Completely Online Marriage Registration in Uttar Pradesh (UP) @ INR 10 and in 10 minutes

I am putting up this post especially because this information is so hidden on the internet that I had to realize it the hard way (that is by visiting the registrar's office and reading the notices on wall - not that hard a way, but still ;-).

I think it is mainly because there are too many organisations, lawyers and third parties making easy money out of registration process (INR 5000 is kind of standard price) and Google bombards you with such search results. Secondly, government after once introducing this technical advancement didn't put in efforts to advertise it - again this could be attributed to previous reason. Lastly, UP is relatively more fond of Hindi language and their official website for marriage and property registration is completely in Hindi - and this doesn't really go hand in hand with Google search.

Getting to the point now:

Marriage registration in Uttar Pradesh is possible if and only if - either place of marriage is UP or one of the applicants' residence is in UP.
The website - http://igrsup.gov.in/ provides you with two methods of complete and partial online marriage registration (हिन्दू विवाह पंजीकरण).

Completely Online

• Aadhaar Based - Registration is based on Aadhaar Card - so if both the applicants (the couple I mean) don't have their Aadhaar IDs or registered mobile number for receiving OTP, they can reconsider reading this post further. I would still suggest opting for this method of registration, as getting Aadhaar is way too easier these days.
• Direct link - http://igrsup.gov.in/igrsup/userMarriageRegistrationMenuSub  - Most of the information is available on the website itself and I won't rewrite here. A few extra pointers follow though.
• Language - The marriage certificate that one gets after completing the registration process is delivered in your e-mailbox in both Hindi as well as Englilsh. If one of the applicants' Aadhaar Card has regional language instead of Hindi (along with English version) in Aadhaar information, for example, Punjabi for Punjab based Aadhaar Cards, then the Hindi version of marriage certificate will have Punjabi written in the auto-filled spaces, which ideally doesn't make any sense, but one still gets the English version right which is widely accepted.
• Photo Upload - Despite following the criteria of 40KB photo size limit and file format as jpg/jpeg, I faced issues in making the website accept the photo upload. It ultimately worked with the photos which I borrowed from the Aadhaar card pdf - which were quite low resolution and low size.
• Stamping - The certificate delivered online over email doesn't require any stamping as is also mentioned on the certificate itself. Due to limited publicity of this online registration process, there is a lack of acceptance of this online certificate as it doesn't bear a physical stamp from marriage registrar. This is really crazy but yes it is truth. Even, the immigration agents create doubts in using this certificate instead of the one with the stamp.
• Costs INR 10 - This is really important to know that marriage registration costs only INR 10, which one can pay through SBI internet banking (this is the only one that works as of now). Hence, it saves you from getting fleeced by the lawyers and third parties who charge at least INR 5000 for the same.

Partially Online

• Office Based - The applicants' information is updated online along with the scanned copies of DOB and Address proofs and photos. The applicants then need to visit the registrar's office as selected in the online form along with the original documents and some forms.
• Direct link - http://igrsup.gov.in/igrsup/userMarriageRegistration - Most of the information is available on the website itself about application process, hence won't be repeated here, a few pointers follow though.
• Application Number - The application number one gets after completing the online form is important as it is required for editing/completing the form at a later stage.
• Form A and Witnesses - Though, it is not mentioned anywhere in the online application form or the guidelines regarding this, but a duly filled Form A  is required along with other documents. We got to know this at the registrar's office and the form was available nearby there. The form also has a column that requires two witnesses which can be applicants' parents or any known person.
• Request Application - We are also asked to put in an application request for marriage registration. Again, this doesn't have any mention online, but the office bearer asked for the same.
• Gazzetted officer attested Affidavit - An affidavit on stamp paper that with the marriage details - attested by a gazzetted officer - is also required.
• Partially hire a lawyer - For the last three requirements, I would suggest taking help of a lawyer or ask someone who knows about this stuff. They shouldn't be charging more than INR 10-50 for all of these. Lawyers sitting near the registrar office are always aware of all these requirements. If one gets the whole application process done through them, they are definitely going to fleece you.
• Bribe - This wasn't obvious for me as I thought people in India would have improved now, but yes the sub-registrar did ask for bribe. 

Online Verification of the Certificate

Thanks to Pratyush's comment below, there is a web link available for online verification of the certificate:

http://igrsup.gov.in/igrsup/userMarriageRegistrationVerify

As some people had a doubt regarding online verification of the certificate in the comments below, hope this information helps.

