u/BankPractical9508

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some genuine advice on health insurance for my parents. I’m trying to make a long-term decision now rather than waiting until they are older or develop more health issues.

**Parents**
Dad: **54 years old**
Mom: **49 years old**

**Current health**
**Mom:** Some leg pain and dental issues, but no other major health problems.
**Dad:** Cholesterol levels fluctuate / has cholesterol issues, but otherwise no major health problems.
No major surgeries or hospitalisations that I’m aware of.

**Current insurance**
We currently have an **Oriental Insurance** health policy.
From the policy document I have:
Dad: **₹5 lakh sum insured + ₹2.1 lakh cumulative bonus**
Mom: **₹2.5 lakh sum insured + ₹87,500 cumulative bonus**
Premium: around **₹26,000/year**
The policy is already active and has some continuity/accumulated bonus.
My main concern is that the coverage may not be sufficient as they get older.

**What I’m confused about**
Should I:
**A)** Continue the existing Oriental policy and add a **super top-up**?

**B)** Continue Oriental but try to increase the existing coverage?

**C)** Keep Oriental for now and buy separate individual policies from another insurer such as **HDFC ERGO** or another reputed insurer?

**D)** Cancel/switch from Oriental completely and move to HDFC ERGO or another insurer?

I’m particularly interested in understanding **whether cancelling an existing policy with accumulated continuity/bonus is a bad idea**, especially when the parents already have some existing health conditions.
**How should I actually compare policies?**

Apart from premium and sum insured, what should I look at?
For example:
Room rent limits
ICU limits
Co-pay
Disease-specific sub-limits
PED waiting period
Claim settlement experience
Cashless hospital network
Restoration/recharge benefits
No-claim/cumulative bonus
Lifetime renewability
Any hidden exclusions
Whether a super top-up makes sense

**Ditto vs local insurance agent**
I’m also confused about where to purchase it.
Is **Ditto** a good option for researching/buying health insurance? Is their advice genuinely useful, or is it better to speak to a good **local insurance agent/broker** who can help during claims?

For parents’ health insurance, does the intermediary actually make a meaningful difference during a claim, or is it mostly about choosing the right policy directly from the insurer?

I’m not looking for the cheapest policy. I want something that will be **reliable for the next 15–20 years**, especially when my parents are older and more likely to need it.
If you have actually bought health insurance for your parents or have gone through a claim, I’d really appreciate your experience.

**Would you personally continue the Oriental policy in this situation, add a super top-up, or switch to HDFC ERGO/another insurer? And how would you make that decision?**

Used AI for better writing !

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some genuine advice on health insurance for my parents. I’m trying to make a long-term decision now rather than waiting until they are older or develop more health issues.

**Parents**
Dad: **54 years old**
Mom: **49 years old**

**Current health**
**Mom:** Some leg pain and dental issues, but no other major health problems.
**Dad:** Cholesterol levels fluctuate / has cholesterol issues, but otherwise no major health problems.
No major surgeries or hospitalisations that I’m aware of.

**Current insurance**
We currently have an **Oriental Insurance** health policy.
From the policy document I have:
Dad: **₹5 lakh sum insured + ₹2.1 lakh cumulative bonus**
Mom: **₹2.5 lakh sum insured + ₹87,500 cumulative bonus**
Premium: around **₹26,000/year**
The policy is already active and has some continuity/accumulated bonus.
My main concern is that the coverage may not be sufficient as they get older.

**What I’m confused about**
Should I:
**A)** Continue the existing Oriental policy and add a **super top-up**?

**B)** Continue Oriental but try to increase the existing coverage?

**C)** Keep Oriental for now and buy separate individual policies from another insurer such as **HDFC ERGO** or another reputed insurer?

**D)** Cancel/switch from Oriental completely and move to HDFC ERGO or another insurer?

I’m particularly interested in understanding **whether cancelling an existing policy with accumulated continuity/bonus is a bad idea**, especially when the parents already have some existing health conditions.
**How should I actually compare policies?**

Apart from premium and sum insured, what should I look at?
For example:
Room rent limits
ICU limits
Co-pay
Disease-specific sub-limits
PED waiting period
Claim settlement experience
Cashless hospital network
Restoration/recharge benefits
No-claim/cumulative bonus
Lifetime renewability
Any hidden exclusions
Whether a super top-up makes sense

**Ditto vs local insurance agent**
I’m also confused about where to purchase it.
Is **Ditto** a good option for researching/buying health insurance? Is their advice genuinely useful, or is it better to speak to a good **local insurance agent/broker** who can help during claims?

