What is my skin type?
Are you wondering how to know what type of skin you have? Dry, oily or something else? Ask your wife, girlfriend or sister, they will tell you.
Where to buy cheap lemongrass oil in bulk?
I don’t know about other places but you can buy lemongrass essential oil at affordable prices in Bhubaneswar, Odisha from a government run shop. The name of the place is Tribal World which is in Rupali Square, Sahid Nagar, Bhubaneswar. Here is the Google Maps link to the store.
It is run by an government organization called Tribal Development Co-operative Corporation of Odisha Ltd. Their websites are tdccodisha.org and adisha.in
They have 100 ml & 200 ml bottles, with & without spray pumps. A 100 ml bottle without pump costs 180 rupees while sprayer bottles are costlier.
You can use this oil in your manual reed defusers, electronic aroma defusers, as a manual spray, or as floor cleaning liquid to give your home a nice aroma. It is very concentrated so you should dilute it with water before using.
How to clean glass kitchen chimney
What is the best material to clean oil & grease from glass panel of a kitchen chimney?
We have a modular kitchen & chimney setup from Sleek. I have tried to clean the chimney, its exterior glass surface, its filter & other inside, outside areas using various types of liquids to such as tarpin (similar to kerosene), thinner (similar to spirit, used to wash paint off brushes) & detergent mixed water.
But from my trials I have found the window glass cleaner Colin does the best job of removing the oily, sticky substances with least amount of scrubbing efforts. I absolutely recommend it.
I also use Colin to clean the modular kitchen’s panels. Any other brand glass cleaner liquid should work as well.
How much time it takes to reload HDFC MultiCurrency Forex card?
I have the VISA Platinum ForexPlus Multi Currency Corporate Debit Card.
Today, on a Friday, I reloaded it with Qatari Riyals at 12:35 PM in the afternoon online using my debit card.
I received SMS & email notification of the amount being loaded at 6:13 PM in the evening.
So it took 5 hours 38 minutes.
Note: On our last trip to Switzerland, I had loaded Swiss Francs on the card only 1 day before my travel date & it was confirmed the same day via email, but I still could not withdraw Swiss Francs at any of the ATMs in Geneva airport when we landed there. Then after one more day I was able to withdraw my cash.
So to be on the safe side, my advice is to load foreign currency on the card atleast 3 or 4 working days prior to your travel date to be 100% sure that the card will be ready for use when you reach there.
How to smell nice all day long
This is my advice for all kinds of human beings, ladies, gentlemen & others. You don’t have to smell like a flower all the time but please for the love of god, at the very least, don’t smell bad.
I speak from personal experience. I have been there. Despite bathing daily, we start to smell like garbage after a few hours.
The primary reason for that is the sweat that generates in our armpits, and then it catches onto the armpit hair. Within a few hours bacteria is formed on that hair & we start to smell like pigs.
The secondary reason is not taking a shower in the end of the day.
So here are 4 steps how to fix that terrible body odour of yours that you can’t notice but others can.
1. Must do: Shave off your armpit hair completely. No cutting with scissors. It is 2020 already, whether you’re an alpha male or a lovely lass, armpit hair is just not sexy anymore. Buy a Philips hair trimmer or a manual triple blade razor & clean shave it regularly.
2. Most important: Apply a Roll On Deodorant on your armpit right after coming from shower. I recommend any of the roll on deos from Nivea which are great. It creates a very thin layer in your under arms which reduces sweat generation itself & also prevents bacteria creation from sweat. It works for a really long time, like 10 hours or so!
3. Optional: Wear a nice perfume or gas deo spray, whatever floats your boat. But just don’t over do it. Very strong aroma is also kinda repulsive.
4. Further hygiene: Take a shower in the evening when you return from work, or before bed when you’re ready to call it a day. You don’t need to apply the roll on deo after this last shower to leave the skin some breathing room in the night, also its unlikely that you’ll sweat much in your sleep.
How does Paytm FASTag work on national highways?
When I bought a new car this year the car dealership took Rs 500 from me towards FASTag, out of which Rs 100 is the cost of the tag, Rs 250 is refundable security deposit and Rs 150 is kept as a threshold amount in your FASTag account. Many banks are assigned by the government to sell these FASTags. My car dealership gets the tag issued by Paytm, so they connected this tag with my Paytm mobile number & this new car’s registration number. And then they affixed the tag on top of my front windscreen.
Within minutes I received SMS notification from Paytm about a new FASTag being activated in my account, and I could see Rs 150 threshold amount in a “FASTag wallet” inside the Paytm app.
If you order a FASTag from any of the issuing banks the process should be similar, you will pay the one time fee to buy the sticker, you will also need to provide your car’s registration number while buying it, and it will be given to you by the bank and you will stick it onto your car. But I am unsure how much time that will take because traditional banks & their employees are very lazy, when I asked about to one of the “Personal Banker” officer at my HDFC bank’s home branch he was completely clueless about it. So I would suggest you to get it from Paytm.
I recently went on a big road trip & this was the first time I used it. As this has been launched since quite a few years, all the toll gates on national highway are FASTag enabled already and the government is going to make FASTag mandatory to pay toll fee from 1st December 2019. So now is the perfect time to get it.
Right now, some toll gates have all of their lanes FASTag enabled while some toll gates have only one dedicated lane for it, and some toll gates have handheld scanners with their staff. In either case you will be able to see FASTag notice boards & banners from atleast 500 meters away before approaching the gates. Now you just go near the gate, there are scanners which will read your tag & lift up the metal boom barrier & you can drive past. It automatically deducts amount from your bank account or Paytm account depending upon to which account it is connected.
