Is Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) running Volvo buses (Garuda branded luxury coaches) on kerosene?
Bangalore auto drivers (Indian auto drivers in general) were famous for running their autos on kerosene (ಸೀಮೆ ಏಣ್ಣೆ, मिट्टी का तेल्), due to cost advantage of the subsidized fuel. But internal combustion engines were not designed to run on kerosene and these autos were leaving behind a thick black exhaust, polluting the environment and spoiling health of people around.
Last Saturday, on 27th Jan 2007, eNidhi India CBO (Chief Blogging Officer) Shrinidhi Hande spotted a Volvo B7R, owned by APSRTC, running on NH 9 (Hyderabad-Vijayawada route) which was releasing an unusually thick exhaust. I was rather shocked to see that. See the video below, focusing on exhaust pipe.
(The bright sun light has reduced the darkness of exhaust gas, tilted video is retained as it is for a change)
Technically, Volvo B7R buses incorporate some of the finest technology available in buses world wide. The B7R (B7R stands for Bus, 7Litre, Rear engine) have turbo chargers and intercoolers, meant to optimize fuel usage and comply with international pollution norms (B7Rs sold in India are Euro II compliant while in UK Euro III versions are available). Pollution caused by Volvo vehicles are far lower than any other Indian made heavy vehicles.
Still this particular vehicle was an exception. At a normal speed of 60 kmph on a plain highway, this vehicle was not expected to release black fume.
Was that vehicle very old? (It can’t be, since Volvo India started selling buses in India just around 9 years back (on June 15th, 1998, to be precise))
or was the diver using inferior quality fuel?
Or the vehicle was not serviced for long time?
It is time APSRTC spares little more attention towards its Garuda coaches, each costing INR 6 million plus. A proper maintenance and supervision is necessary to increase the life the vehicle also to protect its reputation.
Along with my colleagues, I did visit Hampi last weekend. It was rather an un scheduled trip, planned in less than 48 hours. We wanted to attend a colleague's engagement ceremony in Bellary, Karnataka and we were not willing to travel all the way to Bellary from Hyderabad (350+ kms) just to attend one function. So the nearest tourist place being Hampi, it was decided to visit Hampi.
ನಾನು ಚಿಕ್ಕವನಿದ್ದಾಗ ಹ೦ಪಿಗೆ ಹೊಗಿದ್ದೆ. ಈ ಪ್ರಯಾಣದಿ೦ದ ಹಳೇ ನೆನಪುಗಳುಗಳು ಮರುಕಳಿಸಿದವು (I had been to Hampi long long back, sometimes in childhood and this visit refreshed the memories.)
This post is my personal account of Hampi visit. I've written a customized review that'll be useful for people planning to visit Hampi at Mouthshut.com. If you're looking for tourist information on Hampi (like best time to travel, what to see, how much time to spend, travel and stay, and other details) please checkout my review on Hampi available at the end of the post
Check out some videos first.
Video 1: Musical Pillars at Vittal Temple, Hampi.
The pillars made out of stone generate musical tunes when struck with hand. Different pillars produce different sound (that of Veena, Mrudangam, key board, horse gallop, etc). Each pillar generates a specific sound and this depends on its density, length, space etc. Without any musical instruments people of 15th century used to have concerts...
Note: The explanation for the videos are in Telugu language. Inconvenience caused by this is deeply regretted. Video 2: Multiple faces: One stone representing different animals:
Video 3: Hampi museum
This one is lengthy. Ignore the noise in the video. No explanation here.
All videos were shot in SE K750i. (Read my review of this product here)
We left Hyderabad on Friday midnight and reached Hampi by Saturday afternoon loosing half day in travel which could have been used for more productive purposes.(reasons were many: driver didn't knew the way, the roads were pathetic, we started late and our estimate of required time was wrong)
We rented a guest house in Hampi, had refreshments, hired a guide (His name was Nagesh) and spent half day seeing key places in Hampi. Evening we went to TB Dam near Hospet.
The local residents of Hampi have kept all other professions aside to encash from tourism boom. Hampi has gained popularity after UNICEF recognition and Jackie's movie, "The Myth". One child was trying to sell maps to us and was saying "ಬೋಣಿ ಮಾಡಿ ಸಾರ್ " (Kannada for: be my first customer and make my day). I asked him its afternoon 2 PM and is it your first sale still? He replied that he just returned from school and just started selling his goods. Most of the houses are converted into Guest Houses and are rented to tourists and roof tops and open spaces are used as restaurants.
