Chennai OpenCoffee Club - the first of its kind in India started by Vaidhy and Siddhi is now one year old. The club members meet on the first sunday of every month at the Amethyst coffee shop, Chennai. And August’s meet is on the 3rd.

OpenCoffee Club is an event happening all over the world, which was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to meet together informally and network.

In the Chennai edition, every meeting usually begins with a generic topic that the members want to discuss - common problems faced by startups like hiring people. People also discuss about their ideas and ask others’ inputs.

So, if you are free this sunday afternoon, just head over to Amethyst in Gopalapuram to meet really interesting and innovative people.

Today while traveling to office in a public bus, there was a scene which is very common in chennai. There was a girl (pretty and good looking) and a guy (not so good looking, but we will come to that later), who were sitting together in the left side seat of the bus.

To people from other cities, you should know that in Chennai, all seats on the left side of the bus is for ladies and the right side is for the general public. So, this guy was sitting in the ladies seat and the couple didn’t know that, as they were from some northern state. The conductor and a lady were telling the guy to get up and give up the seat. The conversation that followed was something like this:

Girl: See, we both are together, can you please allow us to sit?
Lady: Its ok. I can see that you two are together, but this is ladies seat and it is normal for asking guys sitting here to get up.
Girl: Oh. Why don’t you ask the guy who is sitting before us? He too is sitting in the ladies seat right?

I was expecting this to become a huge problem as that is what happens when you give replies like that, but luckily that lady was kind enough to leave the matter and find another seat and the guy too got up to give the seat to an old woman.

The problem all starts with the seat allocation. What is the need for such kind of discrimination in the seats? What is wrong if two people who know each other sit together in some seat. As long as no one is disturbing a girl sitting alone, there won’t be any problem. Instead some ladies used to say “It is written as ladies seat. So you shouldn’t sit here. If you guys can’t find a seat to sit, then go to hell”.

Yes. It is written on the window pane that it is for Ladies only. But unfortunately all you would see is something like this “மகளிர்” which is in Tamil and most of these problems are caused by people who come from other states who can’t read the local language.

I agree that the state government of Tamil Nadu is trying to protect the ancient language and isn’t destroyed by the influence of the western languages. But in places where you need to give some kind of information to people from various parts of the world, it is just plain foolishness if you say “I won’t use any other language other than my mother tongue”.

It just has a simple solution - have both languages (Tamil and English) in places where you want to give important information to the public. You can’t risk other people’s lives if you use the Tamil equivalent of “Exit“.

There are some people who are die hard tamil fans, who won’t speak any other language. And to them all the world can say is “we don’t care”. They should note that it is they who need the world and that the world can learn to survive without Tamil. Languages are like humans. They need to evolve themselves when required - else it all leads to extinction. I think it can be discussed as a seperate essay by itself.

So, what do you think? Should there be a seperate row of seats for ladies? Do any other place have such weird customs in India?

PS: About the pretty-girl and not-so-good-looking-boy, I was wondering “If all pretty girls hang out only with the not-so-good-looking guys, then what will the remaining guys like me do?”

