GOA - My Experience

Goa really is a branded tourist destination. It has everything for all kinds of tourist.No wonder foreigners just keep coming back time and again.The beaches calangute-baga-condolim are all good for enjoying the waves, the water temperature is also very comfortable, every other shop serves you liquor, place is always buzzing with happy tourists and there is not even a single dull moment in Goa.

Calangute is first stop for all Indian tourists, the number keeps increasing y-o-y. Scooter rides, para-sailing, banana ride keeps them excited and busy.In ten years time Goa will attract at-least four times as many tourist from India.With economy booming, middle-class population increasing by millions every year and people having started to spend money on travelling, Goa is going to get busier in coming years.The food is 20-30 % cheaper than other cities in India.Expect that to multiple at-least 3 times in next 10 yrs.As of now Goa as a whole is at least 30% cheaper than Phuket,Thailand with similar beaches & landscape minus the open sex elements.

I liked the beaches more during early morning around 6am and in the evenings after 6 pm. The tranquility and sounds of waves have therapeutic effect on your mind.Its like meditation, brings all your nerves to calm and you feel the joy within.Also, especially, in the morning there is hardly any one, so one can listen to sound waves without any interruptions or noise. No body seem to rise early in Goa, the localites work late in the night, and open their shops and shacks only after 9 am in the morning.Most of the tourists keep enjoying their Kingfisher late into the the night and very few can be found jogging early in the morning.The Yoga meditation sessions early mornings are like bliss.

Bikes/cars can be hired to visit other beaches & sightseeing.I hired a scooty for Rs200/- per day.One needs to pay advance and a photo identity and should have a driving license( random police checkings happens once in a week).These vehicles are generally in good condition, petrol costs Rs60/- a litre.

Several localites approached me for drugs & prostitutes.It means that drugs are still a big business there,though done in discreet manner.The guy gave me a complete list of narcotic drugs available on short notice with complete price list.They also mentioned Russian prostitutes available for Rs15,000/- per s... & Indian girls for over Rs 6000/- per night. The govt is trying to make Goa a clean tourist destination without drugs/prostitutions/massage par-lours. I think they need to cover some more distance in that front.

Several disco's have opened employing girls to lure you in, where entry charge ranges between Rs 200-500.These disco's are different from Tito. These are meant for single people, who go in there, buy drink for one of the lady dancers (one drink will cost between Rs 200-500 ) and then one can dance with her for sometime, its a money snatching scheme.When Dance Bars closed down in Mumbai, lot of people wondered whatever happened to those bar dancers.One can find them dancing on one of these Discos, playing with customers, making deals with them and talking in a way which is very typical of mumbai bar dancer.Heard they also double as escorts.

Kingfisher marketing team has done a fabulous marketing & branding exercise in Goa.Beer means Kingfisher in Goa, though I am fan of Budweiser and think its lot better than Kf premium & Kf strong beer tastes horrible. Kingfisher really have built a big brand by entering into F1 & airlines & the marketing exercise begins in England with direct flights from several cities there, that helps a lot in building the trust.The kingfisher villa in goa looks stupendous, liquor baron does have tons of money, though the airline biz is bleeding profusely. Its time other beer companies start reworking their strategy vis-a-vis Goa, good way to globalize the brand.

There is lot that can be said about Goa, the culture, friendly people, safe destination, opportunity for friendship, endless beaches, holiday spirit & atmosphere, die hard goa fans and unending beer drinking sessions.

Only sore sight for me was lack of cleanliness.Not even a single waste box in entire beach while lot of vendors selling eatable stuffs on paper bags and plastic cups.The sands in the beaches are mixed with paper ,plastic cups and other garbage.Either you provide waste bins every 20 meters or stop eatable vendors from selling things on beach.Action needs to be taken now.There is simply no arrangement for waste disposal.

        Taxi stands are too filled with waste strewn all over. How difficult is it to spend money on keeping city clean, where so much revenues are generated ever year ? Indians can create the worlds most sophisticated software but cant keep a city clean ? Make littering an offence and fine at least Rs 200 for each offence, discipline the shack owners and shopkeepers. Cleanliness is a culture, and responsibility should fall on everybody, handful of people cant be expected to clean mess created by millions of visitors.Its high time hygiene is taken very seriously with huge investment on waste management as well. 

Film Review : ISHQIYA

Another movie in a week and some more precious hours wasted.This time I have made a firm decision  not to spend a single rupee on any first-time-director's attempt.Expectations were high, because the look of movie bore resemblance to Omkara, also Vishal has written/produced the movie. But it comes noway near and greatly disappoints.
Its a revenge film where protagonist is the heroine.Unfortunately we didnt feel any emotions when she finally met her objective.Why ?  The plot which lead to the revenge wasnt told well, the main plot languished in the background and film was flowing directionless throughout. Even they tried to show that villian had some good shades too which again made the story week.
Even the deciet was not convincing enough. The film tried to tell that the heroine had sex with one of the characters so that he can work for her .But the guy agreed to help her even before having sex, so it was just a futile exercise not adding to the story.
Again like Rann just one plot for entire movie, seemed so incomplete.
The film is very low budget movie, shot in and around Gorakhpur in some bylanes and villages. They refuse to spend anything on anything and it shows.
Only positive thing about these movies is that they give you some perspective of places other that mumbai and the issues prevailing there.Castism, kidnapping, arms-trade is shown as big business in northern UP bordering Nepal.
This movie is recommended for TV.Free watching.