Bicycles were available for rent at Rs 40 per day, a cheap and useful vehicle to roam around and explore the place.
We left Hampi next morning, went to attend the function in Bellary and left for Hyderabad later in the afternoon.
Below are the photos we took during our Hampi visit. The first slide show contains only those photos showing Hampi, while second slideshow contains all photos, including individual photos of team members of our Hampi visit.
Nearly 200 images...ignore if you don't have patience/interest in seeing all of them.
Tunga Bhadra river (ತು೦ಗ ಭದ್ರಾ ನದಿ)was almost empty leaving no room for water sports while TB Dam at Hosakote was good.
Ideally one should spend minimum of one to two days at Hampi to get maximum benefit. Also when you go on a tour, the time spent on site seeing should exceed time spent on travel. But in our case, out of 48 hours we spent on tour 24 hours were lost in travel, 12 hours in sleep and refreshment and only around 10-12 hours were spent in actual site seeing. But since it was not planned in advance and still served the basic purpose of visiting Hampi there's no regrets or complaints about it. The trip gave a break from office and served as a refreshment.
Acknowledgments:
Laptop and Data Transfer courtesy: జయనంద న్ రెడ్డి గారు (Jayanandan Reddy)
Cameras used: Olympus FE 170, Sony DSC W5, Sony Ericson's K750i
(Sony DSC W5 Courtesy: జయనంద న్ రెడ్డి గారు,Other two are mine.)
Internet backbone for file uploading: Airtel Broadband.
Flash Slideshow: slide.com
A thought...
When our guide was explaining that in 15th century the land was so prosperous and all, my mind ran few centuries ahead... How would things be then? I guess guides will be explaining to tourists (say in 25th century) something like this: "In 21st century there were very popular IT cities called electronic city and Hi-Tech City, where there were many IT companies, where people used to use laptops and computers and develop high quality softwares, they used to sell these softwares to American companies and made a living out of it...in that time only they were able to interact with people across the globe using video conferencing...they had build very strong anti virus capabilities to protect themselves but..." leaving it to your imagination...
Some more videos:
Musical Fountain at TB Dam, Hoskote, Karnataka
What is there in Hampi?
Hampi contains mainly rocks and temples and monuments dating back to 15th century which have historic significance. The inherited heritage of the then kings are now under ruins and tell their story with silent tears. How much time can I spend there? Places of tourist interest in Hampi is spread across over 64 square kms. If you love history and archeology you can spend weeks here. A minimum of one day is needed to see the most important places. You can spend anywhere between half day to 2 days depending on your convenience
Travel and Accommodation Hampi is around 350 kms from Bangalore and 450 kms from Hyderabad. Bellary is the nearest airport and railway station, from where Hampi is around 60 kms. Avoid going by road (till Bellary) as the roads are very very bad.
Hospet is the nearest town for hotel accommodation, In Hampi many people have converted their house into guest house and rent it to tourists, which is a relatively better option (both in terms of cost and convenience). Bicycles and bikes are available on rent for local site seeing. Depending on season/off season, your bargaining abilities, luxuries offered and other factors, accommodation at Hampi may cost anywhere between 100 to 500 Rs per person.
Best Time to Visit
October to February is the ideal time to visit Hampi. But post December the river thungabhadra, which flows nearby wont have much water hence you wont be able to indulge in any water sports (say boat ride)
During November (usually first week) there’ll be Hampi Utsav, during which you can find additional attractions like cultural shows, exhibitions etc. But at this time Hampi will be over crowded and you cant enjoy the natural beauty of Hampi (also it’ll be expensive)
Places to see
Virupaksha temple is the main temple, while other places are: Vittal temple, Kadalekai Ganesha (Groundnut shaped Ganesha), Lotus Mahal, Veerabhadra idol etc. Each piece of stone has its own story hence the list is endless.
Other useful information:
Only in main Virupaksha temple photography and videography are charged, rest of the Hampi is free to shoot.
Hiring a guide is a must if you need directions to visit various places and get some description of each place. Guides will charge around 250 for half day to thousand rupees per day, depending on various factors (your negotiation skills, season/off season etc)
TB Dam near Hospet is another place of interest, go there during evening to see musical fountain.
