Thukkada

• La Marina - New foodcourt opened in Chennai City Center. A welcome addition, and a good choice of cuisines.
• To buy tamil books in Chennai, I found a few shops - Higginbothams (Mount road), Vidloka (Mylapore Bheemasena Garden Road), Bharathi Puthagalayam (Bang opposite a lane leading from Anna Arivalayam's side entrance - near Eldams Road), Manimegalai Pathipagam (TNagar), Kannadasan pathipagam (TNagar), Landmark (Nungambakkam, Spencer Plaza and City Center), Odyssey, A book shop on South Usman Road (opp Chennai Silks)
• A decent 2 Bedroom flat for rent in Triplicane - supposedly center of Chennai - is available for well under Rs 7500, while at places like Velacherry, Thuraipakkam, Sholinganallur, Perungudi - some of the fag-ends of Chennai -, you get decent 2 Bedroom houses for minimum Rs 8000. (Those who argue in favour of these fag-ends, please visit areas like Triplicane,Mylapore to see stuffs like water-not-getting-logged, full voltage at all times, reachability, accessibility to many amenities, multiple facilities)
• Radhakrishnan Salai alone gets a facelift - all platforms are being re-laid again with newer type of pavement stones. (Just a year back the pavements were laid with high cost aesthetic stones)
• Chennai Police gets 100 NYPD style cars to be stopped at traffic intersections and cause further chaos
• A rough guesstimate of high-class luxury buses running on dilapidated Chennai roads - TCS-100, Infosys - 20, Satyam-19, CTS-70, Polaris - 20, Xansa-10, Wipro-40...key IT companies themselves contribute around 500 buses. Add another 500 or so of school/college bus fleet. Come on, guys! Have you heard of collaboration? Our Chennai roads cant handle this kind of heavy weight traffic. Try something innovative, and help ease burden on our roads.
• All the new roads being laid - like IT highway or bye-pass roads do not have provision at all for something called pavement or platform.
• So-called Spencer Plaza needs to be renamed ChickunGunya Plaza. Try coming out via Phase-2 gate, you will know what I mean
• Guindy Industrial Estate - all those IT Companies complaining of poor roads and infrastrucuture...have you ever heard of something called self-sufficiency and community sponsor development.
• Welcome news! CITU starting Workers Associations/Unions for IT employees in some of the Indian States. High time, one is needed. I imagined starting one 7 years back. Atleast at a level in one company. All the tall-talkers disappeared, when I tried to moot the idea through signature campaign. Such is IT industry courage.