For parents’ health insurance, does the intermediary actually make a meaningful difference during a claim, or is it mostly about choosing the right policy directly from the insurer?

I’m not looking for the cheapest policy. I want something that will be **reliable for the next 15–20 years**, especially when my parents are older and more likely to need it.
If you have actually bought health insurance for your parents or have gone through a claim, I’d really appreciate your experience.

**Would you personally continue the Oriental policy in this situation, add a super top-up, or switch to HDFC ERGO/another insurer? And how would you make that decision?**

Used AI for better writing !

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some genuine advice on health insurance for my parents. I’m trying to make a long-term decision now rather than waiting until they are older or develop more health issues.

**Parents**
Dad: **54 years old**
Mom: **49 years old**

**Current health**
**Mom:** Some leg pain and dental issues, but no other major health problems.
**Dad:** Cholesterol levels fluctuate / has cholesterol issues, but otherwise no major health problems.
No major surgeries or hospitalisations that I’m aware of.

**Current insurance**
We currently have an **Oriental Insurance** health policy.
From the policy document I have:
Dad: **₹5 lakh sum insured + ₹2.1 lakh cumulative bonus**
Mom: **₹2.5 lakh sum insured + ₹87,500 cumulative bonus**
Premium: around **₹26,000/year**
The policy is already active and has some continuity/accumulated bonus.
My main concern is that the coverage may not be sufficient as they get older.

**What I’m confused about**
Should I:
**A)** Continue the existing Oriental policy and add a **super top-up**?

**B)** Continue Oriental but try to increase the existing coverage?

**C)** Keep Oriental for now and buy separate individual policies from another insurer such as **HDFC ERGO** or another reputed insurer?

**D)** Cancel/switch from Oriental completely and move to HDFC ERGO or another insurer?

I’m particularly interested in understanding **whether cancelling an existing policy with accumulated continuity/bonus is a bad idea**, especially when the parents already have some existing health conditions.
**How should I actually compare policies?**

Apart from premium and sum insured, what should I look at?
For example:
Room rent limits
ICU limits
Co-pay
Disease-specific sub-limits
PED waiting period
Claim settlement experience
Cashless hospital network
Restoration/recharge benefits
No-claim/cumulative bonus
Lifetime renewability
Any hidden exclusions
Whether a super top-up makes sense

**Ditto vs local insurance agent**
I’m also confused about where to purchase it.
Is **Ditto** a good option for researching/buying health insurance? Is their advice genuinely useful, or is it better to speak to a good **local insurance agent/broker** who can help during claims?

For parents’ health insurance, does the intermediary actually make a meaningful difference during a claim, or is it mostly about choosing the right policy directly from the insurer?

I’m not looking for the cheapest policy. I want something that will be **reliable for the next 15–20 years**, especially when my parents are older and more likely to need it.
If you have actually bought health insurance for your parents or have gone through a claim, I’d really appreciate your experience.

**Would you personally continue the Oriental policy in this situation, add a super top-up, or switch to HDFC ERGO/another insurer? And how would you make that decision?**

Used AI for better writing !

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some genuine advice on health insurance for my parents. I’m trying to make a long-term decision now rather than waiting until they are older or develop more health issues.

Parents
Dad: 54 years old
Mom: 49 years old

Current health
Mom: Some leg pain and dental issues, but no other major health problems.
Dad: Cholesterol levels fluctuate / has cholesterol issues, but otherwise no major health problems.
No major surgeries or hospitalisations that I’m aware of.

Current insurance
We currently have an Oriental Insurance health policy.
From the policy document I have:
Dad: ₹5 lakh sum insured + ₹2.1 lakh cumulative bonus
Mom: ₹2.5 lakh sum insured + ₹87,500 cumulative bonus
Premium: around ₹26,000/year
The policy is already active and has some continuity/accumulated bonus.
My main concern is that the coverage may not be sufficient as they get older.

What I’m confused about
Should I:
A) Continue the existing Oriental policy and add a super top-up?

B) Continue Oriental but try to increase the existing coverage?

C) Keep Oriental for now and buy separate individual policies from another insurer such as HDFC ERGO or another reputed insurer?

D) Cancel/switch from Oriental completely and move to HDFC ERGO or another insurer?

I’m particularly interested in understanding whether cancelling an existing policy with accumulated continuity/bonus is a bad idea, especially when the parents already have some existing health conditions.
How should I actually compare policies?

