Macy's coming to India!

Just learned from this article about Shopper's Stop coming up with products from Macy's, US. How wonderful is that? No need to wait for friends returning from US to get us goodies( read clothes) from this store

Thought here is my wish list of stores that should come down to India from US

1.Bath & Body Works - I am a huge FAN of their products, and cant stay without a daily dose of the Honey suckle cream













2. Forever21 - Again a very good cloths line and at affordable pricing.

3. Olive Garden - This is the palce that serves the best! Italian food i have ever had, no Italian eatery here can rank up to this one considering their pricing and authentic Italian cuisine










4. Cheese Cake Factory - Yummy, Yummy cheese cakes and great food! The ambiance here is truly Royal!

Dark Chocolate..Finally!

Amul has come up with a Dark chocolate slab called Bindaz. Finally! we can get Dark chocolates off the shelfs, in local grocery stores around! So far the industry biggies like Cadbury and Amul used to only serve milk chocolates in India. Having dark chocolate would either mean a visitor from Foreign land ( read US) who gets lots of them, or a trip to one of the expensive and overly hyped cake shops or DIY from the dark chocolate slabs you get at Crawford market.

I remember I was once grocery shopping( In Akbarallys, Fort), and an elderly lady, who was not from India, was searching for something in the chocolate section of the store, after a few minutes she gave up her search and asked the cashier, "Isn't there any dark chocolate available here? All are milk chocolates!" . The cashier probably din't even knew about such a species of chocolate. Dark chocolate is quite an alien concept for we Indians. Thats probably I guess why Cadbury , who introduced the concept of chocolate bars in India, has not yet come up with this range.

So, cheers! to Amul for doing this.

P.S: Though i tried the new bar Bindaz, it not as good as a Hershey's would be. But atleast we need to give these guys credit for launching it. Hopefully competition would make Cadbury dish out a better one.

Google's Earth!

Just read a new article on how Google is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to make "Green Energy" less costly. Basically it is looking at options other then coal, like Wind/Solar/GeoThermal power to produce Gigawatt's of power.

Ain't this just superb? A company that revolutionizes the way the world is functioning. First it got us a a search page, without which even thousands of web-sites on the net would have been of no use. I mean how would i know whats the name of a site is which has a particular context that i am looking for?
Then it got us the famous Gmail, a web-mail account that can never run out of space and that too FREE of cost! Yahoo/Rediffmail/Hotmail take a hike! Till date these mail service providers cannot rank up to Gmail.
This was not enough it got us the Google Books, Google Earth, these things add so much values to any person on earth especially to kids.
Then the Free Wi-Fi access to the city of Mountain View, CA. Wow!(I wish i lived there!)
And these are the things we get just like that, then there are the side-effects of these which actually run business houses, hundreds of company's have come up, where the primary business fundamentals revolve around Google e.g, Search engine marketing/optimization

Now, to add to all this, the Energy Project, i would not be surprised if actually all the concerns about Earth's energy resource becoming deplete will end one day, thanks to Google.

If i had the powers i would give this company a Nobel prize every year! Google is synonymous to the word Revolution!
I wish i could be a part of this amazing revolution, Google please hire me!

A day in the Family Court of Mumbai

It was the D-day for me, i was finally getting my divorce after separating from my now X-Husband for over one and a half years. It was the family court in Bandra, the court had a huge big Hall, a court room and two Counselling rooms attached to the main Hall. The hall had a couple of benches for people to sit on. The hall was bustling with people, people moving here and there at a fast pace, advocates in their white attire getting papers in place, a few couples( waiting to get separated formally!) and their family members. Support staff yelling names of the next person to get into the court. I was sitting on one of the benches awaiting my turn, that's when these couples caught most of my attention.

One of them looked like the urban-chick variety, they were not accompanied by any family members, just the two of them ( a lot of courage, i must say) initially when they entered the room, they had this cold shoulder for each other, they would not even dare look into each others eyes, apart from the few moments when their lawyer had to tell them something, they did not even look in each other's direction. Then, the lawyer disappeared ( for some work) and they were there standing alone. The guy was standing in a corner of the room and the girl standing almost near the gangway. Due to her position she had to constantly move to allow passage of people coming in and out of the room. After 5 min, the guy just got out of his corner and subtly put the girl in the corner he was standing, so that she could stand comfortably. I noticed a slight smile on her face and that's it, after that they both started chatting as though nothing was wrong with them. That attitude was sweet :-)

Then their was this huge fat girl standing next to me, she was constantly chatting with her lawyer, i could not help but over overhear :-) Imagine, she was here to get her divorce and all the time she would talk to her lawyer only about her husband! She went like this " If i ever bump into my husband ten years from now, i know very well that we will still fall in love with each other" What was that ?????? Honey, you are already preparing to separate!!
That was a stupid attitude!

Then there was this another girl with her father, her husband was smartly standing a few feet apart, pretending he is normal. Her father yelling at the top of his voice about how badly his daughter has been mistreated by the guy's family. He looked virtually perturbed, worried about his daughter's future and knowing he had almost no control on the event of things happening.
The guy would listen to him, but pretend nothing was wrong and at times would try to control his giggle.
That was bitter attitude!

And now about me, nothing much happened, we did not converse, nor did we have any cold shoulder towards each other, no bitter talks either! We simply awaited our turn, went in to the court room, their a Lady, Ms.Rao, announced the following:

"By the Decree of the court, you both are no longer husband and wife. The marriage now stands dissolved!"

Tax -Free and Multiplexes?

Recently "Chak de India" a super-hit film by a super-hit star, Shah Rukh Khan was made "Tax-Free" due to its increased popularity. People who have seen this movie once cannot wait to get back to the theaters and watch it again, all my family members have seen it twice by now.

We enjoy the hub of multiplexes surrounding us, movie watching is made a lot simpler and luxurious by these multiplexes. Though the charges taken by them are more then what they give.

last weekend , after Chak de India received the "Tax-Free status", i went to see this movie, hoping the rates will be less cause of the tax -Free status. But to my surprise, no, the same old charges. I inquired why is that so? i spoke to a guy, whom i presumed to be a operational manager.
The response was, the movie is Tax-Free and they are running a morning show which is Tax-Free and the rates have been reduced for that show!

I though if it was tax-free, the entertainment tax would have been removed for all the shows not just one! Wonder how it works, or whether this is something the consumer is again being fooled into