Travels and figuring out

Here I'm going to explain the things I figured out the routes, on the go, during my second trip to Thailand.

Since I was traveling during the supposed peak time in Thailand, I was suggested I better get the Thai visa from India itself rather than going for Visa on Arrival which might cause delay at Airport though Thai government had announced fee waiver for VOA this year. Thai visa is easy to obtain from India through VFS in Bangalore by following the process described here http://www.vfs-thailand.co.in/Chennai/tourist.html.

The process was extremely quick(unbelievable) and easy at VFS office located at Thailand Visa Application Centre, Global Tech Park No: 11, 1st Floor, O Shaughnessy Rd, Langford Town, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560025. Laptops/CDs/Pen drives are not allowed inside the office but there is a outside store which has locker facility for use per hour. The current rate is 70 Rs. per hour. One additional detail is VFS office does not accept credit card for visa fees, only Cash can be accepted(its 2019 guys!!). I was the first one in as I reached there at 8 AM and came out in 10 minutes max. I opted to receive my passport with visa stamped through blue dart courier and I received it exactly on the 6th working day.

My trip involved going to Bangkok, Surat thani, Koh Phangan, Ao Nang - Krabi, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Bangkok in that order. In my earlier trip, I had explored little bit of Bangkok, Krabi, Phi Phi Islands in a 7 day trip.

I needed to figure 1) How to go from Suvarnabhumi Airport(aka BKK airport) to DMK airport, 2) How to reach my Hug hostel Rooftop in Chiang Mai from CNX airport, 3) How to reach Pattaya from BKK airport and then reach Nonze hostel in Pattaya, how to move around in Pattaya and 4) how to get back to Bangkok from Pattaya, 5) how to reach BKK airport from Nana BTS station and I did little prior research in figuring it out.

1) How to go from Suvarnabhumi Airport(aka BKK Airport) to DMK Airport?

I followed the instructions in this blog http://www.pausethemoment.com/bkk-to-dmk-for-free/ for going to DMK airport from Suvarnabhumi Airport(BKK). I had about 7 hours to catch the next flight at DMK to go to Surat Thani which was more than sufficient time. The free shuttle from BKK airport took about 50 minutes to reach DMK airport.

2) How to reach Hug hostel Rooftop in Chiang Mai (CNX) Airport?

Hug hostel Rooftop is located in Old city Chiang Mai, near the Old city North Gate stop.  Getting to old city from Airport takes about 15 minutes by taxi. The Chiang Mai airport has taxi that charges 125 THB to take to old city. Hug hostel Rooftop is an average hostel, the bathrooms were spacious but the sharing rooms were dorm type beds with little privacy. Since it had one single door for all the dorm members, there is a chance that you might be disturbed a lot during night or the time when you need a little relaxing. Grab taxi works in Chiang Mai but the price can vary depending the time of travel so early or late night taxi might be expensive. for eg: My early morning taxi to Airport from the hostel cost me 190 THB.



Old city North Gate stop is the place to get Songthaew (Red taxi) that takes to popular places like Doi Suthep temple located on top of mountain charging 60 THB one way.

3) How to reach Nonze hostel, Pattaya from Suvarnabhumi Airport?

At Suvarnabhumi Airport, go down to level 1 (Public Transportation), look for Exit Door 8 and catch a bus to Pattaya for 120 THB. There is a bus to Pattaya every 1 hour and seat numbers are assigned in the ticket itself. Here is an excellent blog visually describing the step by step process to get to the ticket counter https://www.markblackard.com/how-to-get-to-pattaya-from-suvarnabhumi-airport-for-120-baht/.  There are 5 bus stops in Pattaya depending on where you want to go to Pattaya. I had booked at Nonze hostel, Pattaya. So I got down at the 3rd stop which is South Pattaya intersection, walked across the bridge to get to the South Pattaya road. I took a Songthaew(Blue taxi) for 10 THB which dropped me on the Pattaya Soi 2 road running parallel to the Pattaya beach road.

4) How to reach Bangkok from Nonze hostel, Pattaya?

