Why did I dip my finger in the curry!!!???

Hello All,

After yet another crazy week, I had sometime to get back to myself. I am sure many readers would wholeheartedly accept my next statement. "Sometimes you really realize that the best vacation place, the best rejuvenating center and the best place to find peace & harmony can only and only be your home! Right?"

Some people run for chilled beer, some people will slip under their comforter and sleep like a baby and some choose to watch back-to-back Rom-Com or chick-flicks; But I, like many of you out their, like to cook!

Well, let me first introduce myself with regard to cooking; I am a very occasional and unconventional cook; I cook when I am super happy or super stressed; I somehow feel energized when I get into the process of cooking. So call me an experimental cook; I don't often cook the same dish  unless I get 5 star ratings (evil smile). 

For me- finding a new dish on the internet, discovering its ingredients in the refrigerator and on the unreachable racks of kitchen shelves, adapting the recipe to suit my inventory, giving a running commentary while cooking like in those cooking shows (yes, I do that stupid thing too), serving that exotic dish to the family and awaiting their nodding head in acceptance and appreciation is a beautiful relaxing and rejuvenating process. Only when my family members woo me for that magical dish, I gain the guts to invite my friends, a larger crowd for a nice lunch another day. 

This time I prepared the vegetarian Thai yellow curry! I had replaced chicken with Tofu; and mushroom and broccoli were adding so much meaning to that recipe. It tasted tender and sugary spicy.  

Hey, but wait a minute! I forgot to tell you something so important in my whole cooking process...! Before I poured the curry into the serving bowl, I did dip my finger and had slurped it to get a quick idea about the overall taste. (now don't contest me over not being hygienic and all...this is what I do but I will make sure that I don't dip it again); I guess all the programmers and engineers out there call this process of dipping and slurping as "alpha testing".

According to Webopedia, Alpha testing is a very early version of a software product that may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. Typically, software goes through two stages of testing before it is considered finished. The first stage, called alpha testing, is often performed only by users within the organization developing the software. The second stage, called beta testing , generally involves a limited number of external users.

By the way, why did I have a crazy week? Why was I so stressed in the first place? 

Answer: I am going through the alpha testing phase of http://realmimpex.com

I guess alpha testing is that crazy phase when people end up doing dual roles, in fact those roles with strikingly opposite characters. Until the first level of implementation is complete, you will believe every concept that strikes you, every line of code that you write and every specification that you think seems to be apt. But, when it comes to alpha testing, you have to question the specification, question the concept and test the end result of every line of code. Gosh! it is so tiring. The only reason for me to sustain is The Team! Oh boy, the team is so energetic! If you believe in the concept of aura, then I can prove that this team has it! We have diluted the time zones. Thanks to Skype, Google Hangout and Whatsapp; without which we couldn't have achieved this. We still have miles to go though...

We are eagerly waiting to serve this curry to our family members; I mean, we are excited to make a few of our customers take part in our beta testing. And to make it happen I should stop writing blogs and restart questioning the features on the portal.

In the meantime, look up your own experimental dish and don't forget to dip your finger!!

Realmimpex.com : Under Maintenance till 20th April 2014.

Notification

Our website is under maintenance. We are shifting our website to a different hosting services. This enables us to host our power packed platform easily on a powerful server. Our website will be down for testing from 10th April 2014 to 20th April 2014. 

 Please wait to watch us live with our Beta version product which will be launched in May 2014. We would update here on our blog page regularly with any progress.

Gist of CII- Where Fashion marries Technology!

We usually get either one of these: Food or Food for thought! But it was one of those rare occasions, we had good food and great thoughts combo!

Yes, Team Realm actively participated in Confederation of Indian Industry 2014, held at Taj West, Bengaluru.

The popular CII did deliver as promised. The evening had all the industry wrestlers under one roof. While the weather gradually cooled, many hot topics were discussed. Realm resonated with Sona Valliappa Group and Go-Go International Pvt Ltd regarding the logistical challenges & current trends of fashion industry.

