Spark and hadoop anyone ?

I should have published this a while back - slipped my mind :-)


Spark now supports batch mode on top of Hadoop v2 (Yarn) thanks to the work we did in Yahoo! Labs Bangalore !
The pull requests are here, here, here, here, here and here (to be applied in order). Have been committed to spark master and will be in 0.8 release !
Take it for a spin and try it out on PB of data !!

Sourangshu was involved in this along with me in getting this polished and submitted to spark.

Citibank outbound transfer limit

So this is NOT mentioned (as of now) - but there is a upper limit imposed on Citibank accounts. You cannot make outbound transfers of more than Rs. 15L in one day.

Irrespective of what you try (multiple payees, different transfer types, etc) : the sum total of all outbound transfers in one day cannot exceed Rs. 15L

Unfortunately, this is not documented anywhere : on the other hand, they do explicitly claim no limit to RTGS transfers !


Atleast the relationship manager and others are the branch were super-helpful in trying to find alternatives.

Fedex in Bangalore

Note to self: For delivery of packages within India, DO NOT use FedEx !
They are slower than other courier companies - even slower than Indian Postal service !!

When you are in the courier business, and you cant beat even the Govt. postal service, you really should give up : pathetic service times from FedEx.

And worst part is, on contacting service centre, the conversations roughly go like this :

a) Try to disown the collection centre and claim it does not exist. The attempt is to claim it was not given to FedEx itself.
I personally delivered it to FedEx office on Richmond Road.
When I pointed out the valid tracking number, the call centre guy changed tack.

b) Abuse their employees in the collection centre by calling them incompetent for not sending package in time.
Meh !

c) Backtrack on the SLA given - and claim it was impossible to satisfy.
The lady at the FedEx office was very categorical in stating that it will be received by my dad the very next day : hence the name 'overnight priority delivery' according to her.
And I repeatedly confirmed this.

d) Claim that 'overnight priority delivery' - does not mean you will receive it overnight !!
Apparently overnight means something entirely different.

e) Try to be extremely rude and bluster their way out of it.
Had to cut the call twice due to this - and they refuse to put you through to their supervisor.

f) Feign helplessness and utter stupidity.
"What can I do sir, it is en-route. We cant do anything".



All in all I would say if this is the sort of sub-standard service which can be expected from a "global leader", they might be better off not trying to enter Indian market : particularly considering the exorbitant fees they charge.