Apart from premium and sum insured, what should I look at?
For example:
Room rent limits
ICU limits
Co-pay
Disease-specific sub-limits
PED waiting period
Claim settlement experience
Cashless hospital network
Restoration/recharge benefits
No-claim/cumulative bonus
Lifetime renewability
Any hidden exclusions
Whether a super top-up makes sense

Ditto vs local insurance agent
I’m also confused about where to purchase it.
Is Ditto a good option for researching/buying health insurance? Is their advice genuinely useful, or is it better to speak to a good local insurance agent/broker who can help during claims?

For parents’ health insurance, does the intermediary actually make a meaningful difference during a claim, or is it mostly about choosing the right policy directly from the insurer?

I’m not looking for the cheapest policy. I want something that will be reliable for the next 15–20 years, especially when my parents are older and more likely to need it.
If you have actually bought health insurance for your parents or have gone through a claim, I’d really appreciate your experience.

Would you personally continue the Oriental policy in this situation, add a super top-up, or switch to HDFC ERGO/another insurer? And how would you make that decision?

Used AI for better writing !

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone with experience applying for a Japan tourist visa from India can help me.

My friend and I (both Indian passport holders) are planning a 7–10 day trip to Japan at the end of September. We genuinely want to visit Japan for sightseeing and to meet our Japanese friend before returning to India.

Here’s my situation:

I recently moved back to India after living and working in the UK for about 3 years .I have started a new full-time job in India. But there is unemployment of 7 months in between

Because I was living in the UK, I don’t have an Indian Income Tax Return (ITR) for the previous financial year.

Can I provide the UK financial year tax statement?

My employer doesn’t issue a formal No Objection Certificate (NOC), but I can provide my employment
letter, salary slips, and other proof that I’m employed.

My biggest concern is that I don’t have a large amount of money in my bank account yet because I’ve only recently started working again in India, I have only 1.5 L in savings account

The good news is that I have a close Japanese friend. Their mother lives in Japan and is willing to help us. She can provide an invitation letter and, if necessary, act as our financial guarantor by submitting the required guarantee documents and proof of her finances.

I’m a little confused about how much this actually helps.

My questions are:

If my friend’s mother provides a financial guarantee and all the required documents, do I still need to show a large balance in my own bank account?

Is it okay for my friend’s mother to be the guarantor even though she isn’t a relative?

Since I don’t have an Indian ITR because I was working in the UK, will a cover letter explaining this usually be enough?

Has anyone here been approved without an employer NOC by providing employment proof and salary slips instead?

Would you recommend applying as a self-funded tourist, or should I use my friend’s mother’s financial guarantee?
Is there anything else I can do to improve my chances of approval?

I’m not trying to hide anything or submit incomplete information. I just want to make sure I apply the right way and provide the correct documents.

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through a similar situation or knows how the Japanese Embassy usually handles these cases.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Need to extract AD users, groups, and computers (not memberships) from a multi-domain on-prem AD data into Databricks. Only a small OU is synced to Entra ID, so Graph API isn’t sufficient. I also ruled out direct LDAP from Databricks.tested from Spark workers, and there’s no network path to on-prem (DNS fails, no route by IP, no VPN/ExpressRoute) can’t provision due to security concerns.

Current idea is ADF + existing SHIR → Python (ldap3) → JSON in ADLS → Databricks.

A few questions:
Is an ADF Custom Activity the right pattern, or is scheduling a script directly on the SHIR host acceptable?
Best practice for incremental LDAP loads (whenChanged watermark per domain?) Any gotchas?
Since the SHIR is shared and already busy, is requesting a small dedicated bridge VM reasonable?
For a multi-domain forest, is Global Catalog (3268) sufficient, or is querying each domain separately the better approach?
Curious how others have handled similar set approaches ?

Used AI to rewrite in short way (mindful)

Hi folks , help your lad out

Looking for some real-world experience here. I’m building a data pipeline to ingest on-prem Active Directory data (users, groups, computers) into Databricks for analytics/reporting purposes — not for authentication or account provisioning, just landing AD objects as tables for a data platform.

I keep going back and forth between three options and want to make sure I’m not missing something obvious:

SCIM — my understanding is this is purely for provisioning (creating/updating/deactivating login accounts in a target app), not for pulling directory data into a data warehouse/lakehouse. It also doesn’t support “computer” objects at all. Am I right that this isn’t a fit for my use case?

