Shyam's Blog

With a recommendation from one of my friends, I visited Chinatown today. I was roaming around looking at colorful surroundings and doing window shopping. It is a must place to visit to see vibrant colors and to feel the buzz around any day of the week. I first got inside the Chinatown market - this place had lots of shops selling electronics and gift articles. Also, half of this place was occupied with travel agencies. As I wanted to see the street shops, I headed out of this market. "Paint your name for $10" was the board which reminded me of San Francisco. This corridor of shops was very nice with lots of small gift articles and clothes. End of the corridor was a huge Hindu Temple - Mariamman Temple! Next to this was a very huge Chinese Temple. After walking for a couple of hours, I wanted to hydrate myself and found the right choice - fresh coconut milk. After taking a break to finish this drink, I headed back home. Chinatown - A must visit window shopping place. Photos of...

I visited the Singapore Science Center today. The place is very interesting for kids in the age group of 5-15. For others, it is a matter of recap of the science lessons. Inside the science center is the Atrium, which has the Telsa coil demo twice daily. The coil generates 3.5 million volts. The demonstration was done in a very friendly manner by the host. The audience (about 150) stood forming a circle around the Tesla coil stage. When the coil was powered, electric sparks bursted out of the coil in to the air. Balloon filled with Hydrogen was kept at a distance from the coil. When the coil was ignited, the spark put the balloon into flames and exploded. Moral of the story - Helium and Hydrogen are the only other gases lighter than air. If you want to fill the birthday balloon, fill it with Helium, and not Hydrogen. Last part of the demo involved 5 volunteers from the audience. Each one was given a small fluorescent tube and were told to hold it in the air. When the coil was switched ...

I was reading today's paper and got to know that Indian telecom industry has reached 50% tele-density. After reading this, I checked for the history of Indian Telecom which dates back to 1880s. With around 5 million users in 1991, growth was expected in the next decade or two. Now, there are around 622 million telephone users (both landline and cell included), that is nearly 125 times compared to 1991! This industry is worth more than $30 billion, making it one of the top industries in India in terms of growth and revenue. No surprise, we see Airtel and other private companies sponsoring cricket tourneys like IPL and Champions League!

Got my first smart phone recently. I have been using a few apps which are really helpful. The best available available is the SG Bus Timing app which tells me bus arrivals at a given bus stand in real-time. To test my app, I searched for my bus the moment I stood at the stop. The app said, "2 mins". When the bus was few yards away from the stop, I shook my phone (which is a method to actually refresh the page). The app said, "arriving"! Am really fascinated by the accuracy. Screenshot of SG Bus Timing app on Android

How long does it take to fill a form/application for a phone connection? Around 20 minutes. Add the same process to Broadband connection, tv connection and cell phone connection. With few minutes of buffer and waste-time, it should take around 2 hours to get this done. This is exactly what happened when I went to get the above connections from one vendor here in Singapore. Though the activation of TV and cell phone connection was done instantly, internet took like an 'overnight' time. Land phone will be activated in 5 working days. Best part of the above connections - no need of any service guy to come in and do the installation. No need to give an appointment to the technician for visiting us to set up the connection. Everything is 'do-it-yourself'. Bad part of getting a connection - it took nearly 25 sheets of paper to submit the application. For each type of connection, customer details have to be put in the form. They could have made this a computer based tool and h...