Immigration policy can reduce carbon emission

In the last few months, suddenly climate change has become hot topic of discussion. Everybody is concerned about developing countries with huge population and their demands and ultimate effect on climate.
In India 300 million people is still beyond the basic infrastructure, in future with country growing at the rate of 9%, these millions of people consumption will rise- homes,electricity,cars,refrigerators,et al - the process of creating product for this demand will put more pressure on nature and hence climate.


You cant see the sky in shanghai and they say the workshop of the world's domestic consumption is not that great. Imagine when their domestic consumption will match the exports.People will need to take helicopter ride to see the blue sky.Same thing is going to happen in india as well.We started with hi-tech- manufacturing, infrastructure,metal industry is going to expand multiple times in coming decades.All will blurr the sky vision.
Solution :
As the world is flattening out with even availability of opportunities everywhere, likewise, to save the further burden on nature, we need to have an even of distribution of infrastructure as well. 
Many cities in developed world have world class infrastructures- good roads, surplus electricity, schools - but the population is very sparse.You open the door and you will find no body outside.You take the metro or bus and there will be occasion where you'll find urself travelling alone.US is 7 times india size with 1/4th population.The infrastructure is great throughout the country and has capacity to accomodate 100 million people.Same with some of other countries in Europe with very sparse population and great infrastructure.

If somehow all the nations of the world come together and work out an Immigration Policy to kind of evenly distribute the population world over, it will definitely reduce the effect on climate and carbon emission in developing country.
If these western country, say for example allow 200 million people from developing world, india and china, migrate to them, it will do world a lot good.It will help in optimum utilization of infrastructure and bring down considerably the new infra requirements.Moreover even distribution of population will also further flatten the world by balancing out the wages.

American Idol Selection

Watched couple of episodes of  ' American Idol '. The selection process for latest season is going on.And its interesting to find how emotions plays a very important role in all aspects of our lives - thoughts and deeds.

95% of all the selected candidates for Las Vegas was very average but still got selected.Why ? They had an emotional and tragic story to tell from their lives. Someone suffered an accident a decade back, the other one is a single parent, and another girl was born feather weight with grim chance of survival...all emotional stories, beautifully presented by the camera team and guess what- all of them got selected.Were they good ? None.

               

The world is lacking true Idols with real talent to entertain us for decades with their artistry.These Idol shows are very good platform to find those idols in the crowd.But not many are utilizing this platform to potential.

Lady judges should be done away with. U tell a good emotional story and u r IN. You look good or have a beautiful smile and good dressing sense with average singing talent- you're IN.Unfortunately this is treated as a fashion show.The idols coming out of all this at the end, will not have the substance to survive in the industry for more that couple of years Or to create masterpieces to entertain world over of decades.

Body fades away, substance remains for ever. Making an individual happy on one hand , and making millions of audience happy by selecting only truely deserving candidate, guess its not tough to understand.

IPL : Pakistani player auction controversy

Shahrukh khan's team has 5 pakistani players and 3 bangladesi players.The benefits are many, the catchment area increases many fold. 140 million pakistanis will support the team, 100 million bangladeshis and many million of his fans apart from West bengal.So the team fan base will cross boundaries and so will the commerce.
In last couple of interviews, he is very forthcoming in mentioning that his parents and roots lie in pakistan and he doesnt hide that he has a soft corner for pakistan.Fair enough.
Having said this, we should be aware that more that 10,000 people have been killed in kashmir alone in last 20 years.In last 3 years hundreds have died in spate of bomb blasts in several cities.The islamic fundamentalist are not operating on its own, its got backing of Pakistan government.And they are not stopping at anything, infiltrations are still going on, our people are still getting killed.
Some nation attacks our people and we cant even deny them something as trivial as IPL really makes us look very funny.
                                          Ours is a trillion dollar economy, and potential to change the economic landscape of entire sub continent.But if someone keeps poking at this big nation by terrorist activities, that nation stands to loose out in economic upheavel of the region and if IPL is made out to be a lesson in that, then its a good thing.One cant kill our people and we keep on making their people rich by providing employment opportunities.
The loss of commerce has capacity to change government stance, Foshan in china is a good example.India should completely  discard pakistan from all forms of commerce, that will potentially jolt them up.

Movie Review : RANN

Recently saw another movie from Ram Gopal Varma's stable - Rann.It was a complete waste of time.Varma makes couple of good movies like Sarkar 1-2 and then follows with completely forgettable movies.Its a strange trend that he follows.

Well if you see varma, he is same as he was 20 yrs ago, he refuses to change.He will never spend money on his films come what may, even if india becomes a 15 trillion dollar economy, he will still be making pauper budget movies.He is a  core miser beyond reforms.Rann again is shot on couple of sets, very few outdoor shoots, no special effects - he seems to discard any idea which requires even slight extravagant spending and that shows.

                     This movie has got just one plot.Again a strange thing. And even stranger thing is the event that makes the plot is not shown in the movie.Varma thinks he can take audience for ride.The screenplay is predictable, script lousy, characterization loose and background musics LOUD.
Sarkar has that close-up camera angels, which brought out the emotions very well.Now varma has learnt that it also saves money. In suicide scene instead of showing through visual effects the guy falling, he again took close-up camera angle of heroine eyes, trying to fools us by saying that the pain of seeing her lover die was more in heroine's eyes.

One plot, lousy story, bad camera work and LOUD background music- this is all about this movie.After spending 200 bucks, u feels u have been cheated big time.This movie is good only for TV viewing.Free.

Acting - film with no substance leaves very less scope for acting - though the actors did what they were supposed to.

Memorable scene :  One of characters somersaulted to commit suicide :-), really that was hilarious.