India has many such private libraries. They used to be very popular in the 80s and 90s when foreign books were expensive. Now these libraries have online catalogues and home delivery service. One nice thing about both China and India is that people love to read so much. Though one might lament the rise in readership of self-help books these days, still you can find a wide variety of books in these libraries. More on books in India in the next post.

Here is another library chain. This one reminds me of Book-off in Japan.

Coffee + Soda = strange drink

Every mobile operator is advertising their deals with social networking platforms hoping that people will sign up for data plans.

And they are not forgetting the basic mobile phone customer too. This operator has vans in busy areas selling mobile connections. Note the word STD. In India telecom lingo it is Subscriber Trunk Dialing – the ability to make long distance calls.

This property company is advertising their condominium . They are hoping that you will find some good friends among the 312 houses they have. The subtext reads “312 families some real friends”. Facebook has now beaten Orkut to become the biggest social network in India. Incidentaly, another friend took a picture of exactly the same place just a couple of days back and made some observations on another aspect of Indian street life.

Some years back, cable TV operators used to put up adverts such as this inviting people to buy cable subscription. Now it is for internet.

I went to a Tibetan market in Bangalore.Most Tibetans in this area are the ones who came to India after China occupied Tibet. (India has native Tibetan people too) Outside there are ads asking the Tibetan youth to register for elections and help pick the TIbetan government in exile.

Free Tibet messages

The funny thing is that many Tibetan shop owners inside are selling Chinese products.

Electric car made by Reva

A colonial building at St. Marks road, bibles and other religious books were were printed here in the past. In recent times, this building accommodated a pub, a coffee shop. Currently it has the Hard Rock Cafe.

Bangalore seems more international these days. I see many Chinese and South East Asian students, A lot more expatriate living in the city now.

Many shopping malls and many more coming up.