When Kochi’s finest is not fighting bad guys and sheilding our city from bad things, they are going to help the city’s students. The city’s cops are going to council students to help them cope with stress during examination times and thus helping in eliminating student’s suicidal tenancies.

Two constables from each police station have been given the necessary training to start counseling students and teachers in their respective jurisdiction.  According to the Ernakulam SP, who launched the unique effort most of the students mental stress during exam times and many show suicidal tendencies.

To avail the service contact the helpline 9544000100.

A day after Lalit Modi announced that IPL have dropped all the controversial qualifiers, Kochi’s chance to an IPL team have grown a lot. Currently people who are interested to bid for Kochi are

• Ashok Piramal Group
• Jaypee Group
• Rosy Blue India Pvt. Ltd
• Anchor Electricals
• Muthoot Pappachan Group
• Mohanlal & Priyadarshan

Experts say with these developments, Kochi is going to be one of the top bid teams. Another city that is predicted to win is Ahmedabad with Adani Enterprises, Sahara Group and ICICI bidding for the city. Adani group and Sahara is all set to “show them the money”. Days till March 21st (last day of submitting bids) will be very tensed and only when they open the bids the same day will our anxiety be put to rest. Till than we can just hope for the best because as of now Kochi could not have a better chance. We have our fingers crossed. GO KOCHI!!

Cochin’s IPL-Team dream is just not ready to die. Thanks to the stiff qualification criteria,Mohanlal-Priyadarshan and company who was set to bid for Kochi dropped out of the race. But Lalit Modi’s efforts to sell the 2 teams went belly up thanks to very strict qualifiers.

The decision was made only after 3 companies submitted bids while 10 companies bought tender documents. These unopened tenders were returned to the bidders. The revised Invitation To Tender (IIT) will be made available on March 9th and the bids will be open on March 21 in Chennai. The 2 qualifiers that companies had a problem with was

• The company should demonstrate a net worth of nearly Rs. 5000 crores.
• The company that wins the auction needs to pay $100 million as advance guarantee.

According to the revised rules the Rs. 5000 crores net worth clause has been removed and winners need to pay only $10 million as advance guarantee.

The Muthoot Papachan group (who was reportedly backing Mohanlal and Priyadarshan) initially had backed out from the race and now will be studying the new terms and will let the board decide if they will take part in the auction. So Kochi’s IPL dream is not over and there is hope.

(Wonder what made Lalit change his mind.. )

When Amitabh Bachan was recently in the city he had expressed his interest in being the ambassador to the state. He was responding to a question during an interview on a malayalam TV channel. Bachan said “I like this place, the people, its culture and the ambience here. If an offer comes from the government, I would be glad to promote this state”. Kerala tourism minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan responded to this statement by sending Bachan a a letter asking him to take the job and asked him how to proceed in this regard.

According to the tourism minister, Bachan would be able to promote Kerala in countries like UK and USA. For those who dont know. Amitabh is also the Gujarat’s ambassador. How he landed the job was somewhat similar. Bachan kept raving about Gujurat and a media person asked him if he would be the ambassador for the state and he responded positively. Guurat CM grabbed the opportunity.

A lot of our hopes for a Kochi IPL team rested on Mohanlal’s and Priyadarshan’s shoulders. And that dont look too good. Well, its looking bad as the duo have backed out of the auction. They backed out after IPL changed the conditions and asked for Rs. 5000 crores as security deposit instead of the initial Rs. 300 crores. This did not go down well not only the filmy duo but also with the investors who was backing them. The status of the billionaire sheik from Abu Dhabi is not confirmed.

Experts predict that Ahmedabad will be picked up by the Adani group and either Nagpur or Pune by Videocon. Screw them all.  If Kochivibe makes billions and trillions of dollars we promise to get Kochi a ‘Kochivibe’ team!

Ah-huh! You heard us right. Yes, you are right about this being the 21st century too.  Meet Jewel of Muscat. Its a 9th century ship build in the 21st century. From October 2008 till February 2010, Oman and Singapore jointly worked to build this replica. On February 2010 Jewel Of Muscat set sail from Oman to Singapore.

On the way the ship stop at

• Kochi, India
• Galle, Sri Lanka
• Pinang Island, Malaysia
• Melaka, Malaysia

The ship is expected to dock at Kochi on 10th March.

Wheres the party tonight?

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We at Kochivibe have been updating you with all the latest information on all the happening parties in town. And now, we are really excited to roll out our SMS Party Alerts service. By subscribing to this free service we at Kochivibe will notify you with a text message every time there is a happening party around the corner. All you got to do it fill up the form found below and VOILA, you are all set to know the latest in the party scene.

