What to see in Madurai: Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal Palace, Famous Jigarthanda and Madurai Meenakshi temple and Mariamman tank (Part 1)

Madurai - Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal or Palace, Famous Jigarthanda : What to see in Madurai:   (Part 1)
(Also referred as Thirumalai Naicker or Nayakar Mahal)

Many of us have solved the travelling salesman problem  but the same is faced by nearly every tourist (especially when faced with triple constraints of time wife and kids ;-) [See my earlier post on how to get to Madurai by bus]

So for those who want to spend a day in Madurai and dont want to strain yourself (i.e. want to nap in the afternoon and only do visits in the morning and evening)

Thirumalai Nayakkar Palace - Nice large hall worth visiting and will take about 2 hrs. I was pleasantly surprised with the the tamil language has evolved - it was quite a simple script with much reuse (modular language ;-))

As you finish the Palace and are feeling quite hot - head out to the "Famous Jigarthanda" - yes... thats the name of the shop. The Jigarthanda drink out here is amazing.

Its as good as the stuff thats available at Chennai Murugan Idly albeit the ice cream is filled with ice flakes

<<End of Part 1>> see Part 2



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Writing and note taking apps review : iPad

For most people writing is a personal thing and not quite used for communicating with others unless it's typed out.I find that my task list, meeting notes , mind maps etc stick when they are handwritten

A superb use I found for the iPad is to use it as a notebook.I bought a few stylus ( in eBay and croma later) griffin, Targus, igo, Chinese 2 for 400 type pens on eBay

I bought notetaker HD , notesplus and the hand writing add on , noteshelf, penultimate, notability, upad, remarks, neunotes, paper, bamboo, penultimate, ghostwriter, tapose, write pad, notify and ...

Whew a whole lot of software....

My take on the noteworthy (pun intended) ones

Notetaker HD - probably the second best app but still my first and favourite for all notetaking. Has every feature you can imagine . It's done by dan bricklin the inventor of VisiCalc spreadsheets adding that geeky twist to selection.Can tag and staple

Notesplus - has great set of features and also with an addon you can recognise and convert to text too! A painful reference library to access the books quickly

Noteshelf - one of the best ink I have seen. I would rate this app as number 1. I just moved out since I found this too much eye candy for me ad wanted something little more clunky

Notability - great ink, great eye candy. I liked noteshelf better since this kind of felt like it was blottingWrite pad is for direct OCR and text conversion

All the other apps are quite far away in functionality or are very un-intuitive compared to these.
Example, ghostwriter - clunky,
penultimate and bamboo - no magnify mode,
upad lite is probably ok and will probably come close to the noteshelf,
remarks - cant change palette,
tapose and notify - more for cross referencing

If you wanted to spend money, go for notetaker hd and griffin or Targus stylus.Please do give your comments if you use any other apps.

Travel: Chennai to Madurai by road - Bus

Chennai to Madurai by road - The omni-bus ride! (My experience and some tips) 

 We did the Chennai Madurai by road using a speacial bus from Chennai CMBT (Koyambedu) - Man! what a nightmare of a jam. The bus was full and he left at 11:20 and reached Madurai at 7:30 - about 8 hrs. You will hear a lot of tales of 6 hrs of travel, but I think safe reasonable time for 560 hrs is 8 hrs While it was a good "Volvo" bus, and had only one stop over at Tiruchi, could have been a lot better had he started someplace else. (Perungalathur being too far)

 Please make sure that you get down at the Periyar bus stand (there is also a mattu thavani stand but I think its a little outside town)

 BTW some tips for going on the long distance bus from Chennai :
1. Parking at CMBT for a drop: Follow the general melee of buses and theres a way for cars too to drop you behind the KPN /Parveen stall
2. They do give you water and blanket in "Volvo" bus (Parveen) 
3. Carry night blinders and a pillow if possible
4. Book on kpn web site or parveen website. Just check the cancellation fees . I think its 10% for upto 12 hrs before travel. Book seats in front but not the first row if you can avoid it (The first row is next to the driver and lights from oncoming vehicles are a pain till the curtains are drawn -usually after perungalathur)

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