Stress testing

Software engineers would be well aware of this term and might have been through this too. But, since it was my first experience and one worth writing, so I thought to share it here. This is how it went, I cannot say "this is how it goes" because I think different companies have different ways of stress testing and there actually might be better ones than what we did.

We were a team of 15 to start with. Each member in the team was provided with simplest, extremely monotonous, moronic, robotic tasks - to click on certain modules for producing results and then measure time till the results were out. Then repeat this around 150 times with different permutations and combinations. If you think we could have skipped some of them, we could not. We were asked to record time consumption from start of task to result output. No, not by looking at out watch and noting it on some notebook. But, by first installing a stopwatch on our systems and then noting down time for each of those tasks in an excel sheet with predefined rows and columns for each task and user. Since this was not enough it was informed that each task must start at same time by all team members. That would happen only when the team lead says to do so. So at 10 am when every one took their seats to become Google pigeons, confusions arose from which task to pickup first to how to report the time observed in the sheet. At last when things started this is how they continued : Team lead would say "1 2 3 start", and we would start running. Yes, running! Running, our fingers on the mouse, on keyboard - to click here and there on the product, start/stop watch, note down time consumed for producing results varying from 1.5 seconds to 15 minutes and more. Then wait till all 15 are finished with that task and move on to the next one that would be informed by the team lead.

I have heard how load testing is based on increasing load after every successful execution. But, we followed a different approach starting with 15 from 10 am to 5 pm. Cycle was repeated with only 10 users from there on till 9 pm and only a 5 user test was performed from 10 pm to 1 am. Well, that downfall in users was planned due to unavailability of manpower at night so our poor managers had no other choice.

So, at 1 am when I was finally free, my stress limits had been tested. How much stress do I feel upon doing such high level work for almost 15 hours with only tea/coffee or meal breaks and no more.

My stress testing seems to have passed as I am still writing.

P.S - Its not good to write about one's workplace because it reveals a lot about what we actually do and what people think we do. But, since it was an incident that was totally out of the blue for me so here it was to be.

Paternity leave

When it comes to gender equality most employers claim to be pro women and are more than eager to explain how they ensure women do not get the feeling of a lesser mortal in their organization.

Yesterday I came across the term 'paternity leave' while reading something on mint.

During evenings I am often at my elder brother's place. He had to take leave yesterday because baby was feeling too sleepy and bhabhi had to attend an important meeting. The daily routine of leaving him at day care could not be followed so bhaiya decided to go for the 'miss'. So, when I said to bhabhi "today I read about paternity leave, isn't that a great idea?" Well, to my surprise she replied - such a leave does exist and to my utter surprise she informed it's a 1 week leave!

What is the 7 day leave for? May be it is a gesture from the employer of the would be father to acknowledge that they know his wife is expecting so he should be with her during that time.

"What if companies could give one month paternity leave every year till the child is 3 years old or so?" When I muted this to bhabhi, she was very much in favor of it.

So why don't HR managers come up with something like that. One reason could be, If the father takes leave to take care of the baby allowing the wife to go on work, it does not give any fruits to husband's employer in fact it adds to the productivity of wife's organization. So this step would be considered to be one for the benefit of other organizations.

But, this could be a good tool for the companies who take this as an initiative because this would definitely make the father think many times before he decides to jump over to another company with no such arrangements. In fact in case of couples working in same industry, this could be an attractive policy to poach the other half by rewarding the first half with additional leaves because benefits would not go outside the company.

It would be like a bond for 3 years signed by the parents not for a few hundred thousand rupees but for the convenience of their child.

Does literacy matter?

It does not if it is only about reading and writing and not about the education of understanding and following.

I workout in a gym during evening which has 4 treadmills. These poor treadmills run incessantly due to a rush during peak evening hours. So that they are used judiciously, the instruction in front of the treadmill states "Please use for a maximum of 15 minutes at one time". Yesterday when I was ready for running they were all occupied. After waiting for about 2 minutes I checked how much time these health conscious individuals would take to get down. 3 of them were already above the 20-minute mark, with ladies having run for more than 25 minutes. Finally when I got one treadmill, next to it was a girl may be in her late 20's running for the last 30 minutes. She finally stopped at around 37 minutes - yes, I continued to peep into her speedometer with utter frustration and almost on the verge of asking her to get down.

This triggered the question in my mind whether literacy matters or not?

Looking at the above incident it seems being literate is not enough to make things better because though a gym incident does not impact my life or anyone else' for that matter but incidents like this where people take U-turn under a crossed U or throw garbage in front of a dustbin do reflect society's mindset.

I think literacy matters only if it educates us!

Lost but not found.

In March I had written about a lost and found case. That was when I lost my laptop and then found it in less than 12 hours. Other than that I missed my passport twice on transit airports(Johannesburg and Bangkok respectively) and in fact found it before I realized what I had done. All this in less than 1 year of time. Thanks to all the generous people of the world for returning the goods.

Well, as I expected at that time, my quota of luck was being overused so when I lost my camera last Friday, chances of finding it were less. Since there were not too many things I did with my camera on that day. I cannot imagine anything else but having dropped it from my pocket while driving back home. May be that was the price I had to pay for being lucky all the previous times.

Though there is one more thing common in previous incidents - all of them happened outside India and this one right here in Bangalore. But, there is nothing anyone could have done even if they found it rolling in the streets - I never wrote any contact number/address on the camera cover.

I had been planning to start a weekly post containing 5 pictures about Bangalore and its lifestyle. I guess I delayed it too much and now it will remain uninitiated until I buy a new one.

Kholo Kholo

Taare Zameen par might be a meaningful movie. But, I am not writing any review here, I obviously cannot write one before the release.


But the song I find most meaningful goes like this:

kholo kholo darwaze, parde karo kinare, khoonte se bandhi hai hawa, milke churayo sare.
aa jao patang le ke, apne hi rang le ke, aasman ka shamiyana aaj humein hai sajana.

kyun is kadar, hairan tun,
mausam ka hai mehmaan tun, duniya saji tere liye
khud ko zara pehchaan tun.
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar,
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin,
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

Basi zindagi udasi tazi, hansne ko razi garma garam sari abhi bhi hai utari.
zindagi to hai patasha, meethi meethi si hai aasha, chakh le rakh le hatheli se dhak le ise.
tujh mein agar pyaas hai, baarish ka ghar bhi paas hai.
roke tujhe koi kyun bhala, sang sang tere aakaash hai.
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar,
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

khul gaya, aasmaan ka rasta dekho khul gaya.
mil gaya, kho gaya tha jo sitara mil gaya , mil gaya.
raushan hui sari zameen, jagmag hua sara jahan,
ho udne ko tun azaad hai,
bandhan hai koi ab kahan
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

kyun is kadar, hairan tun,
mausam ka hai mehmaan tun.