You will receive a SMS of the fee deducted but it will not be instantaneously, the SMS usually arrives after a few hours, depending upon how well that particular toll gate is connected to the internet. I have even received SMS of one toll gate charge one day after I drove past it, so nothing to worry, it always deducts the correct amount.
So far I have not been able to test a round trip by going both ways through the same toll gate within a time period of 24 hours, but I believe it will correctly deduct the amount [round trip fare minus one way fare already paid] instead of charging you one way fares twice, which seems only logical.
I have setup Paytm to charge my credit card Rs 1000 to top up its balance automatically when the balance goes below Rs 1000. So the process is completely automatically, I zoom past toll gates, they deduct the fee, I get a SMS, I can see the transaction inside the Paytm app & I can also download a monthly statement in PDF format as well. I would say this whole system works pretty smooth.
South India road trip
We went on a car trip towards southern India for about 4 weeks, from 30th August to 22nd September. We just got out of the door without any fixed route or destination or number of days in mind, with only one hotel booked at the next city, and continued planning further details on the road, till we were ready to return home. Here are some details.
Route / Distance / Toll Paid / Days Stayed
BBSR > Visakhapatnam / 423 KM / Rs 400 / stayed the night
Visakhapatnam > Vijayawada / 368 KM / Rs 547 / stayed the night
Vijayawada > Chennai / 458 KM / Rs 450 / stayed for a week
Chennai > Puducherry / 130 KM / Rs 150 / stayed for 3 nights
Puducherry > Bengaluru / 311 KM / Rs 100 / stayed a week
Bengaluru > Hyderabad / 575 KM / Rs 680 / stayed a week
Hyderabad > Visakhapatnam / 682 KM / Rs 845 / stayed the night
Visakhapatnam > Bhubaneswar / 419 KM / Rs 500 / reached home
Stats:
Drove 4265 kilometers from home till back home, across 5 states and 1 union territory.
Paid approximately Rs 3800 at various national highway & interstate expressway toll gates, almost all of which was paid using FASTag, the electronic toll collection system.
Burned around 17757 of petrol.
Spend 67019 in hotel bills.
Saw countless beautiful sights, passed by hundreds of mountains, endless greenery, drove on great 6 lane national highway from Vijayawada to Chennai, drove on awesome 8 lane Nehru Outer Ring Road outside Hyderabad, drove on terrible potholed roads in Bengaluru. Ate at many highway side dhabas & food courts. Visited temples, malls, beaches.
Our jaws hit floor seeing absolutely massive KIA Motors plant in Andhra Pradesh while going from Bengaluru to Hyderabad. Ate Swedish food & brought furnitures from giant IKEA showroom in Hyderabad.
As I sit here at home in Bhubaneswar on a rainy morning, typing this post, trying to remember all the things we saw & did in the trip, relive those moments, I feel good that I did this trip, I feel proud that I was able to drive such long distances, but more importantly it feels useful.
I believe such spontaneous, big road trips can be very useful for a person: just get out there, see the vast lands, see our gigantic country, first get confused & then understand different languages, cultures, eat different food, hate some people, love some people, it increases your exposure, it broadens your horizon, gives you more courage to face the unknown, grows your ability to overcome obstacles as they come, it keeps you on your toes, it keeps your brain sharp, it makes you more understanding & compassionate towards others.
We will definitely be going on more such journeys.
HDFC credit card cash back
Here is one more reason to use a credit card from HDFC. Now you have the option to get direct cash back to your bank account against the points you have earned. The points to rupee ratio varies by card. On a Regalia card 5 points equals 1 rupee, so if you have 1000 points you can redeem the points to be 200 rupees in your bank account.
To do so login to your NetBanking account, go to Cards > Credit Cards > Redeem Reward Points > tick your active Card & click Continue > Continue. A popup window will open & it will automatically log you into the HDFC MyRewards portal where you can see your incurred points and redeem them against cash or various products.
Note that HDFC will change you 99 rupees every time a redemption request is made, so it is wise to have atleast a couple of thousand points before redeeming them to cash. Earlier I used to redeem my credit card points for perfumes but this is the first time I used the cash back option as it is a very new feature.
How to upgrade HDFC bank savings account from Classic to Preferred
Okay so this is not something a savings account holder can do on their own. This upgrade is offered by the bank when your account satisfies all the eligibility criteria of the Preferred Banking Programme. More details about HDFC’s Preferred banking is found here.
So recently I saw a blue banner message inside my HDFC NetBanking account saying “get a taste of exclusive banking, personalized for you”.
I have been a Classic banking customer since quite a few years now & was so happy to see this upgrade being offered to me, so I clicked the red Join Now! button, and was presented with this next screen.
This page had my details such as my name, where my home branch was, and there was a simple form further down below to take my consent to be upgraded to the Preferred programme which I gave, and also an option to change the branch of my Relationship Manager [RM] if I wanted, which I did & submitted the form.
After one working day, my account was updated. I didn’t receive any email or sms notification but my NetBanking account had changed from blue to yellow theme, and in the very bottom a new RM’s name, email & phone number was scrolling.
I am yet to speak with the new RM & avail any benefits from this newfound status though 😀
Feel free to steal my design
I am not a web designer & I would love to know if people like the simple design of my blog.
So if want to have the WordPress theme used on this website then to download it here.
It is free and you can do whatever you want with it. Add/remove/edit, make it yours.
I would be happy to hear from you if you ended up using it somewhere so please email me 🙂
A link back to my website’s home page from your website would be super nice of you but not absolutely mandatory.