Microsoft Graph API — works great if your on-prem AD is hybrid-synced to Entra ID, has nice native delta/incremental queries. My problem: our sync to Entra ID is only partial (scoped to one specific OU/business unit), so Graph API alone won’t give me full coverage across our whole organization.

Direct LDAP — works regardless of sync status, since it goes straight to on-prem AD. But it needs on-prem network connectivity from wherever the pipeline runs, plus a service account, and I have to build my own incremental logic (whenChanged watermarking) since there’s no native delta query like Graph API has.

Given my sync is only partial, my current plan is: LDAP as primary method, maybe layering in Graph API later for the subset that IS synced (if that’s even worth the added complexity vs. just using LDAP for everything).

Has anyone actually built something like this? Specifically curious about:

**•**	Anyone doing LDAP pulls directly from Databricks/Spark (I’m looking at Python’s ldap3 library) — any gotchas?  
**•**	Is a hybrid LDAP + Graph API approach ever actually worth it, or is that overengineering when LDAP alone covers everything?  
**•**	Any horror stories about computer/device objects specifically — ours currently has zero reliable data in our existing on-prem extraction

Appreciate any real-world war stories or “just do X” advice.

Hi everyone,
I’m 26M, salaried, earning around ₹1 lakh per month, and I’m looking for guidance on building a good credit card setup in India.

A bit of background:
I lived abroad for the last 3 years, so I never really built a credit card portfolio in India.
I currently have an HDFC Millennia credit card with a ₹4 lakh credit limit.
HDFC has offered me an upgrade to Regalia Gold, but it’s First Year Free (not Lifetime Free).
My spending pattern:
Frequent orders from Swiggy, Zepto, and Amazon
Online shopping on other e-commerce sites
Around 4 domestic flights every 6 months (roughly 8 a year)
1 international trip every year
I’m considering cards like:
Amazon Pay ICICI
HDFC Swiggy
HSBC Live+
RuPay cashback cards (not sure which one makes the most sense)
My goal is to maximize cashback/rewards without paying unnecessary annual fees. I also want to build a strong credit profile over time.

Some questions:
Should I keep Millennia or upgrade to Regalia Gold (not LTF)?
Which 2–4 card combination would you recommend based on my spending?
Is HSBC Live+ worth it compared with SBI Cashback or HDFC Swiggy?
Are there any cards I’m overlooking that would suit my spending better?
If you were starting from scratch today, how would you build this portfolio?
I’d really appreciate recommendations from people who have optimized their card setup. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,
I'm a Data Engineer and have received two job offers that I'm currently evaluating:
Offer 1: Wissen Infotech
Offer 2: Liebherr Pune
Both offers are almost identical in terms of CTC, while Liebherr provides a few additional benefits. Since Liebherr is a German multinational company, I'm also curious about its work culture, stability, and long-term career prospects.
My current tech stack includes:
PySpark

Azure Data Factory (ADF)

Azure Databricks

Azure Synapse Analytics

I'm looking for feedback from people who have worked at either company or know about their engineering teams, especially for data engineering roles.
Some areas I'd like to understand:
Work-life balance

Learning opportunities and upskilling

Data engineering projects and technology exposure

Engineering culture and management

Job security and company stability

Salary growth, appraisals, and promotions

Brand value for future career opportunities

Opportunities for cloud, big data, and modern data platform work

Onsite/international opportunities

If you had to choose between Wissen Infotech and Liebherr Pune for a Data Engineering career, which one would you pick and why?
Thanks in advance for your insights!

Hi everyone,
I'm a Data Engineer and have received two job offers that I'm currently evaluating:
Offer 1: Wissen Infotech
Offer 2: Liebherr Pune
Both offers are almost identical in terms of CTC, while Liebherr provides a few additional benefits. Since Liebherr is a German multinational company, I'm also curious about its work culture, stability, and long-term career prospects.
My current tech stack includes:
PySpark

Azure Data Factory (ADF)

Azure Databricks

Azure Synapse Analytics

I'm looking for feedback from people who have worked at either company or know about their engineering teams, especially for data engineering roles.
Some areas I'd like to understand:
Work-life balance

Learning opportunities and upskilling

Data engineering projects and technology exposure

Engineering culture and management

Job security and company stability

Salary growth, appraisals, and promotions

Brand value for future career opportunities

Opportunities for cloud, big data, and modern data platform work

Onsite/international opportunities

If you had to choose between Wissen Infotech and Liebherr Pune for a Data Engineering career, which one would you pick and why?
Thanks in advance for your insights!