Thursday, January 29, 2015

An unexpected visit for the second time

So this happened last December (2013) that I had to travel to Bangalore from Coimbatore. I had never travelled in a AC sleeper bus on an overnight trip. The scheduled arrival time for the bus was 5 am, so I promptly kept the alarm at 4 30 and slept off. The occasion was that Kurukshetra's Xceed was happening at Bangalore and I was going to help host a quiz.

But it so happened that, the bus ended up reaching half an hour earlier, and by the time the bus had gone past all the alighting points, past Majestic and to the shed, I was sound asleep. That being the last set of beds in the bus, the conductor didn't notice me as well. He was irate and gave me a good bunch of appreciative words as Suprabatham, waking me up at the shed. I got down and it was cold, very cold! I reached the main road at around 4 10 and took an auto to IIM-B. Never really managed to find out where that shed was or how long I had overshot Majestic.

A couple of days back, my cab driver took an alternate route and I found myself crossing a familiar temple to a road under a bridge. Then I remembered this incident. The area was Chamrajpet.

Fun times. If you never failed,  overslept, you never lived.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

GoIbibo: broadcasting travel plans since God knows when!

I have GoIbibo app installed on my phone. Never having used it is another story, but today a notification on my locked screen alarmed me!

Who the fish is Rahul? I have had some problems in the recent past because of the previous owner of my current phone number not having updated his number at all online locations, but that was someone called Victor, Rahul was a new name. I was curious; so I went to the Account page and saw this.


Good, so nobody was signed in. Anyhow, let me just click on "My Bookings" anyway. And, to my shock and surprise, there are 2 bookings.


I click on one and I see this: an itinerary for 3 people.


Who these people are, I have no idea. Why is their account appearing on my phone also I have no idea. I think it is a problem with user bookings from Guest accounts on GoIbibo. Well done on privacy and security domains, *massive applause*.


If you are using this app, uninstall it. Who knows, which random person is seeing your flight details?

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Counting Stars

It's been a while since I've written anything at all, so I thought I'd let me guilty feelings take a small break by writing a small piece today. We went to Hogenakkal for the weekend, since it was a 3 day weekend (Bless Republic Day for falling on a Monday).

It has been quite a few years since I had been to a falls and taken a bath at a natural waterfall (6-7 years? I don't even remember the last time, it was with Grandpa at Kutralam I think. Kishkintha doesn't qualify.) But the most enjoyable part of the trip was stargazing.

Chennai and Bangalore are too polluted to see anything in the sky at all, but the sky above the Forest Officers' guest house at Hogenakkal was crystal clear. So many stars visible that I almost cried. I am not a big fan of identifying constellations (in fact, I don't know if I am-- I haven't done it much during my childhood) but identifying Orion constellation was overjoying. The inner kid in me was awakened. I was also able to identify Canis Major with the help of an image that I was able to Google up which showed constellations in their relative positions. It isn't much, but it was fun. I should try picking this up as a hobby.

Also writing. Must write more often. That's all for now.