Your Cheques will become Invalid from Jan 1, 2013 – Find out WHY ?

Your Cheques will become Invalid from Jan 1, 2013 – Find out WHY ?:
It might happen that your cheque’s start bouncing and do not get accepted from Jan 1, 2013 . There is a new standard in banking called as Cheque Truncation System or CTS 2010 , which all the banks have to follow now. RBI has issued a circular telling all banks that they should only process and accept those cheques which follow CTS guidelines.

What is Cheque Truncation System or CTS ?

Its just a new improved structure for chqeues and a set of guidelines which will change the way cheques are being processed and cleared. Right now, all the cheques are sent directly physical to the other bank for clearance, but with this new Cheque Truncation System guidelines, the banks will send the digital version of cheques (read scanned image) to the other bank and the clearance will happen almost same day or very fast. Some of the features of CTS cheques would be

• It would have the wordings “please sign above this line” at right bottom

• All CTS-2010 cheques will have a watermark with the words “CTS INDIA”, which can be seen against a light

• A bank logo will be on cheque with a Ultra Violet Ink , which can be seen only under UV Scanners.

• The CTS 2010 enabled cheques will not allow any alterations. If there is any mistakes, the cheque will be invalid

• “payable at par at all branches of the bank in India” text will be at the bottom of all the cheques

• There will be IFSC and MICR code on the cheque

• You will have to sign the cheque will a darker ink, so that your signatures are valid for scanning.

If you look at these features, you can simply see that these are required for digital processing and once these Cheque Truncation System enabled cheques arrive , the whole banking system will start clearing the cheques in a must faster time. This will improve banking and save paper . Below is a sample of cheque which fulfil CTS criteria’s.

SBI has already told all its customers to get new cheques because all the old cheques will become invalid , In the same way HDFC bank and ICICI bank have also told their customers to get new cheque books.

What you must do ?

1. Replace your Post Dated Cheques
If you have given any post dated cheques to someone like for your home loan payments or for some other kind of payment, then its the time to replace them with fresh cheques else it will just bounce and you might have to pay the bounce charges
Deposit any Old Cheque now
At times, we accumulate old cheques and deposit them for clearing only after many days or weeks. If you have any cheque which is to be cleared, better deposit it and encash !
A lot of banks have also asked its customers to give return back the old invalid cheques at their branch and collect new cheques, not sure why they need old cheques , why cant they issue the new cheques directly ? Also note that the cheques will be sent to the last updated address only. Learn more about CTS here . I hope you are clear about Cheque Truncation System (CTS) and how your cheques will become invalid from Jan 1,2013

The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using:

There's a wonderfully powerful and subtle technique in Google Mail that can be used to enhance every reply you make to a mail: if you select an area of a message and then hit Reply only the selected text will be quoted in the response.
For example, here's an email I need to reply to:

If I simply hit Reply then the entire original message is quoted in the response:

But if I first select the piece that's important to me:

And then hit reply, only that part is in the response:

Use this to respond to just the right parts of a message and cut down those enormous chains of replies where the messages grow and grow and grow.

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About JAAGA ,Android Development …and Cycling.

 

Ok, no need go get confused. The two topics in the title are completely different things, different worlds, actually. Today I attended a quick Android newbies session by the brilliant Adnan Brar, who is at the moment , bootstrapping his own startup : Taskgram.  The 2 hour event was hosted at a totally cool and hip atmosphere , JAAGA.  The concept of JAAGA of being a creative area where people can just hangout and discuss ideas is what makes it unique.  This is similar to what Noisebridge is doing in the US, provide a platform to interact with like minded individuals.

I have been searching for some tutorials on Android app development on the net, and I came across the hackerspaces community. There is found two, just two spaces registered from Bangalore, India, one being JAAGA. Its embarrassing that the techie city has nothing to offer for hackers to get together. Anyway, I found that there was an android session coming up on Sunday, so that meant I had to getup earlier than my usual 12 noon !

Now app development, or any kind of development,for that matter, is something I can do perfectly on my own with google to guide me. But there is something different when people get together and exchange ideas and brainstorm.  That’s  what led me to search out some kind of training session, to meet like minded hackers wanting to learn/create something new. Today I met Adnaan, Mayank, Nipun and..Nikhil, I think .  The one common thread we had was that all of us were employed in good companies, but somehow the work were doing was not inspiring enough for the soul. I think it proves that its not just money that is important, we do need food for the hacker’s soul.

One of the guys turned up on his cool mountain bike, and he was also in fully cycling battle-gear ! Mayank is a certified bi-cycle nut, the moment you bring up the topic, you realise that you can’t just hold up to this guy’s passion for the wheels. He did give me some advice and tips and oodles of encouragement to take up bi-cycling myself, and I am seriously considering it.

Looking forward to the next coding session at JAAGA.Kudos to JAAGA for taking the initiative. I hope more such communities spring up in the garden city !