Be aware, Be Kochivibe.

If you must drink and drive, drink Coke.

The buzz of Kochi having its own Indian Premier League team has been around for quite sometime. Here is more information on the bidding process. The cities that have been offered as the home location for the franchises are Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Dharamsala, Vizag, Rajkot, Cuttack, Baroda, Cochin, Indore and Gwalior. The auction is scheduled to happen on March 9th 2010.

• This time the process of bidding for teams is extremely difficult unlike in 2008. Among the most contentious clauses is the requirement for the bidder to privide a bank guarantee equivalent to 100 per cent of the money that the winning bidder offers for the 10-year contract within seven days of winning the bid. Where as in 2008, the initial franchisees of the eight IPL teams had to provide only 10 per cent of their bids as bank guarantee.
• Bidders also need to have a net worth of $1 billion as a pre-requisite and offer a pre-bid bank guarantee of $100 million. In the 2008 auctions, prospective bidders paid a pre-bid deposit of Rs 20 crore.
• The minimum bid price has been fixed at a staggering $225 million (Rs 1,042 crore), compared to the base price of $50 million (over Rs 230 crore) when the first auctions were held in 2008.

Here is an interesting fact. A list of India’s 10 most affluent cities was recently published. Following is the list

1. New Delhi – Has IPL Team (Delhi Daredevils)
2. Bangalore – Has IPL Team (Royal Challengers)
3. Mumbai – Has IPL Team (Mumbai Indians)
4. Chennai – Has IPL Team (Chennai Super Kings)
5. Hyderabad – Has IPL Team (Deccan Chargers)
6. Kolkata – Has IPL Team (Kolkata Knight Riders)
7. Kochi – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010
8. Pune – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010
9. Jaipur – Has IPL Team (Rajasthan Royals)
10. Ahmedabad – One of the home locations thats on offer in 2010

7 out of the 10 most affluent cities in the list, have an IPL team. All 6 cities above Kochi has an IPL team. All 3 cities that dont have an IPL team are on offer as a home location for the auction on March 9th.

Mohanlal and Priyadarshan has shown interest in bidding. Also Muthoot Pappachan Group is said to have making efforts for a Kochi team by partnering with Mohanlal and Priyadarshan. Also there are reports that Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan is interested in picking up a team. Sheiks and Malayalees has been sharing a very good bond from the past couple of decades . Keeping that in mind, we hope he bids for Kochi too . There are reports that YusufAli MA, M.D of EMKE group and person behind LULU group (who is also building India’s biggest mall in Kochi) is keen on a Kochi team. As per some reports Salman Khan is keen on bidding for an IPL team and is interested either in Kochi or Nagpur.

Making this entry on Kochivibe has made us dizzy. Especially the Rupees and Dollars part . We hope that Kochi is one of the 2 lucky cities to get an IPL team. We are amused to see “Dharmsalsa” as one of the cities up for grabs. That just DONT sound like one of the cities that would have an IPL team (sorry Dharmsalians). Kochi would make a better team anyday! .  Fingers crossed for March 9th.!

Mercedes has displayed all their latest cars in the arsenal at Kochi with the theme Pure Fascination.

Their latest lineup that is now on display in the showroom at Maradu consists of

• S-Class (S350 CDI L)
• E-Class (E350 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY & E 250 CDI BLueEFFICENCY)
• 2010 M-Class (Sports Edition)
• Monster SUV the GL-Class.

Mercedes aims at interacting with the customers and media with such an exercise is to interact with customers and media. We at Kochivibe are just disappointed that Mercedes AMG SLS that was recently unveiled in India is not on display. Now that was a car worth a test drive!

Lulu has announced that construction of the mall in Cochin is on track and will open to public before December 2010. Here are some pictures, videos and facts about this project.

[View with PicLens]

• The entire project takes up 17 acres of land
• Total project investment is 1,200 crores
• Parking space for 3000 vehicles
• Famous architect WS Atkins (who also designed Burj Al Arab & the Jumeirah Beach Hotel) designed the project
• 300 national and international brands
• A 7 or a 9 screen multiplex
• A 10,000 square feet children amusement area
• Bowling alley
• 6 fine dining restaurants
• 50,000 square feet food court with 18 outlets and coffee shops
• Food court can seat 3500 customers
• Marriot hotel with 300 5-star rooms, in the complex
• Commercial tower exclusively for airline/aviation companys to complement Kochi’s tremendous growth in the sector.
• A retail management school to cope with the shortage of skilled man power in the field
• 6000 direct employment + another 20000 will benefit indirectly
• Expected to attract 25 lakh tourists every year

Check out the video about the Lulu Mall Kochi