Sung by Shankar and music from Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy. You can download the song from here.

Play and donate

On FREE Rice you can donate rice by playing vocabulary quiz. I came to know about it from Sandesh's blog. It's an interesting initiative and the web page is very simple and effective.

It's a UN initiative to let people play vocabulary based quiz and for every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated. Donations go to UN World Food Program .

It also informs that approximately 3.8 billion grains have been donated since its launch on 07-Oct. I donated too and would suggest others to spend 5 minutes out of a few hours of monitoring cricket scores on the net or while chatting with your friends.

Deviating a little from the main topic and looking at the two aspects of the
website.

Vocabulary:

I don't think such a quick quiz can improve one's vocabulary substantially. It
takes time for an individual to assimilate new words and such time does not exist in this case. But, it could still be used as a refreshment from busy schedule or to gauge your vocabulary levels. If you try taking away just 2 words a day then some lingual gains could be made as well.

Donation:

UN being the most respected organization when it comes to world development, I cannot challenge the effectiveness of this initiative. But, I have doubts about how much rice registered on the servers actually translates to real rice? And then we all know about the rest of the delivery chain and how much will reach the end! Going by the 3.8 billion figure, it translates into approximately 3,80,000 KG of rice, assuming 10 grains would weigh 1 gram. Per capita consumption of rice in Indian urban areas is around 4.7 Kg per month. Considering higher consumption in other countries, in less than 3 months this program should have donated rice to feed 70 to 80 thousand people for 1 month. I doubt so many people would have been freed from hunger. But it is worth spending a few minutes every day for a fraction of that.

So go ahead and spend a few minutes.

Kashmir. Behind the Vale - Book Review

Author: M J Akbar
Publications: Roli

You might have read and heard a lot about the Kashmir issue, so have I. But, I know most of us have formed opinions, views and images based upon what we were told or we heard. This book could help many a people who ever had any interest in knowing more about Kashmir.

M J Akbar takes you through centuries of history of Kashmir from the times of Kingdoms in early ADs to 1990. Yes, only till 1990! He shed’s light on all aspects of Kashmir from its kings to people, from religion to regions etc.

It makes for a good read if you have some kind of connection with the state of probably have visited it sometime.

Few lines from passage about how Islam came into existence in Kashmir - After a very unstable period of 12th century where the change of kings was more frequent than change in weather came a king in 13th century, popularly known as 'Bud Shah'. After stabilizing the state he wanted to change from Buddhism to Public's religion, which at that time was Hinduism. Since Hindu pandits could not decide which of the 4 castes the King should join he was not granted the permission to become a Hindu. He then decided to become a Muslim and he did. Over the next 50 years of his prosperous rule he did everything right a king should do. He built mosques and temples with equal devotion. But, then people followed him and so followed Islam in Kashmir.

How history is formed !

But, then one book on a subject as wide as that may not be enough.

Future of the forgotten redboxes

Indian postboxes are all set to get new and refreshing looks. Yes, the picture on the left is the future. Designed by IIT Mumbai this is how they will look like. I think it is an an ambitious project from department of post.

Now the question of-course is how important is it to change the looks of postboxes nationwide. Each postbox would cost around Rs 10,000 and approximately 3 lakh such boxes would be rolled out all over the next 3 years read more.

In my opinion it really was not so critical to change the looks but the existing postboxes were really old, dirty and if I ever had to drop a letter in the post box which, I do only when I fill some forms for entrance examinations, I always had a feeling - would this be ever picked up?

But if things go as planned then they would come into place on a BOT (build, operate & transfer) format. They would be used for advertising resulting into additional revenue stream and other benefits like rust free steel, common lock for all post boxes etc. would definitely reduce operational costs for India post which is a good step forward for the extincting behemoth.

But, who writes letters these days? Well many do but invisible to us living in urban areas who prefer typing over writing. But, how could the postal department revive its usage in the urban areas?

One suggestion from my side would be to insist all primary and secondary school teachers to insist their students to actually write letters to their parents, friends or teachers when they are taught letter writing in class 5th to 8th or so. Looking at the number of students in those classes in the urban areas definitely could make a good contribution to postal revenues.

Otherwise we would see kids collecting letters in addition to stamps as a hobby because they would be as rare as stamps itself and letters hung in museum with tag line "this is Indian letter".

Broken News

This Tuesday I was on Delhi airport for almost 8 hours waiting for my connecting flight, which fortunately was only 1 hour late.

Delhi airport being many times better than Bangalore airport, I got a seat easily in comparison to the struggle for standing space on Bangalore airport. The plasma TV in front was airing IBN7 (Hindi news channel from IBN and network 18) and here is a short extract from one of its breaking news.

My assumption that every alternate news is tagged as breaking news was proven incorrect as the red flash for breaking news never disappeared for the next 8 hours. Yes, every news was breaking news!

One of the news goes like this:

delhi hawai adde pe hua hungama

Indian airlines ki flight pe hua hungama

Flight 102D pe hua hungama

Already 5 minutes into the news there is no reason explained for the so-called "humgama". Each line of news flashing as a headline. The news report continues with red flashing light stating “BREAKING NEWS”.

yatri subah 5:30 se airport par

Flight ka samay 8 baje

yatriyon ne plane par chadne se kiya inkaar

Plane par 104 yatri sawar

Plane ki der se yatri naraz

These pieces of headlines flashed more than 5 times each. How much was the delay, what made the travelers unhappy etc. - no information. May be the news channel did not find such things important enough. This was followed by the next breaking news about some guy buried alive etc.

Now that being breaking news I think IBN7 will soon have brothers and sisters like IBN8, 9, 10 etc. because there are so many flights getting late everyday on so many airports in India, there would be surplus content.

This poor quality news is not unusual neither are people like me writing about it!

Sad part of the story is, "hindi' news channels are miles ahead of English news channels in this with STAR news and AAJ TAK miles ahead of their competition too. Hindi seems to have become a language only for 'masala' and 'gossip'. In fact growing number of Hindi news channels- there are already around 9 each having short slots for national news and rest all booked for such breaking news and about 4 English news cahnnels further emphasizes that there is definitely a lot of market demand for such content which is not a great news in itself.

People who may still want to watch news in Hindi would depart too as there is hardly any news and probably we would soon get to hear parents telling their kids "beta hindi news channel mat lagana, achhe bachhe aisa nahin karte".