 

Anindya Mukherjee sets new record riding from Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn

An Indian mountaineer made the country proud yet again, not by setting any mountaineering record, but by setting up an exceptional 69 day long bicycleexpedition. The expedition came to an end on September 2nd 2012. Kolkata based Anindya Mukherjee completed this laborious cycle expedition from Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn, becoming the first Indian to accomplish this.

Anindya Mukherjee

What began as a conventional expedition took this extraordinary avatar and created history. Crossing a distance of about 5000km on a bicycle which was no joyride throughout. Mukherjee had the pluck to cover the lonely and deserted areas in his way totaling to be about two and a half months. The ride started as a tribute to Harold William Bil Tilman, but itself became an inspirational story. On Sunday morning when Mukherjee reached the base at Walvis Bay in Namibia, the moment was perhaps the best moment for the mountaineer so far. Anindya said, “I always wanted to do this expedition; it was my way of paying homage to Tilman. Dreams, I guess are not always easy to achieve but I’m happy that it has finally come true,”

Having started off with the journey from June 24, Mukherjee knew this isn’t going to be an easy thing. It was a test of his survival skills too. Mukherjee said, “As a professional mountaineer, I’ve scaled many such mountains, but this one’s unique. There were days when I had nothing to eat. It was a complete new terrain and I didn’t even know much about the African language. That was a big problem,”

Cycling past deserted Trans-Kalahari highway, Mukherjee were getting frequent thoughts of winding up the plans. He said, “The journey was exhausting at the same time deadly. I had to cross areas which were completely deserted. Thinking about those moments, still gets me goose bumps!”

Mukherjee a.k.a Raja, was the first Asian to have participated in the Mt Elbrus race in 2007.

Ustad Hotel - Smacking good.

 

The DVD version of this new age malayalam movie was released last month, and torrent sites all over have picked it up.  I finally got to enjoy perhaps the other best movie of this year Diamond Necklace being the first).  And my verdict : It’s a keeper. The plot of the movie is fully on Wikipedia. And there are a lot of themes and ideas in the movie which have been borrowed/inspired from others though.

The move is centered around good food, and good times, and feel good music. There are mouth watering shots of signature malabar cuisine, lazy strolls by the beach, and different genres of music in songs and in the background. But at its core, it is a story of relationships. A gentle mixture of the old and new, and about change.

Three different generations of a family are present in this movie, and the rift between them is presented without the usual melodrama you see in normal tear jerker movies.  There is the beautiful story of how five children grew up without a mother, the elder sisters bringing up their youngest brother. There is the rebellious daughter of an orthodox muslim family, who first rejects the boy, and then realizes her mistake late, but not too late.  And then there is Karim’s philosophy that inorder for something to be special , you simply have to believe it is special. A nice borrow from the Kung Fu panda.

The visuals are awesome ! I have been living in the malabar area of Kerala for the four years while I was in college, and I was amazed at how artistically the familiar sights and sounds of the area has been captured on film. The background music beautifully accompanies the visuals without over powering it. The strings beats and vocals in the BGM are a fresh relief from the usual cacophony one finds there.

A lot of colorful characters further enrich the movie. There are some characters here who do not have single dialogue, but still show us why they are important in their roles. The character of Narayan who is a tamil social worker is a gentle nod in the direction of selfless service of humanity.

But the highlight of the movie is the brilliant acting of Thilakan. Nobody else (barring Nedumudi Venu perhaps ?) could have played that character. The moments between Karim and his grandson discussing various ideas of luck, fate and success, sipping sulaimani tea by the beach side really stand out. He speaks the idea that “anyone can fill a stomach, but a truly gifted person can fill the soul” twice in the movie. The first time, it is not meant to register, the second time, you come to really appreciate it.

What stood out:

1. At the airport, a character mentions that Faizi has a good Mammootty look (19:14). It is actually Mammotty’s son who is playing the character.
2. Shahaana praises Faizi’s superb dialogue delivery (1:20:58). Good for his second movie.
3. Most of the female characters in the movie are muslims, and they are fully veiled when they step out of their houses. In the wedding photo of Faizi’s parents, the bride is completely veiled, only her eyes are visible.
4. The boys start their days playing football on the beach. Football is a fever across Kerala, something different in this cricket crazy nation.
5. The scene where Faizi brings a live chicken to the GM’s table (1:52:00)  is from the climatic scene in Hollywood movie ‘No Reservations’, where Catherine Zeta-Jones drops a raw steak at the table of an annoying customer.  The next scene where the live rooster pecks on the pieces of cooked chicken gave me jitters, you could say it is forced cannibalism there.
6. Towards the end of the movie (2:17:54), in the scene where Faizi prepares the biriyani, there is a beautiful piano piece which is a straight lift of Nemo’s theme, from the movie Finding Nemo. The OST of that movie had got composer Randy Newman and Oscar nomination.  The songs in the movie really make you sit up and listen, it’s a rarely found fusion of Arabic and new age rock sounds.

Well now this mouth watering review has certainly made me hungry again, so Im gonna munch on my Diwali sweets.

Happy Diwali everyone !!