How does the certificate look like?

Here is how the Aadhaar based marriage certificate looks like. I have added this as some people were curious about what all is mentioned in the certificate. I have blackened the personal information and added the comments in the image. Hope this helps!

Thanks for reading! Cheers!

Applying Online for Australian Visa through ImmiAccount

I am writing this to get and give more information related to the online application of the Australian Visa. I tried searching for the same, but unfortunately couldn't gather much information for the doubts I had.

I had applied for the Student Visa: Postgraduate Research Sector Temporary Visa (Subclass 574) for my PhD studies in Australia from India. But most of the things mentioned here are in general applicable to all the visa classes.

Depending on which country you are applying from, there are different ways for making the application. In India, one can apply directly to the Australian High Commission, through an agent, through VFS or through ImmiAccount. The last two aren't same though are online methods (I wanted to apply through VFS which I thought earlier to be referring to the ImmiAccount and both being the same thing, but that wasn't the case).

Applying through ImmiAccount, as mentioned on the DIBP website, is handled with top priority while paper based application being the last. The other methods of online application are faster too, that is, through a registered agent or through VFS but it is just that they take some consultation charges. VFS is quite cheap in that sense, while agents can ask for any charges they feel like based on the scale of their organisation/company. ImmiAccount doesn't need any such charges as one handles his application by himself without any third party. The charges being mentioned here are not related to the Visa Fees but just the consultancy charges.

For applying through ImmiAccont, all by yourself, you will be going through these steps:

• Find the exact Visa you will have to apply for your purpose of visit. The tool is available on the official website.

• Register yourself on ImmiAccount and start an application.

• Complete the application and submit it with the corresponding Visa Fees.

• You will be assigned a case officer and he will send you the document checklist.

• Upload the required documents in the ImmiAccount portal under correct heads/categories.

• Complete health requirement test (status for that is directly available in your ImmiAccount).

• Once the checklist is complete, you can press the "Complete Request" button and then confirm.

• It will then show the status of your application as "Assessment in Progress" which earlier would have been showing "Request for Information".

• I am currently at the above step, so I will be updating the post as time passes.

• Now you have to wait for the case officer to respond back or the notification of acceptance of visa.

The average processing time for TU 574 subclass visa is 14 working days through ImmiAccount with Assessment Level 1. It has taken longer than that for me, and might take more than month varying from case to case.

The information I have provided, part of it and details of most of it is available on the official website. But there are certain things which are not known prior like:

• The response time for an email is 7 days for onshore and offshore email addresses for querying about visa and it might take longer than that.

• Sending email to the department in India guided me to connect to the onshore case officer.

• Sending emails to the department (SVCSA offshore) returns with an automatic reply with all the necessary details, and also implying that only thing I can do is wait for them to respond instead of spamming them with query emails.

• Australian High Commission in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi cannot help you with information regarding your visa, so no need to waste time going there. I couldn't also get any of my phone calls received there.

• Making phone calls at onshore (Australia) office also didn't help as no one picked the call.

• The average processing time as experienced by one of the consultant companies is 2-4 weeks for student visas.

The above efforts were made after the average processing time had passed. Querying before that might or might not get entertained.

Things might have been simpler if I would have applied via VFS or an agent, but it was worth exploring. However, I was least interested in throwing away money for agents, but VFS is definitely a good option. Their services as experienced while contacting them initially over phone seemed absolutely fine.

I hope I added some useful information on the www, if there is any suggestion, correction or doubt please do comment. I seek more information and personal experience of applicants.

Age of Warring Empires - Magic Tower - Tips and Tricks

Magic Tower is one of the major parts of the game and by far the only method (as of July 2014) for training heroes in battle mode.
Ever gave a thought of simplifying the tower for best of your needs?
Here are some tricks for getting things done in an efficient manner with regard to tower, where needs meet their ends quickly:

• Experience Run:
  
  • Each stage in tower is comprised of 10 sub-stages. 
  • Always do the last sub-stage of any stage, for example, 1-10, 15-10 etc.
  • Reason is very simple: Hero experience, which is always maximum at the last sub-stage and will always be higher than the first sub-stage of next stage, that is, Hero experience from 10-10 would be greater than what you would get from 11-1. 
  • For example, even though you are capable of doing 11-1, it is recommended to do 10-10.