Yahoo can do but Google cannot!

Nice post on digital inspiration which lists some of the the things Yahoo search can do but Google cannot.

Projecting performance.

Recently a friend of mine was unhappy with his appraisal as he thinks he deserved more because of good amount of hard work he had put in. Well that probably is a case with most of the employees these days especially in IT companies because of the inflating salaries causing huge expectations.

My suggestion to him was "it could be possible that your boss does not know how exactly you are putting in a lot of effort and you must focus not only on the effort but also on the visualization of that effort to the concerned person(boss)". This in other words means projecting the work done is as important as doing the work.

Here is one good example.

"The Taj Group of Hotels once faced a peculiar business problem. The mirror in the hotels’ bathrooms became misty after a hot shower and people invariably used a towel to wipe off the mist to see their face. So, Taj put a heat source behind the mirrors, which prevented the mist from forming. But when customers were asked what they felt about the change in the mirrors, they hadn’t even noticed it. Then Taj came up with the idea of putting the heat source only on a square portion of the mirrors, which showed the face of people. Mist was allowed to settle on the remaining parts of the mirror. The customers found this really innovative"

Found this example on agencyfaqs as a part of Harish Bijoor article. I think it is an excellent example of what is done may not be noticed as long as it is not planned accordingly. This stands equally true @ work as well.

It is not that your supervisor wants you to chase them all day to serve them in sycophancy but then you are not the only one whom he supervises and just as you don't know what all he does in those 9-12 hours he is at work, he may not know about you either. Though you not knowing enough about his efforts does not matter but vice versa will impact you. So keep this in mind when you go in for an appraisal next time.

Anyways no matter what your supervisor gives you, it will not be sufficient for long enough! isn't it ?

Movie insurance

How often does it happen that you start watching a movie and with in the first 15 minutes you realize that it would be a waste of time and stress on your brain? And what if that happens in case you went to watch a movie like that in a cinema hall paying more than Rs. 200 because you were mesmerized by the glitzy promotions.

I think cinema halls should have some kind of an insurance where if you walk out the theater within first 15 minutes then 50% to 75% of the ticket price would be returned.

Prohibited or not?

Looking at this I do not understand whether smoking is exactly prohibited or not inside a plane toilet. If smoking is prohibited then why an ashtray next to it. This to me is equivalent to someone saying - murder is a crime but in case you happen to do one please do not let the blood spill here and there. Clean the knife and floor.

I, We and Leadership

Since more often than not, I do not have much to do so I speak to people around me on leadership etc.

Often my argument is when leaders speak(exclusive of personal interviews) they should prefer to use 'we' over 'I' as much as possible. Because, though it is they who stand on the podium, it is they who will take big decisions, it is they who will sign the deals but to make people feel they are a part of the organisations, leaders must use 'we'.

Last sunday I was travelling from Bangalore to Guwahati. I had to change 2 flights. Would like to share an observation.

Kingfisher airlines. The inflight magazine contains an address from Mr. Vijay Mallya who is currently acting as the Chairman and Chief Executive for the airlines. In his address to the passengers he uses 'I' 4 times and 'we' 2 times.

Spicejet. The inflight magazine contains Mr. Siddhanta Sharma's Address to passengers. Mr. Sharma is the CEO for Spicejet. He uses 'we' 6 times and 'I' only once.

If you were given a choice to work in the team of one of the leaders above which one would you choose?(keeping apart the grand charisma and magnanimous reputation of Mr. Mallya).

Durga Pooja

Durga Pooja pictures and videos from Guwahati, Assam. Without the unnecessary chattering of news channels.
Videos are at the bottom(Video quality is not very good though).

Camera : Sont Cybershot DSC T10.

Banker to the Poor. Book Review-V

Authors - Muhammad Yunus, Alan Jolis.

What started as an experiment in 1974 has today become one of the largest institutions in MicroCredit.

Microcredit is a concept that was not accepted easily by any banker in the 70s and the situation has improved only marginally even today, thats what yunus conveying in this book. As the title suggests Grameen is a bank which understands only one thing - Poor.
Some very good points in the book are:

-- The poor knows better how to fend for themselves than the guy sitting inside an airconditioned room in some swanky building.
-- Trust can be more powerful than mortgage.
-- Its good to have contacts in the government and use them appropriately required.

Though it is Yunus' Autobiography and one would expect personal annecdotes in between but there are a number of times when the author deviates too much from the Grameen story.

So read on if topics like poverty, development, society, upliftment etc. interest you.

Electronic Menus in restaurants-I

You enter a restaurant and take seat. On the table you have a touch screen probably double the size of a PDA(yes, smaller than the one displayed on the left). You open it and see various options available to you.
Food
Drinks
Music

Assuming you choose 'food' and you get options ranging from Chinese, Muglai to Thai and whatever you normally get to see in a restaurant. Just read the customer comments and ratings for each of the delicacies as rated by so many customers who would have tried them, loved them and hated them and you could probably choose from the best rated to weirdly commented.

How about the item you heard from your friend he said tastes good? You might want to check out how have others rated it and what do they say about it. Put it in the search option available to you on the top of your screen(powered by none other than Goggle).

You liked it! But then you like it low salt, low oil, spicy etc. You choose from the options of various degrees for each ingredient of the dish.

You choose your drinks, food and confirm your order. Pops up the screen letting you know the time you will have to wait for that chilled drink to quench your thirst or satiate your palate.

Now when you have had a nice time with your family so you don't call the waiter who could take a few minutes to come over and then do the whole money exchange thing(of course not necessary). Just look at the right side of the menu there is swipe machine integrated in your touch screen. You swipe your card enter the amount of your bill which was displayed as soon as you pressed that red "bill" tab - I know you hate it. Oh you don't use credit cards! Just press the "cash" tab next and that same waiter who served you appears in less than a minute with all the possibilities of the change that he may have to give you back. In the meanwhile you could have added your ratings and comments on what you liked and what you did not.

By the way you like music when you go out for a fine meal, don't you? You could have chosen your pick from the music library that was available to you right from your touch screen.

You just had your fine meal in restaurants that could be the future.

20-50 - Cricket world cup 2015

I always felt 20-20 is not for bowlers. In fact I often used to say that in T20 bowlers could only bleed as the concept of the game was to score irrespective of the pitch, fielding etc.

With India's performance against Pakistan and South Africa where the team defended average scores of less than 150, not only the bowlers have done a commendable job but I also gladly accept my wrong notion of no room for bowling.

