The Bazar experience

Makar Sankrant passes..and my mom starts receiving invitations for "haldi kunku" pressing her to return the favor by conducting one herself. The item to be given away becomes a hot topic of discussion within the family. Cost is indeed a factor since it is to be given to atleast 30-40 ladies.  When she asked me, I was reminded of the ad I saw in newspapers and at BEST bus stands (Bravo publicity team !!). See the image in the post. So I suggested to her to have a go at Big Bazar as we remember the day India became a republic...a suggestion I regret giving now.

I have generally heard from other people or seen such a scene only in ads on TV where crowds are involved in shopping in a super market as if life depended on it. I was lucky to experience it myself this time. Me and my mom headed to the Big Bazar at Growels 101, Kandivali...very rarely do we travel outside the Malad -Goregaon belt for basic shopping. Cut to growels..we were welcomed by two queues of 50-60 people. Note here the queue was to enter the shop..coz the shop couldn't handle more. I could already feel the atmosphere around me..as if you are in line to be sent on the battlefield waiting for your turn. People were discussing what they will buy once they are in. In the meantime, I was observing the people who fought and emerged out of the place with more than 6-7 shopping bags. I was trying to observe the trend. I could see that some specific items were selling like hot cakes.

Once we were in, suddenly we both were taken by the storm of people inside. Literally...and I mean it really..no space to walk. People going across you in every possible angle, with their trolleys, baskets with their "Excuse", "Thoda jaga do", some threatening you with just the amount of load they are carrying. It made us forget why we were there. Mom forgot the purpose of the visit and started talking about some bulk packets of cooking oil cans, grains and started checking the offers. I had to pull her out of the temptation and remind her why we were there. So we got aside and started discussing, "What can we buy?" Low cost but something that is very useful..etc etc..First mistake...should have gone there with a plan...Big bazar in this season is surely not the temple to think in. We both wading through the place was becoming difficult, so I suggested her to be at a place with whatever we already bought and I went around the place. This is when I realized I made a bad suggestion about Big Bazar. Of course you do find deals at Big Bazar. Buy a 5 L can of A and get a 1kg pack of B free, buy 1 get 1 free (with the two things bound together in a tight tape with stickers on it) etc. It is a good place for families to get 2-3 months of stuff with some good deals. So you will generally have deals on huge packs and not small ones. Anyway, we did not want to waste all that effort we put in getting inside and we bought the items at that place. Some things I noticed,

• You need a bigger place for such a thing. Though Big Bazar is experienced at handling large crowds, it surely does asphyxiate you surrounded by hundreds of people. A bigger place will make the shopping more pleasant.
• People have this habit of holding meetings near that very unavoidable nook to decide what they should buy, why they should buy, the prospects, profits..damn it..find a better place and plan in advance. This is not a normal supermarket where you can have a stroll..this is Big Bazar in its sabse saste din!!! Be considerate about other shoppers..
• Find a good time to go to this place..an unusual time to be precise..to avoid the crowds coz they are deadly and they care a damn...you can end up coming home with a bruised finger or arm thanks to the trolleys that keep rolling with their owners fixating on the offers.
• Do not forget to take your vehicle. Moving around waiting for rickshaws with those heavy bags can be troublesome.
• Be sure you avail all the offers especially since they have separate counter where the freebies are handed over.

That's all..phew..tiring....still 3 more days to fight...anyone interested?!

Streaming different audio streams to different audio devices in Ubuntu 11.10

Started with my sis talking to me over Skype. And I wanted to listen to some Westlife songs on youtube. But the issue was that her voice was routed to the speakers and when I played the song (i had the song buffered), it too started playing on the speaker. So, naturally, I was being swore at for this. Especially since she got to listen to the song through my mic streaming to her at less than 300 kbps. I can understand how it must be sounding to her. So my problem definition: I wanted to get the westlife song to my USB headset and my sis call on the speaker. This way, she does not get to listen to the staccato variant of the song and I get both the call and the song.

Bit of googling and forum reading led me to Pulse Audio Volume control application for linux. The package is named "pavucontrol". Command to install it in ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install pavucontrol 

Run the application. It provides an interface for you for audio input, audio output and a tab where you can set the type of audio interface for each device. eg. a normal sound card would be Analog stereo duplex. Other options are Analog stereo output, input, digital stereo etc...

The feature which I was looking for was in the first tab. This tab gives you an interface for each application that is using an audio stream. In my case, it was showing me two entries:

1. Skype

2. Alsa plugin for chrome (since I was listening to youtube through chrome. Chrome uses the alsa plugin to access the sound hardware.)

For each of these applications, it provides a slider volume control and also provides a drop down for selection of audio device to be used (most required). So I simply selected the USB headset for alsa plugin and internal sound card for the skype app. There..done! Everyone's at peace... 

What I understood..ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) works at a lower level and is closer to the hardware, while, Pulse Audio is a sound server at a higher level that provides you a host of features for the available streams like manipulatiing the stream, streaming it to another pulse audio server over the network, routing to different audio hardware etc..