Lallmatie.com Blog » Rants

What’s new in 2012 – Road network improvement? A lot! Census Results

bhoot — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:46:19 +0000

I know it’s been months since I last blogged on Lallmatie.com – my work is taking up time, then I spent time with my love and family, then again work, friends, and so on. Well, I learned about SEO and have been applying it at work recently. So I said, let’s check how lallmatie.com is doing on website analyzers – and it has a damn good potential of becoming a popular site! So another challenge take, let’s do this!

Well, here in Mauritius – and especially the East, it’s good to know that we have some of the largest villages in Mauritius, according to last year’s census. These are:

3. Flacq and Bel Air (18k each – yeah, those who though Bel Air is a small village must learn their EVS again!)

5. Mahebourg

15. Lallmatie (10k)

Yup, I wasn’t going to miss Lallmatie, and what I mean Flacq or Bel Air, those figures do not include the nearby villages of Argy, Caroline etc. They’re purely these villages. So if you add the numbers of the nearby villages, you’ll see that Lallmatie (10)+Bon Accueil (7)+Brisée Verdière (6)+St Julian(3) gives the same size as the No 2 village of Goodlands, and almost the population of No 1 Triolet.

Roads are coming up good – with the Belle Rive to Quartier Militaire direct road works visible when you travel from Alma to Quartier Militaire; Salazie straightening and Ripailles road works for the new motorway. I’m so eager to drive on these roads and see how much time can be saved by bypassing the busy roads. No, I won’t say that it’s because of the minister in the region…

Recently traffic has grown so heavy on the usual roads near St Pierre – Moka and Reduit that the quickest way is to pass via Bagatelle if you are going from St Pierre to Reduit – in the morning (and in the peak 5 pm afternoon on Thursdays). I wonder why Thursday is the day of the week where you have the jammest Moka…

What do you think?

Configuring Emtel HSDPA on HTC / Android

bhoot — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:43:18 +0000

After trying to get the config sent via Emtel’s website, I decided to Google a bit before calling or visiting Emtel. HTC wasn’t their list.

I found the simplest solution on yasir03′s blog, I just created a new connection and put the apn to web. And here’s my first mobile post…

A New Year Begins – More Mahabharat Lessons?

bhoot — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:27:06 +0000

I feel bad not having blogged the past weeks. Missed the commenting of the big gambling episodes of Mahabharat. The points are simple:

When you’re on a losing streak, STOP!
Even better, do not gamble for valuable things!
When your elders are doing something bad (and you’re realising), you should stop them! Or it can end into losing everything. If any one of the brothers had stopped Yudhisthir from putting at stake his kingdom…
A woman saved the day in that episode, despite being mistreated! How many women are still mistreated these days, yet they take care of their parents, children and themselves…

With this year, I plan to launch a few online products… Like someone said, anyone can get ideas, but to make them become a business requires execution, planning and perseverance!

Busy month + End of Tulsi on MBC + Budget 2011

bhoot — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 20:10:34 +0000

I feel bad not having blogged for weeks, and missed Ba’s funeral on Facebook. Here we are finally, the end of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, aka. Tulsi over here… Happy to see 112y+ Ba and 64y Tulsi finally disappeared. I hope nobody remembers them… They should remember the villains: Ansh, Trupti etc…

I’ll have to write a full blog on the goods and bads of the budget 2011… The grave thing is that the government is spending nearly 20B (90B vs 70B) over it’s revenues, in times that businesses and themselves have shouted crisis! There are some good measures for the middle class, and for taxing the upper classes more but… the actual minister is no expert in the matter, and simply cannot match the former finance minister!

The Beauty of Tulsi KSBKBT – The real heroes are the villains

bhoot — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:55:53 +0000

After try so hard to make my family stop watching Tulsi every night, I came to realise one thing with the recent turn of events on MBC TV. Let me sum up, in the serial, a big climax and story just ended. Another one just started. A few points will show how the writers/directors are intelligent (yeah, may be you didn’t doubt that):

Trupti (a villain) pointed out that for a whole year nobody realised that the fake Tulsi (a.k.a. Juhi) was actually much shorter than the old real one. Really true – it means that the director knew about it!
If you take the information given recently, Tulsi should be aged 63 instead of 70 as on her hospital paper. Makes sense cause when she lost her memory, she had to estimate her age. Similarly, taking that Tulsi is married for 45 years aged the age of 18 gives 63 years old.
Following the above information, and assuming that Mihir is the first child of the first child of Ba, the latter should be aged… 126 years. Ba is 126 years old and is really very very fit to able to make conversations like she does…

It so happens that every villain, during his/her peak, makes sensible decisions, be it Eklavya or now Trupti. The supposedly models, be it Tulsi and bahus, are never learn from their own mistakes. The biggest flagrant is Krishna Tulsi who didn’t make the difference between Laksh’s hand and Eklavya’s hands, implying that she’s either very silly or wanted to get married to Eklavya to get beaten… and not taking the initiative to live her life, out of fear from Tulsi’s feelings that destructive relations are better than a free young widow in love with the right man…

Finally, Tulsi made the same old mistake of trusting a villain, Mandira in court. She’s a hard nut who never learns. Then that would mean that does have a character. A nuthead written by the writers, geniuses who want ordinary people to know by watching, that they should follow the villains to a certain extent, not the inhabitants of Shanti Niketan.