I took a bike taxi to reach the Pattaya AC bus terminal, cost me 100 THB. The AC bus terminal in Pattaya is located on the North Pattaya Road and buses run every half an hour to Bangkok. No prior reservation is required and it costs 108 THB to reach Ekkamai bus station in Bangkok. This blog describes the AC bus terminal in North Pattaya road http://www.bangkok.com/pattaya/magazine/pattaya-bus-terminals.htm. The Ekkamai bus station is close to Ekkamai BTS metro station. 

If you want to reach BKK airport, you may need to catch the bus terminal located at Near Food Mart Supermarket, Thappraya Road, South Pattaya.

5) How to reach BKK airport from Nana BTS station?

There are 3 days BTS metro passes available if you plan to roam around Bangkok. Since I was not staying for 3 full days I opted for a regular metro card that cost me 200 THB out of which 100 THB is not refundable and 100 THB is a usable amount for metro travel. I took a metro from Nana BTS station and took a train towards Mo Chit BTS station, alighted at Phaya Thai BTS station. Then I followed the directions by walk to go to Airport Rail Link(SRTET City Line) which required a token of 45 THB to take to Suvarnabhumi Airport(BKK). This total journey takes about 40 minutes.


 

 Note: All of these journeys and connections were easily possible as I had very light luggage.

Find Device - Andriod app

Recently I installed "Find Device" app on Android phone after watching a security video, never having imagined a situation where I would utilise the features of the app until today. 

I was on my way to the bank and while driving on my two wheeler on Road 7 in Whitefield, suddenly I realised the phone was no longer in my pocket. Unable to find the phone nearby I tried to retrace my route in my two wheeler with little hope of recovering the phone as anyone could use my phone since it is not locked. Along with the phone, the phone pouch had an ICICI Debit card, Standard Chartered Credit card and Aadhar card. In the last 2 years since I started using this system of having my cards along with my phone, I had been warned by several of my colleagues of a situation when I would lose my phone and the thief would also have access to my One Time Password(OTP) which is used for validation for any bank/paytm transactions.

On my way back, I informed the security of my apartment community also just in case, I dropped it within my community and they come to know of a lost/dropped phone. Reaching home after an unsuccessful attempt at lost phone recovery, I was reminded of the security apps I had installed a couple of months ago on phone. As soon as I looked up for the feature, google started showing my device around the same area where I realised I had dropped my phone.

I immediately used a feature to lock my device remotely and set a PIN on the phone. I was also able to ring the phone and send a message to the person who would have my phone. The remote phone ringing feature works even if the phone is in silent mode and rings upto 5 minutes continuously. I sent a message to the device providing a number to call back but there was no response. I drove immediately to the same location where I lost my phone and contacted the security personnel of the companies in that area but they couldn't help. I again returned back unsuccessful, went directly to Airtel to get a new pre-paid card and obtained one after 30 mins of processing.  The customer care personnel said it would take a minimum of 4 hours and maximum upto 24 hours to activate the pre-paid card.

After coming home, I called up ICICI customer care and Standard Chartered customer care and blocked my cards. I was pondering on the idea of reporting to Police station about loss of my phone and Aadhar card along with it but then realised it would be more of a hassle and I would rather forget my phone rather than going through an ordeal of dealing with them. I downloaded a soft copy of my Aadhar card from https://eaadhaar.uidai.gov.in which is as valid as the original card. After a little bit of research, figured that Aadhar card loss does not require an FIR to be filed as it is a common occurrence.  At the same time, now it was a couple of hours since I lost my phone and above site still showed the device at the same location. I thought of blocking my Airtel postpaid connection after waiting for a couple of days with slight hope that the person having my phone would call my back and I need to keep that communication channel open.

At about 4:45 pm in the evening,  my mother suggested that I should go look to see if my phone was lying on the road and no one might have picked it up as I was imagining. I again looked up on the site and saw the device was at a different location, moving toward Seetharamapalya/Hoodi. The movement was not fast and it was understandable that the person is walking towards home after work. At about 15 minutes of following the device over google site, it stopped moving. I was thinking what if the person I'm trying to reach doesn't communicate in English and was thinking of sending a message in hindi. My mother suggested that I should try to send message in kannada and it is most likely he did not know how to attend the call or operate the phone. If the person had no intention to return the phone, he would have turned it off and removed the sim. 

