Simple pleasures of having your coffee hot: Some ideas

I'm all for having my coffee or tea extra-hot. Its a disappointment every time, when it quickly loses temperature in the space of a few minutes. And I hate it to finish off the beverage cold or at best, lukewarm.

I am the kind who usually runs back to the oven to reheat my tea when its half done. To confess, there are times I've ended up reheating the same tea a couple of times, before actually finishing it.

This has made me wonder whether there aren't any elegant solutions in the form of a custom, improvised coffee mug.

Googling got me some options. A popular one was the insulated coffee mug, which doesn't really solve the problem.

Thermos insulated mug

Then, there were the reheatable mugs that could be plugged into a power socket or even through a car charger. A bit messy and certainly not one you'd want lying around your table.

Stainless steel coffee mug from Alibaba

I was looking for a combination of a mug -cum- thermo flask that retains heat best, one which comes with a reheat option without those ugly props.

Concept by Green Lama and Design HMI LLC

And, I landed on this page which seemed to offer quite an elegant solution. This kickstarter campaign had originally been launched with some issues, and then relaunched to completion.

Product launched by Green Lama on Kickstarter

With this campaign getting closed, the product doesn't seem to be in the market yet, but with limited availability on their home site.

Looks like I'll have to wait some time until I can have a steaming cup of coffee, all the way to the end!

Great Ideas failed by poor Execution: the Helmet Dilemma

Couple of weeks back, the Telangana Regional Transport Authority (RTA) made it mandatory to purchase helmets before your 2-wheelers can get registered. Definitely a well intentioned move to promote road safety. However, the roll-out and execution of this plan has been very poorly managed.

Waiting in the RTA office with all documents ready to register my two-wheeler, it was a nightmare to see the local official walk into office and past a 'new circular' that was active with immediate effect. This mandated all 2-wheelers to be sold with a helmet, and hence all registration documents had to furnish this new bill. Vehicle Showrooms & agents were clueless about this and people scrambled to comply by getting their invoice bills re-printed, in case they had already bought a helmet with the vehicle. What should have been a straightforward 30-minute registration process wasted over half a day in the confusion, for most people who were office-goers.

Interestingly, the Indian 'jugaad' fix-it-all adapts fastest to such bureaucracy and responds with amazing alacrity. In hardly a couple of hours, the agents had modified their 'rate card' to include this new 'product' to make some more money:

Registration without license :    Rs. 500  

Registration without helmet : + Rs. 300

What should have resulted in more people buying helmets and improving adoption, ended up as a money-making scheme for agents and local officials. Perhaps, it calls for a lot more than plain 'noble intention' to do some public good.