Living in a construction zone

I live in one of the 'upcoming' layouts in Bangalore. It is coming 'up' really fast, considering all the apartments coming up all around my house. Within 100 metre radius of my house, there are at least 100 new houses coming up! Living in a completed house with so many under-construction houses all around is very unique experience. I have lived here for almost 2 years now and it has not been easy!

Coming to think of it, this area has been like this ever since we came here. First, it was the telephone guys digging up the road to lay the underground cable. Then the electricity guys decided to lay underground cable. Then came the Kaveri water folks (no, we don't have water flowing in our pipes yet, but we have pipes ready so that rodents get a breeding place.) Then came the asphalting folks. After this, many people started constructing houses.

Beginning phase of every new house has been very painful to us. First, they drill a bore-well (there is no water supply yet!). This involves a couple of huge trucks entering the area and making enough noise to drive away all wildlife from Bannerghatta national park, very late into the night. The next phase is digging for foundation. They dig carefully place all the mud on the road so that it causes maximum inconvinience to people using the road. This phase lasts 1-2 months and is the most dusty one. After this, a lot of sand, cement, bricks and metal come in, all of which is carefully laid out on ... you guessed it... the road! I guess they consider any land outside the road to be impure, not to be used for dumping construction materials. After a few months of dusty development, the house is almost ready and the road is almost completely destroyed! Any construction waste is left behind exactly where it was, without anyone bothering to clean up after the act. As a final punch, they conduct a 'Grihapravesha', the day when they block the road completely with a shamiana. Meanwhile, my house has lost it's original color, I hardly remember what it was. It is now covered in a fine layer of dust.

The other nuisance of living in a construction zone is the construction labour. These are floating population, typically families of a husband, wife and 4-5 children. Children, instead of going to school, specialize in throwing stones at electric lights. Husband and wife together earn around 200Rs per day, which should amount to around 6000 per month, which is not very bad considering their spending is so less. But alas! most of this money gets spent on liquor, so it is common to see the whole family engaing in a high-pitched, foul-mouthed quarrel at 10 in the night.

I have to suffer this for at least another 1 year. Hopefully things will get better after that.

Ubuntu Linux desktop

Some of the so called 'experts' predict in January of each year that this year is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. I remember people declaring that 2003 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. They kept on revising their targets at the beginning of each year. It has now become so common to see such articles on tech websites that nobody really takes them seriously.

A positive development in the last few years is the rise of Ubuntu. Those who have not been bitten by the Ubuntu bug wonder what is so special about it. Those who use it swear by it. There is a lot of buzz around it all the time. All the code and binaries shipped by Ubuntu are readily available for any other Linux distro to see and copy (due to GPL). So what does Ubuntu do that others don't?

The simple answer is, things work on Ubuntu. Things work as they should. Things work as you expect them to. Here is a Linux distro that cares for the average joe. It doesn't expect you to understand tens of configuration file formats and edit them using 'your favorite text editor'. Ubuntu has been designed with desktop in mind, not just the back-end server. There are tons of software packages for Ubuntu. It has a wonderful package manager. Once you have all the correct repositories set up, you can install pretty much any software without bothering about dependencies, all from a nice GUI called Synaptic. I have been using Ubuntu on my desktop for weeks now, but I have not learnt any debian package management commands yet! Your best chance of getting your wireless, suspension (to disk, to memory), etc working on Linux is on Ubuntu. It is possible (almost) to live without opening the text mode terminal on Ubuntu. There is also a vibrant community around Ubuntu, so things will only get better in future.

If you are hesitant to make the jump, try out the Ubuntu live CD/DVD. I'm sure you will love it.

Customer support and the credit unions in the US

You get to really measure the quality of customer support of a company only when something has gone wrong and you expect them to fix it. For example, you will get to evaluate the customer support of your mobile phone service provider when you are trying to get some error in your bill corrected. I am writing about an example of good customer support that I have received from a credit union in the US.

I am not sure exactly how credit unions in the US are different from the regular banks, probably they run on the same principles as co-operative banks in India. I have been a customer of two credit unions - the first time when I was in Salt Lake City a few years ago and again in 2005, when I was in Austin. It was always nice to interact with them - they created a friendly atmosphere and I was always able to get all my work done with minimum or no hassle.

Recently, I had a bit of trouble while closing my account and getting my money back from IBM-TEFCU. My account had been closed, but my last check went missing! Meanwhile, the credit union had been rebranded as Amplify and it's website design had changed completely. Hence I suspected that it may be difficult to solve the problem and get my money back. However, they responded to my every e-mail promptly and did everything they could to ensure that I get my money back. Today my money has reached me and I feel very satisfied when I send them a thank-you note.

There have been other such incidences where credit unions have given me exceptional help and support. Hence I recommend anyone who is going to the US, especially for the first time, to open their bank account with a well known credit union in their area.

Update: Here is some crisp information about how credit unions differ from regular banks. Now I know why they used to call me a member of the CU, not a customer.