But, of course the best thing I have liked in the T20 tournament till now is the short span of the match. 3 hours for a cricket match in my opinion is the best thing to have happened where one can watch the match without having to miss his work, take leave, stay awake the whole night etc.(all so common for Cricket crazy Indian fans).

I think this is how the 2015 Cricket world cup should be.

32 teams to play the world cup.

Round 1 - 8 groups, 4 teams in each group. 20-20 matches intra group.
Top 2 teams from each group to move to next round.
Let us say then we have A1, A2, B1, B2 .... H1 and H2

Round 2 - A1 plays B1 and B2 and so does A2. So 2 teams from one pair play 2 teams of another pair and this round be 20-20 too.

Based on the points and run rates the best 8 out of the 16 move to round 3.

Round 3 - Quarter finals.
and now begins the show down with 50-50 in place.

From here on the tournament goes as any other tournament.

With 32 teams playing cricket I am sure there would be lot more variety than we get to see today and with 20-20 in first 2 rounds it will not last for months. With 50-50 in last 3 rounds the big boys will not be able to complain either about the reduction in the quality of sport.

Of course grooming 32 teams to be able to play up to international standard will have to be ICC's job and I do think 8 years is a good time to bring teams to that level. ICC has much to gain from entry of so many teams into international arena so they should not have any qualms for such a daunting task.

Regardless of my weird ideas till India plays Australia on Saturday we can say - "Bharat desh ka nara hai, 20-20 hamara hai", "Indian's slogan is 20-20 is ours".

Sachin

Sachin's last play in England. A good slide show I found on The First Post.

This is not the first of its kind slide show especially for a legend like Sachin. But, since I admire him and I found it today by chance so thought of linking it here. I admire him because:

> His bat spoke for him and not he.
> He never answered criticism to defend himself. He knew what he was doing and what he had to do.
> He always made a comeback in the worst of times.
> His behavior was always of a gentleman.

Ok, since I am sounding very cliched here so I will stop before the fewest of the reader's of my blog pledge to stop reading my blog.

But like Ashoka, Budha, Ram, Krishna, Prophet and Jesus became history. He would become history too. A history that will be remembered till when cricket will not cease to exist.

Suggesting or insisting

On the FC Blogs, after reading Innovation: Lessons From a Car Shopping Experience, I had made a long comment. Longer than some of my own blog posts, so I thought of posting the same comment here too.

My comment was "Pushing a customer to alternatives of the product which the customer is looking for is definitely not going to help. In fact it will have a negative impact even if the dealer is suggesting a superior product at whatever price.

But, I think there is a finer line between insisting and suggesting. Suggesting is not a bad thing if properly dealt with.

In today's world with internet though most of the customers come with as much knowledge of the car as the sales representative at the dealer, still there are customer's who are not exactly sure what they are looking for. They have plain aspirations and that is where suggestive approach can help.
Again there has to be a strong restrain from making that suggestive approach into an insistence.

In this case you as a customer had very clear priorities and understanding, where the best a dealer could have done was answer all your questions and be obliged to meet your requests.

But, an attitude of suggesting superior product, lower prices, alternatives should have been the approach only after understanding what the customer is looking for i.e. after getting to understand a little more about the customer."

Now EnergyPods

No, they are not any new product from Apple which on plugging into ears will energize you.

Read here EnergyPod .

I am impressed by the looks, otherwise I do not need this big an instrument like a spaceship to take a 15 minute break.

Indian hockey - chak diya!

No, I am neither going to write a review for chak de! nor I would be writing a news item for Indian hockey team's victory over Korea in Asia Cup(7-1 victory is commendable).

I watched the final of Asia cup final on Sunday evening and yes it was a shocking victory (yes not a shocking defeat, but a shocking victory). Indian beat Korea 7-1 in an already flooded tournament - flooded with goals by Indian hockey team, who scored a mammoth 57 goals in the tournament. Then I coincidentally watched chak de, 2 hours later. I think this would probably be the reverse of what others would have recently done - I am assuming some of the so many people who liked chak de! might have watched the match.

This could well be a great opportunity for the celebrity hungry brand managers and media agents. For example even the news channels in my opinion have a good chance to spread their wings over some other sports and may be have dedicated shows for hockey.

Companies picking some of the good hockey players as of now could be spotting a good opportunity for much lesser a price than they might have to shell out in case they win another tournament and then all the companies jumping to cash them resulting in much higher prices for the new ambassadors.

It may look as if I am blowing Indian team's victory in the Asia Cup way out of proportion. But, as far as I can see hockey is one of the few games which can easily gain mass appeal in a country like India. I say so because,
(i) It does not require costly equipment to start with.
(ii) It does not need special courts or tracks for common man to play.
(iii) It is not a very complex game when it comes to scoring.
(iv) It's a good entertainer.

And then once upon a time... India was the best in this very sport and even though I doubt kids below 10 would know this, but it is India's national game.

I don’t think chak de was the motivation for Indian hockey players but it could be with these results coming in more frequently. Great hopes for hockey to gain its lost glory.

Does the menu matter ?

Have a look at some of the pictures I took while having dinner at Pizzahut on Sunday evening.





The pictures make everything worth eating and drinking. Drinks for example - under normal circumstance if everything is only written without any pictures then very few would really want to wander out of the normal Coke and Pepsi. But, when you open the menu and find a 15*10 cm picture of a refreshingly green "apple coolers.." it becomes tempting enough to try at least once.

Now lets look at what this could to the business. We as a group could have ordered a pitcher of Pepsi, which would have cost us Rs 90. But highly tempted by the pictures 2 of us ordered apple coolers and 3 ordered "masala lime" each costing 45 resulting into a total splash of Rs 225 only on drinks. That is 2.5 times what otherwise would have been.
Assuming that 1 of every 2 tables order drinks and 1 out of 5 such drink ordering tables is impressed by the pictures and makes an experiment, that would mean an increase of revenue from Rs 900 to 1035(vague approximation of all tables ordering same). This is 15% more!!!

The same goes for pizzas that we ordered.

15% more revenues for designing and redoing the menu once in every 6 months and including new and fresh pictures. I think the menu does matter!!

The bottom line for a restaurant is, pictures in the menu can definitely add value. But, remember it raises expectations at the same time and so living up to expectations is more important and difficult than creating those very expectations.

This is a practice seldom followed in Indian eateries, which I think is worth
spending some time and money in order to reap benefits from the visual impact.

Member Details

This morning I got a mail(in my bulk/spam folder) with subject line 'member details'.
I think this trick can definitely add traffic to the website at least initially.

The trick is, some website guys will send you thanks for registering on their xyz site with your username and password.