I used google translator and sent a message in kannada asking to return my phone along with my landline number. I immediately got a callback on my landline. It was a female voice and she asked me to collect it from near "Ram temple" in Basavanna nagar, Seetharamapalya. I was excited that somebody responded and feeling good about the fact that there is still hope about recovering a lost phone in such a country with so many people. I went near Ram temple and called my phone again, there was a man who instructed me to come further. I told him you could verify from my Aadhar card that I was the same person I was claiming to be. He did not accept the money I gave to him as a reward for returning my phone. All the items on my phone was intact except the fact that the screen was totally smashed and it looked like some vehicle had run over it. The consoling fact is I still have access to all my contacts/apps on my phone and I no longer have to cancel my connection and wait of 5 day time it might take for activating that number again. 

Airtel 4G data plan in India(Bangalore) - postpaid connection

I walked into a airtel store in Nandidurga road, R.T.Nagar and filled out an application form that required a passport photo. No address proof required as they would request for a local person who can attest for you. They would provide a SIM card for postpaid connection and said it would activate in 4 hours. They also did an instant verification with the local contact you provided. The person also said that they would provide frequent updates to the alternate number I had provided.

While the process was simple, some of the claims were untrue. There were a couple of additional steps which I was not aware.

First: There was a televerification process I had to go through. I had to call an airtel number from my alternate number to complete the televerification process.

Second: The 4 hour activation claim was untrue.

Third: An airtel person appeared on my door that evening to verify me in person and took my photograph as a proof along with my employer details.

Fourth: The activation happened after 48 hours.  The internet connection was spotty and inconsistent for the first day after activation.

I had purchased a 10GB monthly plan for 999 Rs but playing youtube for halfday consumed 50% of my data plan in a day. So I'm now limited to only using my dataplan for browsing purposes.

The customer care was not very helpful during the activation process as the automated voice would always tell me postpaid number was invalid. More over there does not seem to be an option to talk to a real person.

I also read that I can top up my dataplan using smartbytes http://www.airtel.in/forme/home/smartbytes

You can also check your data usage by logging on to your airtel account at airtel.in by providing your phone number and supplying the OTP that would be sent to your alternate number. Lot of lessons learnt with this experience at Airtel, India.

I had some connectivity issues with my internet 4G connection where it would time out every couple of minutes or so. I suspected the hotspot device and the SIM card initially. Later after testing the hotspot and SIM card in different areas in bangalore, figured the connection near my house was spotty. Now airtel has a bigger problem to figure out and I have to live with this problem until Airtel fixes it.

work hard

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

fiddling with iPad

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

/*iPad orientation events*/

detectOrientation();
window.onorientationchange = detectOrientation;

function detectOrientation(){

if(typeof window.onorientationchange != 'undefined'){
if(orientation === 90){
// landscape mode
}//end if

else if (orientation === -90){
//Other landscape mode
});

}//end else if

else{
//Portrait mode
}//end else

}
}

iPad touch events:


jQuery("#element").bind("touchstart",function(){
e.preventDefault();
});


jQuery("#element").bind("touchend",function(){
e.preventDefault();
/*Other code here*/
});

jQuery(document).bind("touchstart",function(){
e.preventDefault();
/*Other code here*/
});



});

laptop stolen

Read this article for ways to get it back.


reddit helps!

Interviews and experience

Last year around same time, I started attending interviews and came across some invaluable pointers which I could share.

• Talk to lot of recruiters/employers and figure out their approach, their expectations in the candidate
• Take up as many interviews as possible, this would help equip ourselves and getting better at cracking them
• Set up for a telephonic interview first in order to let them assess whether they are willing to go ahead
  
• Be utmost professional to them, give them a call when you promised so or be ready to take up the call when you promised to be available
  
• Never take up unprofessional behavior from recruiters/employers, this in itself will show how you are likely be treated once you are there
  
• Read up everything put up in the resume, backing it up with real life incidents
• Keep up in your technology related blogs and trends for at least 2 months before the interview if you do not already practice it
• Note down the questions asked in the interviews and look up answers for those which you couldn't answer.
• If you want to qualify yourself for the job even before attending an interview, develop some reusable code and share it with online community
• Ultimately remember that employer - employee relationship is a business partnership and it should not require employee to jump hoops to get the job
  

If you would like to know something more specific, feel free to ask.

