Jeff Bezos(Amazon) comes up with “Kindles” Wednesday, Nov 21 2007

Amazon, the largest online bookstore has come up with a e-book reader, which dares to revolutionalize the way people will read in future. It is called “Kindles”, so named by Bezos, to evoke a lightning spark in our brain.

Kindles is a thin and sleek e-book reader, which wirelessly connects to the 3G network (EVDO data transfer) to download ebooks,magzines, subscribe to blogs, and also a free wireless access to wikipeadia.It never needs to be connected to a computer. The reason that Amazon can give away this wireless access is because most of the time you are using it you are spending money on something at Amazon.com. A book costs $10 and a subscription to Fortune $1.50 per month. Amazingly, the company has designed the wireless service so that almost any book, even one of 1,000 pages, can download in under a minute.

It is very light weighing just about 300 grams (10.3 oz), and it replaces all the books you will ever need to carry. With 256 MB inbuilt memory, it has an expandable SD slot. Its battery life is said to go for a couple of days without recharging. If the wireless is turned off during nights, the battery extends upto a week, without having to recharge. It calls its screen(800×600) to be very convenient and the user will feel just like reading a paper. Easy to handle and has a qwerty key pad also, to quickly search through the documents.

The device, (which Jeff calls a service) is tagged at a staggering $399/-. I am pretty sure that the price is over rated. Here’s a link you can follow:

Amazon:Kindles

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Visits to Seoul Tuesday, Nov 20 2007

Its been quite a tiring stay here at Samsung, Korea on weekdays. Weekends have not been any softer on us. If it is a weekend, its a trip to Seoul, or to places around the city. I have been here in South Korea for almost 6 weeks now, and almost all of them were filled with fun, and excitment.

Before we could do anything or go anywhere, we first needed to buy a Digi cam, to capture every single moment of our life here. Yongsan is a place near Seoul, similar to S.P Road or National Market in Bangalore. All the electronic items were supposedly cheap out here, but the fact is, only the local korean electronic goods are cheaply available. The foreign brands like that of Sony, Cannon, Fuji and all are just the same. We roamed around the entire place. saw various gadgets all showcased and very attractive. If you are a gadget freak, you’ll love this place.

The following day we went to this place called COEX mall, Short for Convetion and Exhibition Center. A huge one indeed. This is the largest underground mall in Asia. It houses many many sub units, like a cool world class Aquarium, a multiplex of 16 screens, and a verrrry huge bookstore. Can spend a complete weekend in here, without even realizing the entire day just pass by.

Nam-dae-mun ( South Great Gate) is a National Treasure of South Korea. It is especially beautiful in the night, daylight doesn’t hide its charm. It has this magnificence and beauty, so typical to the Korean architecture, which will soothe you instantly, and take you into the marvelous history of the Korean War. You’ll find guards of the gate standing there, less to represent the prevalence of Joseon Dynasty, more for the photographs which tourists love to capture.

You have this Namdaemun market, just beside the gate leading to a vast variety of items, local goods, foreign ones, expensive, cheap, and serving to all the age groups. Clothes in particular are a popular buy here. Again the night life is well lit and is said to be the best buy time.

Gyeoungbok-Gung Palace is one of the five grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. You can go to this palace to have a look at the typical korean architecture portrayed popularly in those korean war movies, where spears fly around in all direction and the warrior hero, keeps jumping from one building to another miraculously escaping each spear. Its a peaceful place and you can easily spend 2-3 hours even if you just click around trying to capture the curves of the buildings.

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Anyang Haseyo !! Saturday, Nov 3 2007

My journey:Day 1

I had a flight on 30th October 12:30 A.M, to Bangkok(Thai Airways). Got in, and in no time it was already early morning and we were in Bangkok, at 5:30 A.M (All the timings henceforth will be mentioned in their respective local times ..hehe), Had a transit to make to another terminal and It was a pretty huge distance to cover between two terminals and we did not have much time left with us. We again had to collect our boarding passes for the connecting flight to TAIPEI. The crowd was real bad there and it was so frustrating to stand in a long and slow moving queue early in the morning in a country that is not even yours,and among the faces(other than our team) that don’t even distinctly looked pleasant. (Believe me when i say, Air hostesses of THAI AIRWAY SUCK BIG TIME,but Cut Cute East hasn’t made its entry yet). Our connecting flight was at 7:10 AM and it was already 6:45 A.M and we were still standing in the queue with tons of people still ahead of us waiting just like anybody else to grab that boarding pass and rush to the flight. Just then, a cute lady came and said something . I couldn’t make out a word of what she said, cos firstly she might have spoken Thai, and secondly, I was yawning to my hearts fill, which had completely blocked my ears, and all i was doing was checking her out.(SO totally not my fault). But to a great relief,she had actually opened up WHOOPING 10 more counters, and people just got distributed into those 10 lines and believe me, they were giving a damn about dignity then.