Carrying your own water will save you lot of money. A Rs 12 one liter bottle is sold at Rs 15-20 in Hampi.
If you’re a foreign national go with an Indian friend if possible. The locals here at Hampi adopt all tricks and techniques to extract maximum money from foreign nationals.
Hope this was useful. Additional photos and videos and description at my blog.
In our day to day operations we interact with lots of people and at times, people give excuses as to why they are not able to do something. This post is a quick analysis of such excuses
Length: Less than one page
In the context of this post, excuse is defined as “a defense of some offensive behavior or some failure to keep a promise etc”
At a high level, I classify the excuses into 2 types
Interested but have some genuine concern: When people want to help you/keep their promise but are not able to do some due to certain problems they are facing, they fall into this category. This kind of people can be dealt with easily, as they usually respond positively if you come up with a solution for their excuses. It’s very much possible to arrive at a mutually beneficial deal with this kind of people.
Not interested, hence faking some excuses: When the primary interest is missing and people still try to show that they’re very much willing to help, they come up with a wide range of lame excuses trying to justify “I want to do but not able to”. This type of people do not respond positively if you propose a solution to their concerns. They’ll come up with some other excuse. It’s very easy to identify that the excuse is not genuine as the party wont be able to provide additional evidence/logical reasoning/proper explanation. Since the interest to cooperate is not there, any negotiation or any attempt to arrive at a mutually beneficial situation will eventually fail.
So determining the other party’s primary interest in the issue under consideration is very critical. If someone is not at all interested in peace and their hidden agenda is to spread terrorism, any amount of discussions, talks and negotiations will not bring in peace, because the other party will not respond honestly or fulfill its side of commitment.
If you find that someone is giving second type of excuse, it will be better to avoid negotiating with them altogether and shift to alternate options. Unless you’re in a compulsion, don’t waste time dealing with those who do not have the basic interest in helping/cooperating. This is because for a successful relationship both parties have to show some interest, mutual respect and commitment.
This writer has won a prize from Mouthshut.com for his video review of the product Olympus FE 170. (Though the prize has never materialized)
The video review that describes features of Olympus Digital Camera, which I posted in mouthshut.com has been adjudged as one of the best video reviews under “Post a video review contest” held by mouthshut.com (MS is a consumer review website, very popular and one of its kind in Asia)
As a prize I’ll be getting domestic flight tickets from flightraja.com. Details on this are awaited but I guess I'll end up spending more money than the prize value while redeeming it (in terms of taxes and other expenses). Irrespective of the prize, its always nice to win some prize and it was long time I hadn’t won any.
July 21 2007 Update: 7 Months after winning, I've NOT got any prizes what so ever. Have abandoned pursuit after repeated communication with Mouthshut didn't result in anything materialistic benefits. Full details of this non fulfillment of the promise from Flightraja and Mouthshut can be read here.
ವಿಜಯ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ಪತ್ರಿಕೆಯ ವಾಣಿಜ್ಯ ವಿಜಯ ವಿಭಾಗದಲ್ಲಿ 16 ಎಪ್ರಿಲ್ 2003 ರ0ದು ಪ್ರಕಟವಾದ ನನ್ನ ಲೇಖನವನ್ನು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನೀಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
Kannada for: Below is a Kannada article by me which was published in a commercial supplement of Karnataka's Number one news daily, Vijaya Karnataka (Now taken over by Times of India Group (Bennett, Coleman & Co)
The four column article has been split into 2 parts for easy scanning and reading.
(The article speaks about the competition among various petrol companies (IndianOil, BPCL, HPCL etc which were coming up with new new schemes to sell petrol and to make people buy petrol only from their pumps)
So far I was writing on multiple topics and different subjects. Because of which I was not able to fit my blog into any category. (It doesn’t fit anywhere even now )
After much deliberation and thought process, I’ve decided to classify my writings into 10 broad categories and will focus only on these categories, for future posts…
8. Personal posts and miscellaneous Posts which doesn’t fall into any specific category and my personal topics which might not be of much use to you unless you wish to know more about me. http://www.enidhi.net/search/label/Personal%20and%20Misc
A single post may fall into multiple categories if situation demands.