accidents and claim

6 months before, I was driving around in a rental car and was getting out of a parking lot. I see a woman in front of me trying to park her car. I stopped far behind and was waiting for her to park. Since she could not fit into the parking space, she came in the reverse, did not notice that I was behind her car, hit my front bumper and cause few dents on the bumper of the car. The woman(crying) accepted her fault and a person from her insurance called me after a while and told that since it was her fault, her insurance will take care of repaying for the damages. Since it was my first time having met with an accident, I was not aware that we need to file a police complaint even though the damages were minor. After a couple of hours closely missing hitting another car thinking about this incident, I handed the car back to my rental company, reported the incident and got another car expecting that if I keep the car, the damages would be imposed citing, I caused those damages. I could literally see the rental guys jumping since they got a chance to claim from a hugely popular insurance company.

Fast forward 6 months later(that is now), a representative from my rental company calls and tells me the woman's insurance is not paying for the damages since the "reported damages did not match the actual damages on the car". It looks like that is a loop hole in the system when there is no proof of police complaint. The bills comes up as $500 and now I'm responsible for paying the damages.That was a total shocker to me who believed in fairness and justice. My internal voice was screaming "Why should I pay for something I didn't cause?". In fact I'm traumatized by that event. I should have sued her. Whenever I see someone backing up in front of my car, I'm terrified. I was lucky to have a third party insurance from hotwire. But there were several questions in my mind whether the insurance would pay for it as I had no police complaint(one among the several documents they require to pay for the claim). I had to scour for a couple of weeks for documents and stuff to provide my insurance guys and they finally paid for the damages. Still I feel bad for my insurance provider as it was never our fault.

Moral: Always file a police complaint for your proof.

Previous conquests:
1.Lost baggage claim from British airways
2. Two wheeler theft insurance from bajaj alliance
3. Duplicate H1 battle

Dancing

Somebody ingeniously defined Dancing like this.

- It is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

Steve jobs

Steve Jobs died, i cried, hearing about his death on iPhone, while watching his memorial video on my mac book. Hats off to you the inventor of my era. He left a deep impression on us, thanks to his work ethics and innovative apple products.

Communication gap?

Conversation between an Indian guy and American girl:

IG: Do you like to Dance?(curious if the person next to him likes dance)
AG : I have a boyfriend.

IG: You dance really good(intended to be a compliment).
AG: I'm with a friend.

Seriously, Aren't the answers irrelevant to the question or statement?

2 jobs

I think everybody should have 2 jobs one job indoor(working with machines) and another outdoor(working with people) everyday. 4 hours indoor work and 4 hours outdoor. There will be more satisfaction and more productivity.

Befitting description of a scorpio moon

With his ghostly complexion, floppy white hair (when it is not dyed or cropped to disguise his identity) and droning bass monotone, Assange not only behaves like a character sprung to life from a science-fiction screenplay but he even looks and sounds like one.

Numerous interviews with close associates of Assange and others who have dealt with him extensively paint a picture of a man who can be brilliant and charming one minute but insufferable the next, who has alienated many of those around him and whose erratic personality risks undermining his mission.

Jack Shafer, press critic for the online magazine Slate, wrote that Assange "possesses such an ego-swollen head it's a miracle that he can walk without toppling over."

On a personal and political level, however, he is a complex, volatile, sometimes inscrutable, often difficult man, according to people who have worked with him.

German publisher, Domscheit-Berg says about Assange: "It is not for nothing that many who have quit refer to him as a 'dictator.' He thinks of himself as the autocratic ruler of the project and believes himself accountable to no-one."

To his most ardent admirers -- and there still are many, including the hackers who have launched repeated cyber attacks on his perceived enemies -- even if Assange's activities and personality is flawed, his achievements and brilliance should earn him forbearance.

Suelette Dreyfus, the Australian author whose book on hackers Assange helped to research, put it this way: "It does take a certain type of strength and backbone to do (what Assange does), and these are pretty rare qualities because the risks are pretty high."

To talk truth we need courage.
To abide by it we require a stoicism.
To lay bare the truth , what do we need? Stern complacency, strict faith and an invincibility, which has made Assange different from the crowd.

I was thinking INTJ but Sarah brings up a good point for INTP. All I keep thinking is 'what is his angle on this?' 'what does he have to gain?'

