GCoffee is now an integrated blog!

GCoffee is now an integrated blog and the personal content is now moved to August Minds. Please keep visiting all the other blogs of mine. Carpe Diem!  Seize The Day!

1001 events that shaped the world

Here is a little secrete of mine. During my schooling, I scored 98 in social studies.  (until my friend quips in to say that he scored 101; yes the total marks were for 200; and I just scored 49%).   History and Geography books used to be very dry accounts of people, place, and events and I always wondered why all these happened.  Be it the printing of the book, or the context of the text, lack of pictures (most of them were hand drawing or black and white faded images) and appeared more like a law book.  There was no sufficient material for me to think that I am proud of this country's history. These days, having been exposed to a lot of new age books and popular historian authors, History is really a fascinating subject for me.  It made me pick several books on history accounts and I really did read them all. The recent pick being 1001 events that shaped the world. A voluminous, encyclopedia kind of book, it has sequence of events narrated starting with BC and until recent '80s.  With a One Page - One Event concept, its really easy reading and a great compilation. Unlike other history books, there is nothing to memorize here. Almost every page has a suitable picture. Where photographs are not available, the oil paintings and art pictures are presented. But mind you, most of the oil pictures had nudity, violence, massacres, murders - not really disturbing but unless you make up your mind that this is our history and this was how the pictures were drawn.  One odd finding was that Gandhi's death was in colour photo - I am wondering if it was taken from the movie. The Index that appears at the beginning of the book is another wonderful listing countrywise.  I recommend this book to nourish your general knowledge. Its expensive. But its not just a coffee table kind; it truly has the essentials.  

Tags: Books, History

Flipkart's customer friendly service

Image: Namas Bhojani for Forbes India

I always find Flipkart to be very customer friendly.  All my online purchases have been through Flipkart for the past few years.

Some recent positive experiences:

a) I ordered a 16 GB sd card along with a mobile as a gift for my family.  However, upon receiving the Kingston sd card was bent. Since it was a gift, I did not have the bill and order no. handy.  I called up Flipkart Helpline and asked for SD card replacement.  After understanding my problem thoroughly, they agreed to replace.
b) If we  have ordered a book to your office address and if the delivery date falls on Saturday, they call up to check if we are available at Saturday. Obviously you dont :-).  SMS your house address, you get your order delivered at home.
c) This is the big highlight - I had ordered a gift for my daughter whose birthday falls on 4th July.  The committed delivery timeline was 7th July.  I requested Flipkart to consider delivering on 4th July - they really did the magic - the gift was delivered at 9 am!

There are few news I hear recently from my known circles - a colleague got a product over priced than MRP;  another friend got to know his order cancelled without intimation; another said an empty box was delivered.  And a very loud mouthed open letter to Flipkart's CEO on poor services.  I am only wondering its just happening after Junglee's entry.

What Gates reads this summer...

Bill Gates has posted his current summer reading. Please visit this link: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Great-Summer-Reading?WT.mc_id=7_5_2012_summerreading_tw&WT.tsrc=Twitter

Also, its a wow feeling to see what he reads: 
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/All?search=Books&view=preview