The opportunity to discuss with CEO of Gokuldas Exports Ltd and the fashion industry expert from Infor Ltd was utilized to its best! Stay tuned, we might have good news on the lines of partnerships!!!

This sounds picture perfect right? Well, it would have been perfect if Mr Ramesh Kumar Shah from R K Group could have attended the complete event.

Team Realm sincerely thank Mr Duggar (CEO of Go Go International), Mr George (Industry expert of Infor), Mr Thyagu Valliappa (Executive Director of Valliappa Group) and Mr Chakravarti (CEO of Gokuldas Ltd) for their support, inspiration and guidance!

We knew we were on the right track, but the topics discussed in CII gave us a booster!

Thanks CII for everything !

Torn Bermuda

After finishing school final exams during one summer of 90’s I went to my uncle’s house for holidays. I was also accompanied by my lovely cousins’ vatsa and sapna.

All was fine until one day when my aunt told lets go for an outing and took us to “Ramana Maharishi Ashram” near Mekri circle, Bangalore.

I was fully geared up for the outing (So called :)), dressed in New Bermuda (Chaddi), Shirt and full face powder.

My aunt hired an auto and stuffed all of us in it and we started towards our Final Destination. We reached the place after about ½ hr. of travel. Unlike today traffic was not heavy on the roads and travel used to be a jolly ride. The auto driver would be thinking to dump us anywhere on the road because we were making so much noise sitting inside. I still have fresh memories of how we used to laugh and make fun of each other by cracking practical jokes. Pity that auto driver. Jokes apart; finally we reached the place and started playing.

We played Hide and Seek, lots of Hopscotch etc. at last we saw a place where other kids were playing too. This new found place was actually a part of the building which was adjacent to the park we were playing. We all got attracted to the place because of its structure. It resembled a huge slide; the difference was the material it was made of, it was concrete.

No matter what, we wanted to play this big slide. So I and my other naughty cousins’ started to climb up the slope and down we came sliding. This went on for an hour or so.

All were tired and it was getting late in the evening so my aunt told we have to get back home. With lots of saddened face we had to start towards the main road to catch an auto back home. On the way back we were allowed to relish some roasted corn with masala.

We got back home and were about to change the dress and get back to normal attire. The day was memorable and it was coming to an graceful end. I got into the room to change my dress and noticed that my bottom back was actually backless :) My Chaddi was torn behind beyond recognition (After effects of concrete slide). I felt like the whole world has come to an end and this will be the last day of my life. Tears were just waiting to run down my cheeks as I had torn one of my favorite chaddi. Actually the issue was more than that and it was MY FATHER the Strict wise man. I was damn scared to get back my home after Happy Holidays with the torn thing alone with me. Somehow I managed to reveal and narrate the whole story to my father and convinced him. I got the damn thing darned and started to wear it again.

“Sometimes a small chaddi/bermuda can make u cry and shiver”

What are we doing ?

We are working on our online platform round the clock using a 2.3Ghz Intel Pentium IV processor, 2GB RAM DDR 1,  machine and yes, we do not want to change the machine. We have decided to release our ALPHA version of our online platform using this machine. This machine took breath once we installed an additional 1 GB RAM (Transcend) to our existing 1 GB RAM which we got it for 600/- from SP Road, Bangalore. Thank god for the new RAM, now we can access our Local Host. Yes, this still takes lot of time to load but better than before. Our engineer Mahesh, is facing much more challenges with this machine to balance the speed of project flow with the speed of the machine with noisy neighboring surroundings and election power cuts. Nothing is impossible according to our Technical Head Sandeep. He has pushed a lot and have been developing code structures for the ideas lined up.

Yes, we are squeezing ourselves working hard for this. Sleepless nights + days, no food tummies, 10 - 15 google search results on different tabs always, phone's switched off all the time, numbers, symbols, server problems... Yes as said we are squeezing ourselves.

