Bangalore Infrastructure : In Rains !!

Comments blogs about Bangalore Infrastructure are everywhere !! ..But it is tough to see that happening in front of your eyes daily :(

Recently I was happy to see that BMP(http://www.bmponline.org/) is doing some good work around our apartment & its good to see some progress. But my happiness did not last for much time. As usual they started some work & it was abandoned with all in mess. They lay the road half-way & then stop the work to mess it up more than it was earlier.

See some photos !!

Lalbaug Botanical Garden, Bangalore, India - Revisited !!

Its been long time I visited Lalbaug Botanical Garden in Bangalore, India !! ...The reason for not visiting it for long time is probably traffic towards Lalbaug & not not finding time :) .. btw the universal excuse of not finding time is not good I feel so sometime.

I was surprised to see the changes to Lalbaug which are done recently. So there are more reasons to visit this beautiful place with family & kids !!

• Clean atmosphere
• Good fresh air
• Ample place for jogging or walking
• Hassle free parking(depending on what time of the day u go !!)
• New Zero B Water taps !!(Pure filtered water vending machines)
• Much better maintained that what I saw earlier !!
• Electric Golf Car ride for Rs. 100 !!

Specially the Zero B Water vending machines are great idea. So people need not carry their own water bottles.

Learning Car Driving in India !!

Learning car driving is great fun in India. Specially with Car Prices falling down or Income rising !! ..Many people buy car & its a need sometimes.

But when it comes to learning Car driving, its tough to find good instructors. Also they charge you too much compared to what they teach you.

Some of the disadvantes of learning Car driving with Alternate controls :

• You never get full control of the Car
• The Instructor sitting next to you alway keeps his foot on clutch/break, failing you get the feel of car
• He will press break even before you respond to a situation !!
• He will adjust the Steering for you sometimes
• Missing out important Instructions !!
• You feel you know driving, but actually you know just basics
  

I would suggest to anyone would like to learn a Car is to go to a Driving School where the Car on which you are going to learn do not have alternate control. The advantges are as below. BTW, this is from my own expereince. My wife recently learned Car Driving on our own Car without alternative controls(offcourse !!). And the results were amazing, she learned faster than I could learn with driving school car !!

• You get feel of Car Controls yourselves
• You get to know the Clutch/Break faster than with alternative controls Car
• You respond to situations yourselves that makes you more confident
• Learning curve is faster & close to REAL world !

Enjoy Driving !!

Driving Directions In India ..Online !!

Finally I have got the tool which provides me Driving Directions between 2 places in India :). This is still in beta, but looks impressive.

This feature was my wish list for long time, as I have seen this kind of system in place in US & Australia !! ..See my blog entry on 21st July about this :

My wish list in July-06

I can't believe that the wish will be fullfilled so soon :) ...

URL : http://beta.mapmyindia.com

I tested the website feature Driving Directions with some areas I know & it looks ok. Though it may not have all areas, but its still useful for the people who are new to city & could like to know the place. Also I checked the route map from "Pune to Bangalore" & its quite accurate.

Have a look at what you get here :

Its a great service. Also the regular Maps are good as they are Interactive.

GIS overall has a good potential in India in my opinion. There are many companies building applications around it.