s_yajaman's blog

I have been living in Bombay for the past 15 months.  Chose a place to live close to my children's school to minimize their commute.  A number of my (now ex-) colleagues live in the same area - some in the same building, some within 5 minutes walk.   I changed jobs in Jan and my new office is about 1.7 km from my old. 

Here is an article from todays DH.  http://www.deccanherald.com/content/257985/high-court-says-road-widening.html

A couple of years ago, Puttenahalli Lake, JP Nagar 7th Phase (near Brigade Millennium) was a garbage dump. Today it is filled up with a fair amount of fresh water with 200 trees around and is home to more than 50 species of birds, including European migratories. My wife and three others, along with the BBMP, were instrumental in bringing the lake back from the brink of extinction.

 My wife and I went yesterday to the Indiranagar RTO to renew her DL.  As soon as we stepped into "the zone" there were touts offering help.  We, of course, ignored them and walked up to the RTO.  

As we walked up we realized that my wife's DL said "RTO BNG CENTRAL" (Koramangala) and we wondered what trouble that would mean.  But we decided to check anyway.

There was a helpdesk there.  It was operational.  We asked the lady there if we could renew the license here.  She gave us the forms and asked us to check at Window 3 if it was possible.  We also realized there was a medical fitness certificate (completely in Kannada) to be got from a doctor.

At Window 3 there was a reasonably helpful lady.  She told my wife that it was possible to do it there.  She confirmed if the address remained unchanged.  She asked us to write a letter requesting that the license be renewed there.   

We paid the Rs.250 fee at the cash counter and my wife went to get her MC done.

 Those of us living in apartments might know that an annual inspection of the electrical installations in our buildings (DG set, earthing, wiring, lifts, etc) by the KSEI is mandatory.

This is their vision (from their citizen's charter).

Was checking if there were any fines against my car's number at www.btis.in.  None.  Then I decided to do a random sampling of cars on unpaid fines.

Did a random sample of 100 cars across the 5 RTOs for unpaid violations and fine amounts.  This would be fairly representative as the number is quite large for a sample.

The other big theme that I follow is peak oil.  There has been a flurry of articles in the mainstream media that last few days on this topic. 

Have been chastisized by Tarle for pouring ATF on burning embers in a previous post and not using my praja time on more useful things :).