. Without the slip, there is no way of prooving that you have not taken the money and that you have really had a network error, and the banks will not bother to check their logs if the money has really ben dispensed or not.

This is a serious problem. Lets say you are a salaried person and at the end of the month, when you have only around Rs 5000 in your account, and you get into a medical emergency and the hospital is asking you to deposit Rs 5000. You go to the ATM, and it swollows your money. Its the middle of the night, money gone, and no ways to reclaim that money back, and you are in a medical emergency. Imagine the kind of trauma that you will get into. People would rather have paid the Rs. 20 fee for the transactions rather than getting into this kind of trouble.

Should we stop using the ATMs? Should we go visit the bank when we need to withdraw money the old fashioned way? Because the only proof that you can possibly get in a situation like this is the slip that you get from the ATM, and atleast here in Pondicherry, most of the times all ATMs are out of paper, and for most of the other times, the prints are hardly legible.

It is money, and private banks would be glad the keep the money for themselves rather than let you have it back, and in the court only documents speak and if you are without a document that supports your claim, the bank would just say that the cash was dispensed and would ask us to bring the ‘proof’ for our claim that the money was not dispensed.

I am writing to RBI anyways today. But getting a reply from RBI is a tough job too. Takes a lot of time. You need to send a letter through registered post first, and you will not get a reply fro that. Then you will have to spend another Rs 10 and file an RTI application to get a response, and they will manage to reply with a stupid reply asking for details that we will never have, and that the banks will never give us. The transaction id for example.

This really is, a serious problem.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• ravisblog

Guess who is the new featured writer at Helium’s Featured Writer at the Computers and Technology Section. Me. I didnt know that and nor did helium send me a notification, but a fellow helium user sent me a mail seeing this. I dont know how long I am going to be a featured writer listed on this page, so I just took a screenshot of the page.

I guess it should be an honour that Helium has selected me as a featured writer for this section. Heres the screenshot.

Click here for a bigger image, of the page on helium where it says this

Click here for the list of my articles on Helium

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.