If you encounter a salesman approaching you with some product or file in his hand more often than not you look at him and say no, before even listening to what is he saying(in fact you don't even know if he is selling or buying). If you were a bit polite at the most you would listen to him and then say thanks, make some excuse for why you do not want to listen to him further. But now if he says "do you remember you bought that thing from us" or "do you remember we met" or may be something like "thanks for buying so and so" which you might have never bought, would you not be provoked to listen to him/her for a few more seconds and ask him/her back what is it that he/she is talking about.

Well the spam mails I am getting in my mailbox stating "thanks for registering at our website, your login details are following and please visit our website" is following the same trick(in my opinion). I think it does makes some new or gullible internet users to visit the website. In case you get an e-mail mentioning the website features, the possibility is that even the new internet users might not visit the site. This could be because they did not like the features or just that they are not involved with it. In case-I, it provokes them to think how could they be registered with this site so they visit the site to check it out.

I think the trick makes sense to introduce products to customers who are not willing to have even a single look at it.

2 years

2 years back from today, I joined this workplace. It was a fresh and new beginning to my career. I do believe I got a very good opportunity much better and higher than my expectations.

Over the two years I met lot of good and interesting people. Learnt lot of new things and saw places which neither I had ever though of or heard of.

Some of the things that come to my mind which i have realized/learnt:
1. It is not just the work profile that matters, it is the people among whom you work that matters equally.
2. Networking helps.
3. Its important to move on.

After having learnt my small share of the new things, now its time I start to unlearn as well so that I can learn new and more.

Learning is the key.

Being brutal

At my age I have read many a books on business which talk about performance and non-performance. All those authors often write about getting rid of non-performance and encouraging performance. I always thought it would be easy to encourage performance. At the same time when I read about the bell curve Jack Welch created I was shocked to hear that a team lead would be required to fire the bottom 5% performers of his team every year.

Jack himself said that he found team leads signing-off at the end of 3 years because there was no way they could fire someone they had been working with for 3 years and now he performed fine but was still at the bottom of his team.

I thought it was crazy but still always used to quote this example in any discussion that involved a point about performance. I did agree that it was an outrageous thing to do something like this but at the same time believed that if a standard of this sort could be established then others could try to establish standards equivalent to 80% of that by may be softening some of the rules.

I am standing at a position where my stance about someone's performance might result into a decision like that. Unfortunately the person in question is a good friend of mine. And more unfortunately an honest statement from my side might not result into happy state of affairs.

I do have sometime to decide on my position on the whole matter and I hope whatever I do is a rational and justified decision.

Comfort Zone

Life in a hotel sounds very dull, moronic and unusual. But, When I tell people I lived in hotel for 8 months(in China) then it sounds beyond all that = weird. Even I used to think it is silly to be living in a hotel instead of not moving into an apartment.

But, now I am missing all the comforts that I had in the hotel. From the cleaning of the room to change of bedsheets. From removal of towels in the bathroom to ordering of newspaper at 1 in the night.

Keeping apart all the problems of food and living alone and working 16 hours a day in a world totally away and different from yours now its time to live in a world that is not the same. Its time to re-create the comfort zone.

The old man and his God. Book review - IV

Author - Sudha Murthy.

I have not read Sudha Murthy before though I have read that she written quite a lot. This time I got my hands on it as my brother bought it.

The book is written in a very simple and plain style. Describing some very common stories that the author came across in her life. The statement she makes in the preface stands correct for such stories and it is that "we all come across such strange and touching incidents in our life it is just that we forget them".

Well some people makes note of them and get a chance to share with others. This is what Sudha has done in this book.

The book is written in a very simple language and does contains interesting stories with happy and sad endings showing different facets of life.

A good short read.

Back to blogging

Been here done this. I have been away from blogging even before and this time it was a higher degree as I stopped reading them too. But, the reason was not merely my laziness but also the block on accessing blogspot.

Now that I am in Bangalore, err.. Bengaluru, I there is no such block and I would be more regular to writing. If not writing at least reading them.

Let's see when I say more regular what can I come up with.

Blue Ocean Strategy. Book review - III

Authors - W. Chan Kim. Renee Mauborgne.
Publisher - Harvard Business School press

A typical management book it talks about creating a market for your business where you no longer compete with your existing competition. Though it is a bestseller. I did not like it too much for a few reasons like (i) It really does not gives any practical solutions instead it is giving too much of theoretical solutions (ii)It really does not tells anything new.

The book is written by management professors at INSEAD and hence is more like a consultant suggesting something instead of an executioner with task at hand.

The examples cited as reference to the strategy of creating a new market all make sense in hindsight because they succeeded but there would have been so many unique attempts that would have failed as well. Though the book does touches upon how to execute such strategies, convince people to allow changes and move things forward but again it is too much theory. Well I would say my understanding might not have been good enough but if you think you like business then do read the book to realize it is not fun to do business in fact to do business is a serious business and it is very important to do monotonous and not so interesting tasks in business.

The only blue ocean strategy I could learn from the book was how the authors made this book look technical with a complex name and still write not so very complex content (though the authors might have worked very hard to generate this) and make the book a bestseller. One good thing is the book is not very thick like other management books and hence can become a short read on some journey.

Languages and their meaning.

I remember a few years back for the first time when I read in some newspaper article that Chinese is a tonal language with every word having 4 tones with every tone having a different meaning. I thought, 'how stupid' and how do people speak such a language. Well I still think its 'weird' but now after having been in China for more than 6 months I have been seeing and hearing only that language.

Now after having worked out my way to speak a little bit to the waiters in the restaurant and to taxi drivers I find it interesting to learn this unique language more everyday. While learning this alien language (I mean Chinese and alien because it is as distant as an alien’s language would be, no disrespect to the Chinese language and people) what I realized is that all languages are as meaningless and meaningful as every other language (including Hindi).

Where as the 4 tones for every word result into 4 meanings, to count up to 100 all u need to know is 0-10 and then you can keep adding and multiplying the numbers to reach 100. e.g 2 is er and 10 is shi, so 12 is shi er and 20 is er shi, isnt that cool.

Just quoting a few examples here for short comparisons.
Most of the people know only one thing about china and it is "nihao" meaning “hello”. But, dissecting it, 'ni hao' means 'you good'. ni = you and hao = good. Co-incidentally I can relate this to Kannada (the language of Bangalore). 'ni' in kannada also means 'you' and in Hyderabdi (the commonly used language in Hyderabad which a sister IT city of Bangalore) 'hao' means 'yes'.
After giving much deeper thought to ni hao, for the first time I thought what do 'hello' and 'namaste' (Hello in Hindi) stand for and realized there was nothing much that could be dissected and understood more about these words. Now if you think its an easy language lets see how different tones result into different meanings and all the sense is lost.