Finally got our boarding passes just in time and headed for the plane. Took off as soon as we sat, and flight was off to Taipei. Journey was around some 4 hours. We were served breakfast and i did not like it. I hardly cared about the food. There was seriously nothing interesting to do. The so called IN Flight Entertainment SUCKS in Thai. Guess what, they were screening Mr. Bean…….Oh crap…!!! And moreover, nobody around to check out too…(Remember what I said about Thai Air Hostesses…?!)..SO I dozed off again.. and when I woke up I was over the Southern seas of China and we had just entered TAIWAN.

Time was 13:30 now. Had a one hour halt here. We were asked to wait outside, so that they could clean the flight and “Make our fly More Pleasant” (Huh…Pleaseeee).. Came out and roamed around the airport of Taipei, and had a view of the roads outside. This was the first time I was seeing such broad and clean roads, with all the cars following amazing discipline. It was as if they were programmed to move around the roads…We were careful not to move away too much from the terminal. And then it was again time to board the flight (1430 HRS). We were headed to Incheon Airport, which supposedly is voted the best airport on the planet (No exaggerations, check this link out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incheon_Airport) . Journey was again a boring one with nothing great to do. I was just waiting to land.And after 3 more long hours,my wait was over.

We came out and went through all the necessary formalities…and collected our baggage. We exchanged a few dollars at the airport. (1$ is around 900 Won, though the exchange rate may say 920/930..we get just 900 in hand, cause of some Buying and Selling concepts). Once we were done with the exchange, we headed out to Gate no.7 where we were told to catch a Limousine. I was certainly thrilled, but it turned out that the Limo was in fact a BUS.(Later when I tried “define:Limousine” on Google the first definition that pooped out was “Limousine” means a vehicle for hire, with a driver, that is used for the transportation of passengers and that has a seating capacity …

So we were in the land of morning calm, and in the CUTE CUTE EAST. Samsung Electronics is Head Quartered in Suwon, another city near Seoul (About 20 miles). Took the ticket (costs 12000 Won man…..). Got onto the bus, and this was no less than areal “LIMO”. This bus would be “Hyundai PowerTec”. They are much similar to the Volvos which we have back in Bang…but just that, PowerTecs are not the best ones out here, and Volvos are the best ones out there. This ride was around One and half an hour, but the best ride I have had in my life. For a car fanatic like me, it was a feast to eye. Hyundai is the leading car manufacturer here, followed by KIA Motors (Which also is a subsidiary of Hyundai), ans then the Samsung Motors. (Yes, Samsung is involved in automobile too….not just that, they are analogous to TATA) Samsung is i almost every industry out here. There were tons and tons of cars. All with amazing beauty and amazing streamline, cutting through the wind like an arrow.

And the best part was, I was sitting on a spearhead too…Our LIMO, was going at constant 120kmph. And who doesn’t like experiencing SPEED ??. The roads were amazingly smooth (Now i know why they call “INDIAN ROADS”). Equally smooth were the transmissions and the suspensions of our PowerTec. And finally we reached Suwon after 90 minutes on dot journey.We had already booked guest houses from India and they were waiting at the Bus terminal to pick us up. We reached the guest house called PARK 22. Its an Indian Guest House (IGH). Quite near to our place of work. It was already aorund 2030-2100 in the evening. Food was ready…Yes Indian, No..not great, just OK. And then went to our rooms made calls to home and slept offfffff. That was a very very tiring Day 1.

DAY 2:
We got up pretty early at around 6:00 in the morning and took all the necessary stuff (Like laptops,given by Samsung India and necessary docs and all). Head quarters is my dear friends….MIND BOGGLING. It is just like any other sky scrapper but, today i was actually gonna work in it !! Completed all the formalities, got our ID Cards, and headed to work area..Setup our laptops on the desks and then…….IT was ALL WORK WORK WORK WORK and WORK. How much work ??? Work enough till i slog, work equivalent to three times the effort I put in back in Bangalore,and work enough to stay in the office till 1200 in the midnight…Almost daily, and bloody work enough to keep you so occupied that you are afraid to even open your gmail and reply to the mails or atleast check them.

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