• Prestige Run:
  
  • If the only thing you are concerned with is prestige (which is not a usual case, but sometimes you feel the need for it), then you are supposed to do the highest level you are capable of. 
  • Prestige reward rises with every stage and sub-stage.

• Crafting Material:
  
  • This is what helps you in upgrading your weapons, armour and accessories. 
  • Game is designed in such a way that it won't be always easy to get to that particular stage from where you need to extract the required upgrade item. 
  • So, most of the times you will have to buff up with all kinds of military bonuses along with the leadership card and head straight to the minimum sub-stage of required Magic Tower stage, for example, 11-1 for iron ore and 14-1 for ruby etc.
  • If you are capable of doing the last sub-stage out their, then it would be an additional Prestige and Hero Exp, but it can come at the cost of reduced "Stars" after completion. 
  • "Stars" decide the amount of material you will get. Minimum 1-2 Star fetch you single item and the subsequent reward contains a pack of three such items along with other Energy and Copper Coins reward. 
  • Stars depend on the troop loss you had and the number of steps you took to reach the final skull inside the instance. Better you perform or longer you go better the item reward.
• Resources:
  
  • There is a huge amount of resources that you can get from the Magic Tower, which increases with every stage of tower. 
  • This amount due to latest change in Tower is usually high enough that you might even need to get extra food for making troops, that is, the amount of troops lost in a single run of tower can be rebuilt using the reward food.
  • Also, always make use of your Medical Centre for regenerating troops (except catapults), because it is cheaper to revive troops through donation of food than to make them directly from barracks.

• Double-Experience Event:
  
  • This is the high time for training your heroes. 
  • Do not forget to wear a double-experience card so that you get triple experience from the tower. 
  • If you have VIP card, it will further add to the exp. 
  • And remember you have to do only the last sub-stage of your highest tower stages, even if it is needed to buff up completely.
  
  

• Minimum Steps:
  
  • This is the most important step for which the blog post was written. 
  • Each instance of the tower is based on some random instance generation algorithm, but it repeats its instances and one learns them while training on and on in tower. 
  • I have posted some instances here below which take a minimum of 7 steps up to 9 steps to complete. What you all have to do is keep switching between two stages of tower unless you get the desired one as shown below.
  • The clear cut benefit is that, by doing tower this way, you gain Prestige and Crafting Material at a very fast pace, which is not possible during usual random grinding of instances.
    
    
  
  
  

• Version 2.3.22: 
  
  • Now this is where key to this business is. 
  • If you find trouble in recognizing the instance, its better to install an older version of this game, which you can easily find on internet. 
  • In this version, Magic Tower shows where the boss is, so it is easy to identify the instance and reach the boss straight.

Check out this link to see how sometimes its needed to spam tap to get into the right instance which is unique and small.

Perhaps, most of the stuff you people who have been playing for long now already knew about. Hope some part of it helped some class of players, at least the new ones, for whom otherwise it takes long to figure out all these things by themselves.

PS: The Game stuff keeps on changing with time, this post had been written as per then current status of game as in July 2014.

Happy Gaming! Cheers!

How to get free gold in game, Read this - Age of Warring Empires - Free Gold
How to deal with the Dragon Event, Read this - Age of Warring Empires - Dragon Event  

Age of Warring Empires - Dragon Event - Tips and Tricks

The Dragon Invasion Event is a daily event in which dragon re-spawns every 23 hours. Most of the information about the event is available in the log on the left side of the window. Please read that before going up for the event.
This is an event which I would say every one should try, at least when their heroes have become a little better so that they do some 1 or 2 damage on the dragon. There are nice gifts available for toppers, first blow and killing blow, and for the rest some prestige and copper.
But one has to be careful so that you do not waste many troops and do maximum damage.

1. Dragon's Nationality - This changes randomly for the dragon, so one has to take the heroes of the same nation in which the dragon is (Persia, Rome or Greece) so that you can do 200% increased damage. Now this you already know, what you need to know is the number of troops, number of heroes and the formation for the battle.
2. Number of heroes - If you have four heroes of that nation, you are good to go. In case, you don't have take rest of other nations. Do not take less than four due to the fear of loss of troops. This is because with the right formation of the heroes, you can make your same nation heroes do more damage while other heroes keep dying and hence give you extra turns to hit.
   Therefore for such a scenario, the formation should be such that your same nation heroes are hit by the dragon at last.
3. Formation -
                           1              2                 3
                           4              5                 6
                           7              8                 9
   
   If we number the grid like this, and let us assume that you have only two heroes of same nation H1 and H2, where H3 and H4 are for sacrifice only. Also, H1 is stronger than H2.
   In this case, one of the options for maximum damage is to place H1 at 2, H2 at 3, H3 at 4 and H4 at 5. With this H3 and H4 should never get a chance to hit and H1 and H2 will give maximum number of hits before dying.
   