PS. I know I’ve already blogged about it before. Yes, I keep watching it’s dinner time, and I’m polite to accompany family:

http://lallmatie.com/blog/2009/05/16/kyunki-saas-bhi-kabhi-bahu-thi-to-be-banned-with-kavyanjali-lack-of-realistic-storyline/

Silent Cold Nights: Sound and Image

bhoot — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:16:16 +0000

Living at the outskirts of Lallmatie has one advantage: it’s quiet at night. No thumbing of the ground when big lorries pass by the royal road. Less dogs that bark any time at night (except mine and the neighbour’s).

When I feel the need to have some sounds, I’ll put on my HiFi set with some loud music or movie. It is quite a peaceful neighbourhood. We did hear about theft last year 1 street across, but it’s calm now. My dad worries that it is possible that the recently escaped convicts might make a tour at night. “fermer ress endan!” he said in the afternoon. Well, better be safe than sorry… Everything’s locked…

Just me, my laptop (that’s my media storage), netbook (that’s my remote) and 32″ LCD TV connected to my desktop (you guessed it’s my HTPC). Yeah, there’s world cup but so many movies to watch…

The seriousness of pen-drive viruses and their ignorance: Simple steps to protect yourself

bhoot — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:20:40 +0000

I have seen to many people ignorant of the fact that their pen-drives (usb key, usb disk) have been contaminated by viruses that have been copied by them unknowingly! How? And why didn’t their antivirus detect them? Some do not even know until their computers start becoming slow and more… Let me explain easy ways to detect and protect yourself…

The first thing you will notice if you have such usb-spreading-viruses (they come in different flavours e.g. ckvo, amvo…) is that when you double-click on a drive in My Computer (yes, Linux and MacOS users are safe.. so far). If the drive opens in a new window, it means you have the virus! So rule number 1: Always use the folder tree view to select a drive in My Computer. Why, because when you double click on a drive, it executes a windows file called autorun.inf on that drive. That file can execute any file specified in that drive. It’s like you’re literally opening the door to anyone knocking! Or you might want to turn off Autorun on your computer.

Next thing is to prevent that virus from spreading if ever the above happened by accident. To do this, rule number 2, you need a proper Firewall. I use Comodo Personal Firewall and it’s really efficient – doesn’t slow down your computer, and tells you every time suspicious programs attempt to write to disk or to use the internet (you’d even catch key-loggers).

Your antivirus might not necessarily be able to detect these issues, e.g. I have used Norton/Symantec and McAfee Viruscan. They gave me such a headache, especially by using 200MB+ memory, deleting my whole mailbox and preventing me from running Thinstall applications… Rule number 3 have a good anvirus: the bests I have found are Avast Home and AVG Free. Free and efficient and fast.

Common sources for this virus in Mauritius are the many schools, some universities and some offices where adequate measures have not been taken. Also the internet, when you browse underground sites especially using Internet Explorer. So rule number 4, do not use Internet Explorer 6.

Now what if you already have these viruses, how to remove them? That’s the big hurdle. There are steps that you can find many sites, if you search ’removing ckvo.’ I’ll write another post for that soon…

Crise Euro Already Starts Negative Speculation

bhoot — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:40:44 +0000

The effects of the last 2008 recession was felt a bit late in the Mauritian stock exchange: the lowest point came about Feb-March 2009. Now we hear of the recent Euro Crisis and the market went down a bit last week… already?

A bit too quick. Naiades shares that has risen from Rs 26 to 28 went back to 25.5 (it’s back to 26.x now); Air Mauritius went down from 14 to 13 and is still going down. So are a few other companies. Will this trend persist? I think it will be temporary. It’s not the big financial crisis that coming again. It’s too early, if you base upon Robert Allen’s theory of cyclic markets (I know he might not be an authority, but his words make sense)…

I’ll persist with almost the same list of companies I recommended last time: SBM, NRL (it has good cashflow and is underpriced: other resorts groups are about 2x their NAV), AIRM (when it has gone down a lot – anyway, it’s underpriced), GIDC, Omnicane (these two are long term). The Shell, GCL and Rogers remain solid companies but let’s wait for a fall. If you bought MCFI and BAIN (as in the previous list) it’s time to sell.

Rain and Meteo – Is it time to declare moonsoon à Maurice?

bhoot — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:31:05 +0000

So it was all sunny at work, but it had to be raining when I reached St. Julien d’Hotman. Unbelievable fog on top of that from St Julien d’Hotman – l’Unité – St Julien Village. Never have I seen such a fog in this region. 8 pm, my windshield wipers were used up, they didn’t clean the water well. Though it was a mild shower, I could barely see the end of the road. My bi-halogen projector headlights were covered with dust or grease from the days my car stayed at the mechanic… Should have cleaned them I knew…

Saw my friend’s 1970 car right in front of me. Ah good, he’ll show me the way. But at 25kph, I’m going to stay here so much longer. I decided to overtake, it always feels good to do so. Now the even harder part. Used my memory of the years I drove this road to determine where the road was, each time braking when a vehicle approached in front with blinding headlights…

Finally I reached Lallmatie, the rain hadn’t stopped. Put on the TV, there was meteo, “the weather will be cloudy in the east tonight.” Yes, that’s how precise even current events can be reported by local meteo…