Categorizing helps users find similar posts within the blog when they like a particular post and wish to dig further. This also tells people what type of posts they can expect from the blogger. And for the blogger, this assists specializing in some key topics instead of attempting to write on anything and everything.
You can sort the similar posts using labels tag that’s available at the bottom of every post.
A mathematical challenges for those who love maths.
Few months back, I came across ICICI Bank’s “upto 100%” cash back offer. When you use their credit card for shopping, you get a six digit number and depending on the sum of these six digits, you’ll get certain percentage of money back.
This post is an attempt to interpret the mathematical probability of winning 100% cash back as well as other combinations. (I do not have a solution for this yet, expecting some help from my readers)
The offer works like this: You use your ICICI Credit card and spend more than Rs 2000, your transaction slip will contain a 6 digit authorization code and you’ve to add the digits in the number to get the total. Depending on the total you get you’ll get certain amount of cash back on your purchase. For example, if your 6 digits sum up to say 51, you’ll get 100% refund while if its say 29 (i.e., for any sum between 15 and 30), you’ll get 1% refund.
Refer image for exact range and cash back offered.
It’s obvious that most of the numbers sum up between 21 and 30 and probability of the sum exceeding 51 or being less than 5 is very very low.
I wanted to know the exact probability for each combination. I’ve not reached the exact solution but below is the approach:
For a 6 digit number, with each digit ranging between 0 and 9. there're 10^6 possibilities between 000000 and 999999, i.e. 1000000 possible combinations
When you sum the digits, the minimum is 0 (when all digits are 0) and maximum is 54 (when all digits are 9). If you’ve to get 100% cash back, the sum should be either of 51, 52, 53 or 54
The probability of getting sum of 54 is 1 in 1000000
The probability of getting 53 is 6 in 1000000 (When the digit is 999998 or 999989
or 999899 or 998999 or 989999 or 899999)
The probability of getting 52 is 18 out of 1000000
(999997,999979,999799,997999,979999,799999,899998,899989,899899,898999,889999,989998,
989989,989899,988999,998998,998989,998899)
The chance of getting 51 is 58 out of 1000000 ( 999996,999969,999699,996999,969999,699999,799998,799989,799899,798999,789999,979998,
979989,979899,978999,997998,997989,997899,999798,999978,899997,899979,899799,897999,
879999,989997,989979,989799,987999,998997,998979,998799,999897,999987,888999,988899,
998889,999888,,899988,899889,898899,889998,889989,889899,898998,898989,898899,
899898,899889,899988,989988,989889,988998,988989,989898,989889,989988,998988)
This means, the total probability of getting the sum between 51 and 54 is 1+6+18+58=83 out of 1000000, which is 0.000083
In other words, your chance of getting 100% cash back is 0.0083 % (8 per thousand attempts) which means, if you spend Rs 2,000 or above One thousand time, chances are that eight times you'll get back the money you spent (Rs 16,000 out of 20,00,000 Rs you spend.
Note: Thanks to Surya for correcting me in maths. I'd done some wrong calculations earlier. His profile is not accessible hence I've not given a link, details in comment section.
Similarly, the probability of the sum falling less than 5 is also very very low.
The probability is maximum for 21-30 range, hence a minimum cash back is offered there.
Note: I’ve done only a manual calculation and there can be errors. There should be a better mathematical formula to calculate this specific case study. The conventional permutation and combination formulas I know (nPr and nCr) can't be applied in this case. I consulted many of my friends and staff for a solution but either because they were busy or couldn’t find a solution; I don’t have a mathematical formula to calculate the probability for all combinations. If you can help, it’ll be great.
Since this offer is implemented commercially nationwide, whoever designed this should have a done his ground work carefully because had that person done a wrong calculation, ICICI would have lost crores of rupees in cash back. I salute the brain that designed this scheme.
Here’s an open mathematical challenge:
Can you come up with the mathematical formula for this offer?
What is the probability that I'll get 75% cash back? And for other percentages as well? Will be great if you can help.
Note: This blogger assumes that Mr. K. Vaman Kamath and his ICICI Bank are honest in their approach and no cheap tricks are adopted in this offer. If they’re determined not to give 75% or 100% cash back to anyone, all it takes is few extra lines of software code that will prevent generation of authorization codes, digits of which do not sum up to specific numbers for which huge cash backs are offered.
-Shrinidhi
-------------------------------------------- Original Text------------------------------
You can see below over 75 images of various animals.