My first post on Blogial, and something not so pleasant to begin with. Serial blasts rocked Bangalore yesterday, 25th July 2008. I was at my office working through my normal Friday routine and preparing to have a nice weekend when one of my colleagues came in and gave us this first-hand news about the blasts. However, We continued our work until we could see that the situation was kinda bad. A few mails popped in from our administrative division about changes in the evening shuttles. Our day was pretty much over at about 3 p.m. Everyone was on the phone trying to convince their loved ones that they were fine and there was nothing to worry about(I wonder what would have happened to us sitting there at the office).
I feel I’m an experienced customer to these situations, having faced the same situation two years ago when Mumbai was hit by the same kind of serial blasts in the suburban trains. Although I wasn’t around there at that time (was in Mangalore, studying), I had my family to worry about. And I understand that people here aren’t ready enough for such surprises. Well however, I was amazed to hear about the number of people who were ready to help after the Mumbai blasts. Mumbai has always come clean through these situations, life gets back on track asap.
I don’t know much about what happened yesterday. The blasts took place at the Madiwala bus depot, Mysore road, Adugudi, Koramangla, Vittal Mallaya road, Langford Town and Richmond Town. Two were killed and several were others injured. Tests were conducted that revealed the usage of ammonium nitrate in these bombs. Another bomb was found today near Forum Mall in the Koramangala area. The bomb was then defused by the National Bomb Detection Squad. The Forum Mall is one of the most busiest malls in Bangalore. Bangalore is obviously gripped with fear now and the security is on an all-time high. Today the Chief Minister of Karnataka said investigations were on track and asked people (including the IT sector) not to panic and to stay calm. Infosys, which has been a prime target for these terrorists has beefed up its security.
Most people are indoors this weekend (including me and my friends) as obvious destinations for hanging out were bombed yesterday. I feel people will get back on track starting next week, although the fear is here to stay once it has crept into Banglorean minds. The cops too seem to be freaked out by this surprise attack on once peaceful Bangalore. And the only way of fighting terror is spitting right in its face. Bangaloreans aren’t afraid of this and each one of us should bring out the same courage in the days to come.

In some popular residential areas of Chennai, there has been a psycho killer who for the past one month has killed about 8 persons. He targets people who sleep alone in the night out in the open - watchman, rag pickers, beggars, etc. He drops a huge stone on their head and then burns them.

So, nearly 300 policemen have been pulled in to get this psycho killer and they regularly patrol the areas in nights. This has resulted in no reports of theft for the past 1 week. It is indeed ironic to say that one criminal is helping in prevent crime in the city.

Lets see how fast they can catch the killer and what his side of the story is.

There was once a time when having a mobile phone in Anna University or its affiliated colleges, means confiscation and heavy fines for students. People used to hide the phones in various places and kept it in silent mode. There even used to be occassional raids and a bunch of phones would be taken off.

Now all those days are gone. Anna University’s new Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Mannar Jawahar has lifted the ban on use of mobile phones in the campus. Students are still not permitted to use it in class, but outside it they are free to use it. Atlast the university has got a sane person to be a VC who has realised that even with all the ban, people used to flaunt with their N-Series phones.

Even though the University has relaxed the ban, there will still be some colleges which will continue with the ban and make really stupid arguments saying that mobiles only lead to poor performance in studies. And it would take a lot more than a new VC to change such colleges.

Design Camp 2 aka DCamp is back at Bangalore on July 26 - which is an unconference focused broadly on design and user experience. It is open to everyone interested in the topic: designers, usability practitioners, developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and other audiences.

This year it takes place in Aditi Technologies (last year it was at Yahoo). There are about 11 confirmed topics by various speakers and as usual other discussion themes open for all the DCampers. With almost 200 people registered for the event, I think it would be nice to get some gyaan about good and usable design.

People who want to join in, just include your name in the wiki and make yourself present at Aditi Technologies (look at the map if you are lost) on July 26. I too would be going there to Bangalore for this. Hope I can meet some interesting people out there who can spend some time out for blogging here.

Also make sure that you participate in the design competition sponsored by Aditi. There are gifts worth Rs.10000 waiting to be won.

Welcome to in.blogial - a blogial site for/by people from India. This blog will be more blogialish as more people would be wanting to blog about India and about the city they are in. First I thought of starting a blog where people can post things which happen in their city. But then decided to start an India specific blog to show the rest of the world the various stuff happening in and around India.

We invite people who want to blog about anything even remotely related to India to come here and post. Please remember to categorize your posts based on the city. You can also post about job openings in various parts, accomodations, unconferences happening around your city, etc.

So, just register here and start blogging for blogial. Also I am searching for a better title for this blog. I feel IN doesn’t fit in right. Please comment here with suggestions for a new title.