"shou" in four different tones means(the number with each word represents the tone):

shou1 - collect.
shou2 - ripe/mature.
shou3 - hand
shou4 – slim/thing
Though reading about tones cannot help understand what they mean and sound like, most probably one cannot understand them even on listening to them. This is not a one-off example! Every word has four tones and every tone has a different meaning. Words with same tone can have different meanings too.

Now to avoid taking you more through the details, here is one last example;)

English - condom.
Hindi - Nirodhak
Chinese - biyuntao

Well I never learnt languages from scratch before and so I don’t know the origin of the word 'condom' or 'nirodhak' but here it goes for condom in Chinese.

Biyuntao: bi - to avoid, yun - pregnancy, tao - case/cover. ;) Well it does makes some sense. Say thanks to me for not mentioning the tones of each of the three parts.

P.S. The last example was the lesson a Chinese learning website published today (05-July-2007, www.chinesepod.com), which I refer to for learning some Chinese words occasionally.

Blocked

Though I am not one of those regular bloggers who writes everyday or once in every 2 days, but i do visit my blog regularly to visit other blogs on my blogroll. Out of so many times I visit the blog I do write a few times.

Here in China my blog used to get blocked and unblocked every now and then. I knew it was the government which was blocking blogspot.com but this time the block has lasted for more than 2 weeks and after I read this Going global? Prepare to play by local rules yesterday on the fastcompany site, I relaized it might be more official this time. And then this ain't India where the media can shout slogans against the government , go to the streets and demand for freedom of speech. This is china where government(the party) decides and public follows(has to follow).

Interestingly the authoroties seem to have missed something as they have blocked only blogspot.com but not Blogger . So I can still write but not view my blog. Let us see how long this remains open.

Well I am using slimtrust in the meanwhile to view the not accesible links. Which primarily includes blogspot and wikipedia.

Finally an Indian

At last after having lived for more than 6 months in this city(Hohhot) in China I finally found an Indian. Ofcourse I just did not find him somewhere here and there. I just got to know, in the hotel where I am staying there is a new staff member who is an Indian. Interestingly he is a chef. I think it will be interesting to visit the exquisite kitchen with him where may be I could take some more food delicacies pictures.

Well it feels great to meet a fellow country man in a place like this where you cannot find a single person like yourself.

It happened in India - Book Review

Book - It happened in India (Autobiography, Kishore Biyani).
Author - Kishore Biyani with Dipayan Baishya
Publisher – Rupa

Kishore Biyani is not a very popular man and neither old enough or idolized enough to have written an autobiography. But, I bought the book for a number of reasons. I had read the name Kishore Biyani some 5 years back in Business World when organized retain was starting to emerge as a massive industry of future. I have been interested in organized retain because of my personal interest in mass customer business i.e. B2C over B2B. The book has a glitzy cover and pulled my attention quickly plus only for Rs 99 (original from Landmark, Bangalore).

Now coming to the contents of the book. It is a good, simply written book with no big words or teachings. One unusual approach in this book is so may reviews about "Kishoreji" from various people who have been with him during his ascent. This includes family members, friends, colleagues and business partners. In an autobiography this is unusual because an autobiography is supposed to be the story of the person from the person. But disappointingly rather I must say ‘as expected’ all the people who reviewed (20% of the book is only made up of other people writing about him), none has mentioned any weakness or shortcomings. This makes the book so very usual since it is only human to have shortcomings and weakness and then he too is a human.

What I liked about the book/kishoreji is the extreme focus on learning, un-learning and re-learning. Though Biyani is also writing about customer as his only focus but I think that is something most of the people say. I offcourse do not intend to say that it might not be the case with him but for me an autobiography is not proof enough. Though I would still agree with him as I myself have been a keen observer of the Big bazaars and Centrals and I had noticed a lot of things that he is mentioning specifically.

An autobiography normally (in fact very often) contains 98% past(history) and 2% future. This one contains almost 60-40. Instead at times Kishoreji is laying so much focus on his projected plans and future strategies that it starts to seem like an investor meet where the idea is to impress about the company and then ask them to invest in it.

It is a good read for those who are part of the retail industry or aspiring to be part of it. I also liked it because it is very much Indian with usage of Hindi words at a number of places, which makes it so very easy to relate to things.

3.75/5

Hard work or Intelligence?

While choosing people for a certain task I often tend to think what should matter more? Number of times I see that people are asked tough rigorous questions in interviews. This could prove that the person is intelligent. But does intelligence only make up for all the results that a person can bring out.

What about hard work? The reason for this write-up is a question that popped up in my mind regarding the importance of hard work and intelligence required to produce desired results. The question is, what is more important in attaining certain results. Hard work or Intelligence?

With hard work one can push, stretch and some how try to manage. But, with intelligence one can manage more efficiently and quickly.

Now, If you had an option to choose from 2 people - one with a very hardworking attitude but little intelligence and one with a good intelligence but a very lazy attitude and no hardworking desire then what would you choose?

The Good Women of China - Book Review

Book - The good women of China. Hidden Voices
Author - Xinran
Publisher - Vintage

Women are a topic, which has fascinated many from the earliest of times. I picked up this book in Bangalore not because of any similar fascination but since I have been living in china for almost 6 months now so I thought it was a good chance to know more about anything Chinese as it always helps in conversing with people in a foreign country about their things.

The author was a journalist cum radio show presenter presenting a show on women called "words on the night breeze". In her search to understand women better she interviews many women across china. The book contains narration from those interviews and thus comprises of real life stories of Chinese women. It is well written but contains only sad stories about women at different levels of society, in different regions of the country and of different ages. Still most of the stories come from the time of Chinese military revolution.

It would be easier to relate to the book if one has been in touch with China for some time. Through the book I realized my observations about Chinese women were not very incorrect since the book articulated on the same lines as well.

1. Women in China are considered as a mere object of pleasure. Though the same is attributed to women around the world but what makes it interesting in China is the acceptance of this fact by women and thus further encouraging this for personal gains.
2. Though in general it seems women are at par with men in China because they can be found in all professions that men are a part of but this remains true only as long as the jobs are the labour level jobs.

I think stories like this about women might exist in all parts of world. But, the author is trying to correct the illusion anybody might have of women in China having a better life than that of women in other places.