We are announcing shortly of the date, on which we would release our ALPHA version dream!

SEO - How its done!!

SEO for E-Commerce Homepage

If you have an existing ecommerce website and you’re struggling to gain a high ranking for your most important keyword or key phrase, it may be time to reevaluate your on-page and off-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. Here’s what to do.
The best place to start for homepage search engine optimization is your Google Analytics reports (or similar analytics program). Gather a list of non-brand keywords driving traffic to your homepage over an extended period of time. If using Google Analytics (GA), search under Traffic Sources -> Sources -> Search -> Organic. The longer amount of time the better, as it gives you a more complete picture of the homepage’s past and present activity. Paying attention to the visits metric is important, but also focus on the conversion rate for each keyword. If using GA, add in the secondary reporting dimension, Landing Page and then filter the results to display your homepage only.

Be sure to note if one keyword/key phrase seems to be outperforming all others. As you move through the report, try to discover groupings of keywords or themes. If you have at least 6 months worth of keyword data, you should be able to Identify at least one or two keyword/key phrase groupings.
The next step is to see where your homepage currently ranks for these keywords in organic search. Remember that your positioning in organic search – whether you’re in the top 3 results of Google or the bottom half of the first page for example, has a large impact on how much traffic your homepage receives for any given search query. You can see search volume estimates for your keywords using Google’s free keyword research tool.

Next, open your Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) account and locate the anchor text (within the Traffic category) for the incoming links to your site. Beyond brand keywords, you should see a connection whereas the anchor text GWT presents mirrors the keywords you see in your keyword analytics reports. Chances are, your homepage ranks well for these keywords because you have both supporting keyword content on the homepage and because Google has recognized other websites linking to your homepage using those keywords in text links.

A story behind my shades!

   It was a Saturday. A street in the west got its much awaited break from burning rubber. That street which led to a huge business district was calm with fewer cars. Things were slow as expected. Even the public transportation was taking its own sweet time! I had to wait for a long time, really long. It was me and the street who observed the ever changing and moving world. 

The view of the surroundings was familiar. But when you start observing, you start finding deltas everywhere. These deltas are the changes that are defined in Wikipedia, Google pages, blogs and  books. These changes are well documented everywhere, but it becomes euphoric when you witness it!

People walked with kids, shopping bags, carts, leashed dogs... they became my momentary mates on the side walk. Thanks to my sun glasses, people did not find me offensive when I observed them. 

Once they pass by, I was again left with the same street and that's when I got a chance to think. I thought  about that lady who wore that floral patterned skirt walked a while ago. About the mid-aged man wearing a pale white V neck shirt. About the teen who chose Khaki shorts over the blue jeans.  

Over a period of a finite time, the relationship among the clothes and the people gets revealed. The mere stuff that someone wears, shares a series of complex relationship. The clothing represented the weather, their social status, their mood, their weekend plan, their thought process, their ego, the individual's take on the life and what not!

I realized that one could connect to a stranger just by looking at their clothes. I guess a true and successful  fashion designer can decode this complex relationship. And a clever manufacturer is the one who finds the right designer at the right time and makes his art available to the general public. 

Why do some people prefer high waist over low waist? Sleeveless over sleeves? Why not black or Why black? Why did we change from bell-bottom to straight-fit and went back to boot-cuts and again a pencil fit? Why did the blouses got and lost its flower-bouncy shoulders? At first, fashion might be an answer; but if you dig deep enough, the individual personality will be the reason for these paradigm shifts. Science, Technology, Religion, Culture, Age, Education, Profession and much more are hidden between the threads of the fabric!

An apparel is that assembled piece of fabric covering human body  that can represent the individual and the relationship that they share with the society. That's for the definition and beyond that, everything is passion and art!

Well, I saw the bus arriving finally. I entered. I saw a bunch of people seated already. By the end of these 50 minutes, I had learnt basics (not mastered) of guessing ones character by their cloth. So, I was bound to put on my shades!