All images were taken using Olympus FE 170 during December 2006. Except those photos in which I was an object, all snaps were taken by me.
If you love animals, you'll love these photos too...
These animals can be found at
1. Tyavare kare Wildlife sanctuary, Shimoga, Karnataka
and
2. Prani Loka, near Sri Gurunarasimha Temple, Saligrama, Udupi Dist Karnataka (Update: This Prani Loka doesn't exist anymore. Forest officials have seized these animals and deported them to zoos stating that individuals shouldn't keep these animals as private property.
The one man movie team at enidhi India has successfully recorded its first movie and released it to the public.
Below is the first video on this blog, another giant leap towards reader's delightment by enidhi India. Let me know what you think of this video.
Below is a video review of Olympus FE 170 digital camera.
Acknowledgments:
Video capture was done using: Sony Ericson's K750i (That's my new phone: more about it later) Laptop and data transfer courtesy: Pradeep
Note: There's been over a dozen new posts in past 7-10 days. I strongly recommend checking December Archive by clicking here to ensure that you didn't miss any posts-Publisher
17 Jan 2007 Update: This video has one an award at mouthshut.com. Details here.That's success at first attempt itself and is worth boasting of. March 2009 Update: unfortunately my promised prize, return domestic air tickets, never came through, despite follow ups.
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya or JNV are a nationwide network of residential schools run by Govt of India. I studied in one such school, located in Udupi District of Karnataka and this post contains some photos I took during my last visit to the institute.
Not able to see anything? You need to have Macromedia Flash Player installed in your machine to see above slide show. Some readers have conveyed to me that they're unable to view the photos despite having flash. If you're facing trouble, try checking this link If you still face trouble, please try from a different machine. As I'm not sure of what exactly is the problem, I'm not able to advice any other solutions. Sorry.
This is not the first time I visited JNVC after leaving it in 2001. I had been to there many times. But during December last week, it was the first time I went there with a camera and also stayed there overnight.
Vidyalalya has progressed a lot in past few years and Given above are some snaps of the institute,staff and students of JNVC,Nature and Seeta river that flows nearby etc.
The photos were taken using Olympus FE 170. For a video review of Olympus FE 170 click here
Hope you'll like them. Though I was a bit lazy to give captions to all...
JNVC is hosting alumni day on Jan 27 2007. If you're a JNVC alumni consider attending the same.
Come March and lots of salaried people and financial advisors or tax planners will be hunting for each other. Many people invest in insurance primarily for tax benefit.
How do you select your insurance agent? On what basis do you take a decision of buying an insurance policy of a specific company and from a specific agent?
Traditionally, we buy policies from the agent who were referred to you by your friends/relatives, or from agents who are distant family members/friends/relations or from agents who kept bugging you till you bought a policy from him.
A bad investment equivalent to financial loss. Because it is your money it is your responsibility to ensure that you’re taking advice from right people when investing it. Don’t do investments just to gain tax exemptions or to please the agent (or say to get rid of him)
This post gives you some tips for selecting your financial advisor and tells you some key points you should keep in mind to avoid ending up with a bad investment.
1.Knowledge and Respect on competition products Your advisor/agent, though he might be representing one company, should have good knowledge about products and services offered by other companies. If he claims his company is the best and everything else is totally useless probably you should be more careful with him. If he doesn’t show some basic respect towards the competition and fails to justify his claim with illustrations and evidence better avoid him.
2.Tells negative factors as well A good adviser tells negative points without your asking. For example, if your agent asks you to invest in ELS and says you have tax advantage on them, he should voluntarily declare that ELS have lock in period of 3 years. When he proposes money back policies, he should highlight that money back policies have a higher premium than conventional policies. If he intentionally or unintentionally fails to tell such matters, you’ll suffer later
3.Doesn’t share his commission As per IRDA (IRDA stands for Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, a governing body for insurance companies in India) an insurance agent is no supposed to share his/her commission with the customer. For endowment policies, the agents usually get 20-30% of first year premium as commission and hence many agents offer to pay 2-3 months of premium themselves. Though this might appear like a financial gain, please keep in mind that such agents will be having a strong calculations running in the backend as to what profit they’ll be left with (after sharing it with you) and all their advice will have influence of this calculation, which means you may not get a genuine advice
4.Education In India the qualification to become an insurance agent is Class 12 pass (Class 10 in rural areas). In addition prospective agents shall have to attend a 100 hours IRDA stipulated training, followed by an optional product training by their insurance companies. This minimum qualification is not adequate to give a professional advice these days and if a person has some additional financial background (education or experience) it will be better. It’ll be great if he/she is a certified financial planner
5.Fund Management You’re never supposed to invest all your money in one single scheme/policy/fund however interesting and beneficial they may be. Suppose you have Rs.50000 per year to invest and if your agent advices to buy one policy with annual premium of Rs 50000, he just doesn’t know the basics of money management. You should diversify your investment into multiple investments. This is mainly to mitigate the risk and will also give you more options to control your money. Accepting such wrong advices will be fatal for your financial well being.