Thai Airways vs. Singapore Airlines

While traveling from Bangalore to Beijing this time I got Thai airways tickets instead of Singapore airlines from the travel department of my company. Though I love Singapore (I have been on the airport only, bt I still love it), I still thought its good I get to try another airlines and their services. Well here is a small summary from my side comparing the two.

Thai does not starts serving a hot towel to clean hands and face. If you are starting from Bangalore it is a must because of the dust and pollution that you have to fight on the way to the airport.

Now if the flight is 4 or more hours and you are traveling international you expect your personalized TV because it can be boring to travel that long without anything to do and one big LCD some 15 feet away makes no sense.

The Flight was delayed by 1 hour. Well I doubt it was those air traffic jam reason because the Singapore airlines plane standing on my right side scheduled to depart 1 hour after us departed before we even moved. Though it might not be a regular affair but it was in this case.

There is no menu for the meals giving information about what one can choose to eat and know beforehand what all is available onboard. There is no glass holder on the front seat tray.

I did not find the food good enough either (though this could vary from individual to individual).

The airhostess/airhost are a little slow to react to your needs.
The magazine really does not contain good content to go through(and this despite there being no TV to watch your desired movie)

For the connecting passengers Thai airways does not boarding pass for the second flight from the original city as is the case with SQ (Sing air). So one has to stand in the queue again to get the next boarding pass. There were only 8-10 counters for issuing boarding passes. This is a small number for the number of passengers who were transiting even at 4AM. Unfortunately the queue in which I stood was so slow (of course all of them were so long as well that I did not dare to quit my line and join another after I realized mine was much slower than the other). I had to stand for 1 hour 20 minutes in the queue to collect my boarding pass (one can call it as a time pass). This is quite ridiculous that the next boarding pass is not issued despite flying by the same airlines. On top of this the Bangkok airport is not full of shops or any entertainment facilities(like Singapore airport).

Now having cribbed enough about the poor chaps some of the good things that I came across were the better legroom on Thai (both flights, Bangalore - Bangkok and Bangkok - Beijing). One of the onboard music channels offered Hindi music. And the seats were more stretchable.

So if you have a choice between these two on your travel route then my suggestion would be Singapore Airlines. Especially if you have a connecting flight and your break is for more than 4 hours.

There is a possibility that because I have not been disappointed by Singapore airlines' service even once of the 8 times I have boarded it, my expectations have increased.

But then obviously Thai Airways is cheaper than Singapore Airlines.

Back to Square 1

The definition of back is kind of loosing its meaning for me as over the last few days I have been saying "I am back" but every time this sentence of mine comes from a different place.

25th April when I reached Jammu after traveling 36 hours nonstop from Huhhot(China)->Beijing->Singapore->Bangalore->Delhi->Jammu and I met my relatives and all of them asked, so when did u come back. I Just said "today". Then I resumed office in Bangalore on 02-May-2007 and all the people in the office asked hey! so when did u return? I said "yesterday night". Now after being back here in China for the last 2 days I still say "I am back". Upon landing on the huhhot airport I said to the Taxi driver "Jiare jodiyan" = Holiday Inn, he said yes. Then I said "do she chian" = how much, and he said "oosher" = 50 and I said "bu" = no. I said "se sher" = 40 and he said "hao de" = ok. I guess I am getting absorbed here.

The burger life has re-started and here and "back" to square 1.

What else?

2 weeks back while I was travelling from China to India and I met another Indian on Singapore airport(I had a flight from beijing to bangalore via Singapore).

I will call him X.

X was travelling from US to India. He was with his family and was visting India after 3 years having settled in the US. It made me feel better as I was travelling after mere 5 months.

While we were talking about everything else about my work and his work, he asked me a question. "So what else do you do other than the usual work for your employer?" . I said - I read books. Based on my area of interest he did ask me some of the authors if I have read them and I had not read most of them, which did prove that I was not one of those avid readers who just read and read.

Then he again asked "so what else do you do?" Well I really did not have a good answer, infact I did not have any answer. Since that day I have been thinking what do I really do with most of my time? I think this is a question that all of us should really be thinking once in a quarter and try to retrospect and look back upon the last 3 months and find out if there was something new or great or interesting they did. If they did not, then why? were they so busy? or they really did not want to do anything because they are happy to assume that they have learnt all that they need to know and done all that they could.

I have been thinking the same for quite some time now and havent arrived upon any concrete conclusion of starting on that something new which I could feel great 3 months from now. While I continue to think may be you could try thinking too for yourself.

Decision-making

Decision-making is something I have always suffered with. But despite that I plan to put up some of my thoughts on decision-making that have been popping up in my head for months.

I personally believe one of the important things for anybody to remain happy in life is to make decisions the way he/she thinks. There is a lot that can go into making of a decision.

A few factors that would result in a good or bad decision could be:

1. Strong will of decision maker.
2. Good understanding of the current situation.
3. Proper view of the future and visualization of the outcome/consequences.
4. Being ready to face opposition.
5. Knowing the art of saying no (saying yes is the easiest thing).
6. Uncompromising.
7. Complete information in hand.
8. Willingness to sacrifice one thing for the other (to have everything is being lucky).
9. Being ruthless at times.
10. Being prepared for failure.

Some of the above mentioned factors might have been very specific based on a few past incidents that have been going on around me. But, I still think a lot of these factors are generic.

Decisions can make or break the course of action that might follow ahead. So it is better to take tough and hard decisions even if it results into misery/grief for some time instead of making a soft decision for the meanwhile and then suffering in the longer run.

Orkut turns more Indian

I am not saying, "Orkut turns Indian" because there are lot of Indians using orkut. But, it is interesting to see that till yesterday on the home page of orkut there was not even a single picture of an Indian among the 8 pictures of some smiling people.



Today I check the same page and see that 4 of those 10 smiling people are Indians.



This number is quite high as compared to the actual number of Indian on Orkut, which is around 14% of the total Orkut users as on 28 Feb 2007(Orkut on wikipedia).

This is interesting to see that orkut is turning so much of attention to India leaving China. Reason I would attribute to this the fact that it is not just that Google (orkut belongs to google) believes lot more Indians are interested in orkut social networking than Chinese are but it is more because orkut is facing much less competition with other networking sites in India. In India new friends/social networking portals popped up only after a huge success of Orkut where as such things started simultaneously in China, which has made the penetration of google (orkut, youtube, blogspot) a much difficult task than it has in India. Services like these started by Chinese service providers have existed in India for quite sometime before they caught fire in India.

I think there are two important aspects to this:
1. Indians are more visible in global activities these days.
2. But, we need to have more indigenous products (I am not being chauvinistic).