   If you have all the four heroes of same nation with their strength as H1 > H2 > H3 > H4, the corresponding position that I found to be best is, 7 - 8 - 5 - 6 respectively.
   
   Give these a try if you were not using the same formations, and you will see the difference.
   




4. Number of troops - The heroes which you take for a sacrifice only, give him just a single troop to carry, because he is anyway not going to attack for such a case.
   Give the best necklace to your heroes which are fighting in same nation so that they carry maximum troops.
5. Do not wait and watch the battle and be ready for the next attack (after the wait timer).
6. You can send the other heroes on wall or on an attack so that they do not irritate you in the selection process and you can always choose the designated heroes from the list just from the top 4. This will fasten your process of attacking.
7. With these tricks, which are obvious for a veteran player though, you can make maximum damage loosing lesser troops. You can claim better prizes, for example, a military bonus buff everyday is good enough.
   
   If I have missed out something, or some information is incorrect, or if you have some question, use the comments below.
   
   Keep playing! Enjoy!

PS: For better damage on dragon, try using Two Ashokas in front and a stacking attack hero at the back. This hero combination is far better than any other.

How to get free gold in game, Read this - Age of Warring Empires - Free Gold
How to grind tower better, Read this - Age of Warring Empires - Magic Tower 

Review: GREedge - Online GRE Coaching

GREedge is one of the many online GRE preparation academies. I chose this because one of my friends suggested me, as in my case it would not have made much difference even if it were some other coaching institute. But I would certainly like to write a review of this institute so that others may find it easy to compare.



1. Course Material: This is one of the major aspects to look for, so we will take this first. For this I assume that the reader is aware of GRE pattern as of 2013. The paper contains three main sections:

1. Quantitative Reasoning: This is relatively easier than other sections. One only needs to brush up the concepts he/she had learned during secondary studies. GREedge has a good amount of material for this section. They cover almost all the related concepts and have a nice variety of questions under each category of this section. The questions in actual exam would be less difficult than what are there in the mock tests provided by them. This makes it easier to score in the actual exam. But, I did find some questions that required too much time to solve and shouldn't really come under Quantitative Reasoning section, nor are they asked in GRE exam.
2. Verbal Reasoning: This section is what decides your score on a larger scale. Reading Comprehensions (RCs) provided by GREedge are good enough covering a wide range of topics and varying lengths of paragraphs along with proper relevant questions. The art of attacking each and every type of questions for RCs is also very well taught through their ppts and videos. But they still need to add more to this as RCs need more effort.
   
   For the Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence, I realised that there was some difference in what they had and what was actually there in the GRE exam. SE is still match worthy but TC is what they really need to improve upon.
   
   The word lists in their learning tracker are still underpopulated. They also provide with a pdf and online database of words, but need to add more into the learning tracker itself as it is a crucial part of preparation.
3. Analytical Writing: This part is covered well by GREedge. A pretty good amount of essays are available for practice and feedback along with proper strategies for getting better scores.

2.  Student Facilitator & Adviser: This is a facility provided in form of two mentors that they appoint one each for Verbal and Quant section. The  SFAs keep a track of your progress and keep providing you the adequate feedback regarding your mistakes. You can discuss with them on phone or through email if you face any issue. They also keep you motivated and dedicated towards your studies.

3. Learning Tracker: This is the interface from where you access your online source of preparation. This is in beta stage as of now and needs improvement.

4. Webinars; They keep organising webinars on various topics related to 'how to prepare some particular topics', education loans, right time to apply, pitfalls in entire process of application, and a hell lot of other useful tips.

5. Time Management: This is something that they helped in properly maintaining. This is also necessary for your preparation to go well.

On a scale of 10, I would rate 6 for this institute. I managed to get a score of 325/340 in a preparation period of two months studying for average 4 hours a day.
Other famous sources for GRE preparation are like Jamboree, magoosh, wordpandit, CL, etc. Reader can look for some reviews of these to decide which one to join.

PS: Please read other online GREedge reviews as well, the number of people dissatisfied with GREedge services is no less. One of the links to such complaints is there in the comments below.

For any doubts, use comments below.