6.Dynamic The advisor you choose must be dynamic enough to follow the developments in the market on a day to day basis. Those who have strong contacts to get key information (like dividend to be declared) in advance are an asset
7.Avoid over the counter advisors Avoid buying policies from tele-callers, those who have set stalls at supermarket and such people. Better go for people you know well.
8.Should put you first There may be some policies by selling which advisor may not get enough money or sometimes products from a competitor company might be better suited to your needs. An agent having genuine interest in you will not hesitate to compromise on his earnings and advice you the best option. If he discourages you from considering certain products without giving a valid reason, he’s not sincere in his approach.
With digital encryptions in use, people hardly write letters these days. If you are still used to writing conventional letters and wish to have some secret way of communicating, here's an article for you...
Below is my article that was published in New Indian Express Youth Express Supplement during the year 2001. I was studying in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya that time
After I completed class 12 and before my engineering classes started, I wrote several articles which got published in state level media. Giving some of them here: My prize winning Kannada sonnet, published way back in July 1 2001 in Vijaya Karnataka...(A kannada newspaper now owned by Bennett, Coleman & Co(Times Of India Group). They'd sent a Rs 25 Bharadwaj dictionary as the prize... My other articles in Vijaya Karnataka:(most of them are obselete now in terms of information) Published 4th Jan 2002 (Initially I'd joing Gogte Engg College Belgaum when I wrote this one, later shifted to DSCE Bangalore) Published 31st August 2001 Published 12 July 2002
Feb 01, 2009 Write up: Click on the image to enlarge it. The write-up is about gender confusion surrounding the name Shrinidhi- I've written in detail about this in English here in an earlier post.
Above is my first article that appeared in state level media (Vijaya Karnataka Daily, Karnataka, India. It got published on Sunday, 1st July 2001 in page 9 of the newspaper
Sharing the same with my blog readers, whom I hope will find it interesting. Non Kannada readers please excuse.
Expect few more such articles in this blog in near future.
The Google promoted community portal orkut.com is being used intensively for marketing by many individuals and small companies alike. The modus operandi is very simple: Create a profile in orkut with a female name, join as many communities as possible and then start sending messages to the community members about your product or services.
This is virtually cost free advertising and you get to reach hundreds of target customers without any effort. (And success rate is very much high)
The fact that there’s no validation mechanism for orkut profile creation is being misused by most of the people. Many people create fake profiles to gain specific advantages. Creating a fake female profile will help grab attention as most of the male users usually don’t ignore the communications sent by lady members.
Conventional advertising (say in TV, Print, online etc) being expensive, many promoters have chosen to use orkut to get publicity for their website/product. You can find many fake female profiles in orkut with hundred of communities and negligible number of friends. Their profile will have no content and they usually don’t bother to respond to your communication. Their sole work is to promote certain products or services.
You’ll very often get targeted and unsolicited mails sent to a particular community that you have joined. These mails promote a wide range of subjects-from specific ones like job openings to general ones (like “visit hikut.com”)
Also there're software tools to send scraps to crores of people in one go.
Facilitating free marketing was not the idea behind orkut and I don’t think orkut users would like to become a target of this kind of advertising. Often orkutters just ignore them.
Though there’re options to ignore a user and or report as bogus, I don’t think they’re being used effectively.
I wish Google launches a validation mechanism for orkut profiles. Like as it was when gmail came into existence. Only existing users can invite others: this way people can invite only those they know well and misbehaving profiles can be traced back to those who invited them. Similar post: Orkut and Employee Productivity * Business through missed calls *
