Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Graphistudio

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Graphistudio

I just received my Graphistudio sample album today.  The leather binded wedding album comes in a elegant black suit case with a matching parent book set.  The sample album includes photos printed in different samples papers including, semi-gross paper in offset printing, gross paper with lamination and metallic prints.  It is very easy to order an album.  You just have to upload the pictures with to their FTP server, then submit an order form specifying the layout for each picture.  Graphistudio is probably the most high-end wedding album printing service I have seen.  The whole album is printed and binded in Italy.  It definitely beats the quality of your local print shop.  Don’t even mention to the crappy album come with the photo package from HK wedding studio.  It is like compare a Ferrari to a Hyundai, they are in two different league.  Highly recommended to couples who are planning their wedding.  Wedding album is the only thing, maybe except the video, in your wedding that you will often look back in 40 years.  It is a good investment to capture your finest moment in the best wedding album that you can afford.

Daily Scribble

Vacation at home

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After over 24 hours of flying, finally I arrived at the Vancouver International Airport.  The long flight from India to Canada is though, taking off at 3a.m. make it even worse.  Usually when I take vacation, I will fly away from home and spend my times off in some where else.  This is the first time I fly back home for vacation.  I have a 2 weeks break in between my 2 months India assignment.  Life would be quite miserable if I have to stay there for 2 months continuously.  Actually it is not really a vacation, I still have to come to work in the head office.  However, comparing to working in India, going to work in Vancouver already seems like a vacation to me.

Daily Scribble

Goodbye Bangalore

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Tomorrow night, I will be flying home leaving this stinky (literally) city.  This is the end of my first month work assignment in Bangalore.  It is an eye opening experience.  I see many new things and learn to look at the world from a different prespective.  Although I am not interested in any of them in particular.  It is just totally out of my imagination that a whole country or culture can be this screwed up.  My India experience confirms my believes that some culture are indeed better than others.  We can actually measure the evolution progress of different cultures by measuring how advance they are.

Having exposure to oversea outsourcing management is an asset nice to have.  However only time can tell whether it worths sacrificing two months living alone in a strange city away from loved ones.  My main objective is accomplished in the first two weeks of my trip.  The rest of the time, I am just sitting there answering stupid questions.   Ok.  There are a few real questions, but most of the questions are just plain dumb or can easily deal with over the phone or via email.  At the same time I am trying to get my own work done at 50% productivity or less.  I am sure I would be much more efficient staying in Vancouver than in Bangalore.

It seems my life in Bangalore is so pointless than the only highlight of my day is to go out for a  nice dinner.  I am trying out all the expensive restaurants in town.  I bet I have been to more non-Indian restaurants than most local people.  I am already suffering from having Indian food for lunch, I got have some real food for dinner.  I am sure the company had saved a lot of money from outsourcing to India, so I am just helping the company to utilize some of the saving.

Sigh.  I have to come back for another month after two weeks break back home.  Let’s see how can I make my next stay in Bangalore less unpleasant.

Daily Scribble

Dine out Bangalore

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There are many nice restaurants to have good food in Bangalore. I have been trying out new restaurants every night after work. The company has save a lot of money by outsourcing to India, I figure I should help them spend some of the saving on gourmet food. It is nice when you can expense your dinner to the company account, you don’t have to worry about whether the dish worth the price, you only have to worry about whether the food taste good or not.

Eating local food in Bangalore is very cheap. A very nice Indian dinner is only 200 rupee, about $5. However, having real food in Bangalore is relatively very expensive, the price is still slight cheaper than Vancouver. It cost $30 to have dinner in a fine dining restaurant and $50 in a 5 star hotel. The average daily wage in India is 100 rupee, so my dinner costs an Indian’s salary for the whole month. Well, the company is paying for it, who cares about the price?

In Bangalore, most restaurants only open for dinner after 7p.m., some restaurants won’t even open until 8p.m. The guest house is located in the out skirt of the city, so it is about 30-45 minutes away from most of the good restaurants. Even though I have to spend an extra hour stuck in traffic to have some nice food, the long journey definitely worth the long journal.

Here is the record of my quest for good food, highly recommend to all business travelers to Bangalore: I only list the name of the restaurant and my comment here. Please look up the address and phone number in Google, it should be easy to find.

Blue Ginger in Taj West End Hotel – Taj West End Hotel is like a forest inside the city. You can enjoy real South East Asia food sitting next to a beautiful lagoon under the tree. The air quality in the hotel is really good, you don’t suffer from the pollution on the street.

Mainland China at Church Street – This is probably the best restaurant in Bangalore you can find real Chinese food, instead of crappy Indian-Chinese food.

Mandarin Room in Grand Ashok Hotel – Another restaurant with real Chinese food. It is on the top floor of the Grand Ashok Hotel overlooking the whole city. Very nice view.

Sunny’s at Lavelle Road – Nice French and Italian cruise. I had my first steak in Bangalore here.

Windsor Grill in Windsor Manor Hotel – Pool side BBQ in a luxury hotel. Yes, you can also order steak here.

Zen in Leela Palace – Leela Palace is the most luxurious hotel in town. Go figure.

Fiorano at 100 Feet Road – Nice Italian restaurant close to the Forum Mall, which is next to the guest house.

Via Milano at 80 Feet Peripheral Road – Another nice Italian restaurant close to the Forum Mall.

I.T.Alia in Park Hotel – Probably the best Italian restaurant I had so far. It is very small, don’t forget to make a reservation.

Bangalore Bistro – This roof top restaurant offer an unique dining experience with close-enough French cruise.  The tables are carved out of stone and have a peddle of water in the middle with floating rose paddle and candle.  It is very hard to find, better call them to ask for direction.

Daily Scribble

Cultural Experience

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When we travel aboard, we love to claim that we are there to experience the culture.  We tends to look down on package tour that lock tourists up inside air conditioned coaches and only released them at specific spots to take a few snapshots.  It seems the cultural experience is what distinct intelligent travelers from dumb tourists.  Love to experience culture works fine when traveling to places with lovely culture.  Walking down the Louvre like a French, having Cappuccino like an Italian or soaking hot spring like a Japanese all sound very cool.  You can always learn something new and useful from those rich cultures by interacting with the local people.

However, there is a dilemma when traveling to places with not so lovely culture.  Why would anyone want to experience the mess in India?  Why would anyone want to experience the uncivilized vegetarian diet culture?  It is OK to try it for the first times, so that you can claim it sucks and stay away from it forever.  There is simply nothing to learn from those backward cultures.  Why bother?  I guess the only reason someone want to experience those culture is becoming an armature anthologist, observe the culture first hand and explain why it sucks to satisfy his academic curiosity.