Roman god of Pizza ? Tony !

Acquired a microwave oven over the Sankranti/Pongal long weekend. With expired gift cards that had to be renewed by adding an additional 50% of each gift card. A strange quirk that was a result of a combination of gift cards not carrying the expiry date, retain outlets unable to confirm when the card actually expired and patently stupid enterprise business workflows having web forms for the previous era paper gift coupons but get translated to more modern plastic cards. The details could be another blog post - so we leave it at that.

The kids demanded to have a pizza made at home. Went and bought some pizza base and mozzarella cheese. Sunday brunch menu was to be pizza. Followed the instructions that asked for pre-heating the oven to 200 deg C. Literal following of the manual meant I missed the minor detail of keeping the crusty plate inside the oven during this pre-heating process !

Got the base ready in a bit of hurry with butter, toppings of tomato, baby corn, onion  & capsicum, grated the cheese on top and kept this raw pizza on the crusty plate. Asked the kids to pray to the Italian god of pizza. For usual South Indian food, we normally pray to Krishna (by saying Govinda !) - so by induction a Roman god had to be invoked. The kids came up the name Tony almost instantly.
Sounded Italian. So went with it.

Placed the plate on the high rack once the oven beeped mid-program. After 7 minutes, the pizza was not entirely ready so kept it for a few more minutes.
First home made pizza at our home was ready. The kids loved it. It was not great but not too bad either.

Jai Tony !

 हर किसी को मुकम्मल जहाँ नहीं मिलता ।
किसी को ज़मीन, तो किसी को आसमान नहीं मिलता ॥

Pool Shpool

It's day 3 without the car. No cars available is the message on the uber app.Caught an auto to the main road. Turned on the app again. Got an option on Uber Pool for Rs. 118/-.

Decided to go with that option. The cab arrived in about 10 minutes. Had 2 passengers already in the back seat. Had to occupy the front passenger seat which felt cramped with my 2 bags. The other passengers got down after 15 mins.

Thought had the car just for myself till my destination. But when the driver looked like taking a wrong route was when I realized there was one more pickup.
This was a car pool - so part of the package.
Reached office in about 1 hour 15 minutes - not too bad.

One after a billion

It is a Tuesday and the car still refuses to start. Wifey had called a mechanic but he did not turn up yesterday. Decided to try a cab aggregator service. Mostly influenced by a promotional offer that came my way after paying my broadband bill. Still wondering if that offer had anything to do the issue with my car. Far fetched  by any stretch of imagination. A random co-incidence is all it is.

So downloaded the Uber app and registered my account. Booked a cab today morning. Hit with the ominous surge pricing. Was asked to confirm 1.9 - surge factor at 8:30 am. Surge factor can go up to 5X as I got to know while talking to the driver later.

Proceeded and got a cab within a minute.

Got talking with the driver on the way. Better understood the cab aggregator business model.

Driver owns the fuel and car maintenance costs (including insurance, regular maintenance etc.).

They get paid a fixed amount for every ride. Yes, fixed amount for a ride, irrespective of what customer pays for the ride. Driver pays Rs. 300/- per week as device charges for the mobile phone and SIM card that Uber offers. Money gets transferred to the driver bank account on a monthly basis (Ola apparently settles daily). The driver mentioned that he has to do 10-13 rides per day to make it work for him. That implies starting at 6am in the morning and going on till midnight.

No wonder these unicorns are growing like crazy. 

Bill came to Rs. 498/-. Paid Rs. 0/- thanks to the promo code.

Uber just celebrated a billion rides. I have come late to this party.

Realization of the day - Cost of convenience matched by surge pricing.

Starting trouble

Monday morning struck unexpectedly. I was all set to leave for office. Put my bags in the car and turned on the ignition. But the car refused to start. Tried cranking the engine few more times but no change in result. Had to choose a different mode of transport to get to work.

Started walking up to the main road which was about 2 KM from home. Decided to catch an auto-rickshaw as I was getting late. First auto I approached, he asked how much would I pay as he refused to go by meter. Typical response. Stopped another one who agreed and off we went. Took about 1 hour to reach office by usual route. Got exposed to all the traffic smoke and dust on the road. Paid Rs. 192/-.

On the way back, caught a Volvo bus till Sarjapur junction and walked 4KM from there to home. Bus fare was Rs. 60/- and took 1.5 hours. Felt some nausea and got a headache. The walk back also involved lots of dust and smoke.

Reached home with burning eyes and a heavy head. Some corn and hot ginger tea helped pull through a tcon later in the evening.

Realized how bad the air quality was on Bangalore roads.
And the luxury of travelling by own car everyday with the windows up.