If he was an INTJ I believe he would have made some demands and the information may not have ever been released. I have no clue what his goal is at this time, so just going by the information at hand, it seems like his main goal is just to expose the truth. Wanting to expose the truth is something I believe many INTPs wouldn't mind doing. Also I've read he is a former hacker. Hackers are typically more INTP than INTJ. INTJs are better at building software and systems, whereas INTPs are more apt to finding loopholes and exploiting the system.

I was thinking INTJ at first but now I'm learning toward INTP until we find out more.

Courage is contagious

"Whoever the terrorists are here, it’s not us," Assange told MSNBC. He also had harsh words about presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. “It’s just another idiot trying to make a name for himself." That might be the quote of the year.

What do we want to know anyhow? We want to know how he did it. This riddle remains. And this riddle is inseparable from the man: charismatic and threatening in equal measure, leaving even the fiercest critics unable to casually disregard it—and him. Not unlike another figure on another planet in the political solar system, Sarah Palin, Assange’s opponents may hate his mission, ideology, tactics, and even appearance, but they cannot deny he has moved our on an important issue, and raised a concomitant threat. He has made us emotional: presidents, generals, mothers of soldiers serving overseas. He has made us angry, and only ever more so in proportion to his icy cool.

In his writing online, especially on Twitter, Assange is quick to lash out at perceived enemies. By contrast, on television, where he has been appearing more frequently, he acts with uncanny sang-froid. Under the studio lights, he can seem—with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead—like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth. This impression is magnified by his rigid demeanor and his baritone voice, which he deploys slowly, at low volume.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz19Mb74cQW

I think i should try a career in sales, for I have inspired people in buying two of my favorite brands, netflix and apple.

Or is it just liking the things which the people you like, like.

how to get facebook email

To get an Invitation

1. Login to your facebook account

2. Go to the http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

3. Click "Request an Invitation" button

4.You will have to wait for the invitation for a couple of days

5.After a couple of days, you receive an alert on the messages tab on your facebook.

6.You'll get an @facebook.com email id with your firstname and lastname separated by dots.

format : firstname.lastname@facebook.com

To invite your friends

1.Go to "messages" on your facebook

2.At the bottom of the page, find "invite friends"

3.At the maximum, you can invite 10 friends as of now

4.Invite them and have fun with facebook email

host a site on the internet

I was looking for a long time for some options to have a web site hosted on the internet. And of course a low cost option till the site starts generating money. I searched various forums and came across webhostingworld.net. The basic plan is the bronze plan which costs $12/year. Cant be cheaper than that.

Some of the features that I found interesting on the Control panel were:

• a phpMyAdmin interface
• a ftp site
• any number of email addresses
• a single domain name

The domain name takes 48 hrs to be available, till then the site provides a temporary url to access to the site. That was a welcome feel.

Update: I was under the impression that hosting the site includes registration of domain name with the hosting service. But I was wrong. It comes with additional of $15/yr to register a domain name. So I'll be using the temporary url till my site implements some cool functionality.

some of my favourite quotes

A compilation of my fav quotes over past 6 months or so:

• Success does not require any skill except PASSION
• Thoughts Become Things!
• Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working
• Remember it in your dark moments when the weight isn’t coming off, when you’re poor, or when you can’t think of a way to write something down. Relax. Keep going. It will come.
• “If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” - Bruce Lee
• Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious

learn white hat hacking by following 4 steps

1. Study an operating system such as : Linux/Unix/Win NT, 2000
2. Learn at least one programming language(c/c++/perl/php/python)
3. Learn how networking technologies work(TCP/IP, Ethernet)
4. Join forums like http://hackforums.net/ to learn more
5. Take interest in CEH certification. Everything will fall along.

The below diagram is the heart of networking:

Repeat typed command

First command was :
c:/shrinivas ping www.google.com
Request timed out

c:/shrinivas
To repeat the same command in DOS, using up/down arrows, access "cmd" from the run menu in Windows instead of "command" from the run menu.

php

php is cool and awesome. Got a site up and running in 3 hrs excluding the time taken to set up mysql and integrating it with php in mac osx. Thanks to headfirst php and mysql.

Any cool ideas for a site which you may have been aspiring to create or looking for help?