More on that some other time.

I am getting Married

Yes, finally i am getting married. Though i have always been one of the not so interested in marriage guys but then there are times when such things happen in life we are changed forever.

I am on such a juncture of my life now. 4 months back i arrived in China in the midst all kinds of pressure at work. But then i met somebody who took away all the pressure. Who made me feel as if i was at home. I met someone who changed me..

After 4 months of a happy relationship i have decided that it is time we must strengthen this relationship. Thus we have decided to get married. Though i would be doing it here in china unlike an Indian marriage but i intend to get re-married once i go back to India with all the rituals of a hindu marriage.
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Ok now enough is enough.

Today is 1st April (April fool's Day). So i just thought of putting up a false surprise here.

Ha Ha Ha!!!:-)

Surprisingly Wikipedia says April fool's is more than 400 years old!!

Good for Indian sports

It’s been a old matter that India exit from the cricket WC in round-I and people seem to have forgotten this as well. Though i am not happy to see my own country and its players loosing so badly. Not because it lost but because it lost without even giving any fight to the teams it lost to.

But, i think it is a good opportunity for the other Indian sports. I personally believe a sport in today’s world is driven by business. With Indian cricket team's all time low rankings and worst performances, Indian sports is lacking national idols and now is the time for any of the new individuals to show some great performance. Business will grab them for their brand endorsements and that would give a good push to the respective sport.

I think its important for business to look outside cricket. Only cricket and bollywood being the options available with ad makers the options are too less and thus the brand value of even not so popular and new celebrities is quite high.

Now is the time when these new sportspersons could click and get their share of fame and glory, which has been overshadowed for long by cricket.

So may be Indian cricket might recover from the slump soon for some reason but here is a chance for Indian sports to redefine itself from sports=cricket to sports=sports.

Generations

Families grow like a tree and spread their span. People move and reach places like branches. But, roots matter. Here is one picture that triggered me to think so.



That’s nani (maternal grandmother), didi (her grand daughter) and her daughter Riti.
So we can see 4 generations. Nani is living in Jammu; didi in US and Riti is POI (People of Indian Origin).

What I am thinking is, do the roots feel sad for branches being too far from it and it misses them or it feels proud that the branches have reached so far.

Thanks to didi for letting me put up this photo here.

Shame or Blame

So India lost to Bangladesh. Shame! Shame! Well they outplayed us, so some cheers!! for the bangladesh team too. Credit has to be given to them for bowling out Indian line-up for 191. Yes, the same Indian batting line-up where 3 players individually have more score than whole Bangladesh team.

But, is this not how everything runs in this world - cyclical change. India is a developing economy. But when we see business from these developing countries growing and becoming bigger than some of the developed countries we say its our time now. So if somebody wins someone has to loose.

I think this is good for the world cricket that there are new teams showing good performance. Atleast the world cup will be a little more unpredictable instead just 8 teams being expected to be in the 2nd round(every world cup for the last 4 times).

Ofcourse i dont mean to say, for the development of world cricket I am happy to see India loosing. It is unfortunate to see India loose to a new team. But then if Infosys tipping IBM and Accenture in a mutimillion contract is fair enough then I think Bangladesh tipping India is fair enough too.

But then Accenture and IBM would not sit down and relax. So it is important to notice what do Indian players do after this match.

I think atleast after this world cup, those players who claim cricket is their first love and rest all second(like Sachin etc.) should atleast show it for the sake of it by saying no to all new advertisements for the next 6 months, focus only the game and see what has changed in world cricket since last time they focussed on the game(i guess it might have been a long time for most of them since they have been working very hard for ad shoots).

This result would also have raised Bermuda's hopes. They might be thinking can we do it too. God bless them!

By the way after being chucked out of the workd cup is Pakistan going back home. I think they must loose to Zimbabwe too. Not because i love to watch Pakistan loosing. But, because pak cricket team would anyways receive maltreatement on their return. If they loose to Zimbabwe then they can go to Zimbabwe and there they might receive a welcome treatment. So atleast they will have some place to hide.

Me on TV

So that is me on a local chinese TV after the recovery of that Laptop.

Thanks to Vikram for being intelligent and quick enough to record it on his camera.
It would have never struck me!!

and i found it...

Sometimes luck is smiling at us. But, we realise it only after we see the results. As long as we dont get to see the results we only curse it!!

The bag i had lost at 8:30PM yesterday is with me again now at 11:00AM. It is intact and i think was not even opened(the laptop was right there in its place).

The bag was found due to an honest Taxi driver and 2 good policemen and with the help of co-ordinating hotel staff(ofcourse the reception girls are always very co-ordinating), they kept helping me in translating chinese to english and english to chinese during my conversation with police.

I can't say it was me who was lucky(i lost the bag) or if David was lucky(it was David's bag and laptop).

But, I think i cannot test my luck anymore because i might be running out of my quota of luck .I lost my passport on a transit airport and found it at the enquiry desk in less than 30 minutes(8 months back). Now i lost my laptop(yeah after loosing it, it was mine) and found it again in less than 24 hours. So much of luck within 8 months. If luck had some annual allocation then i have alredy gone above the threshhold.

Happy Ending:

To claim about their success, the policemen had invited the local TV guys to cover the incident. A chinese babe (atleast I think she was quite good) was all set alongwith the cameraman to ask questions to the Police, driver and ofcourse me the victim, which means i would be on local TV in the evening for 5 minutes(i had not even known that this channel exists forget having viewed it before).

I doubt Indian police would be able to manage that. I had a strong belief and it had been strengthened about the fact that "people outside India are more friendly to foreigners than Indians are to foreigners in India"(people = common man on the road who just see a foreginer and might not have to deal with him/her under a normal circumstance).

Now i can sleep easy!!

I just lost it

This evening i took a cab from office back to my hotel. Upon naming the hotel in chinese the taxi driver understood it soon. And as usual after that i only kept saying dui dui dui(dui means yes in chinese) to everything the driver said to me in chinese. But, he was a nice man aged around 50. He laughed with us(me and vikram).

I reached back hotel and after reaching the lobby I recollected I had 2 bags when i took seat in the taxi(1 mine and 1 David's) but now had only 1. I forgot to collect David's bag from Taxi.
The man on the gate realized immediately from my reaction that i have forgotten something big and he is one of the fewest who can speak to me in english easily. Fortunately he checked the surveillance cameras at the hotel entrance and got the taxi number. He reported the issue to Police immediately. And surprisingly police arrived in another 20 minutes. After asking me details about the bag, taxi, driver etc. They informed me that they have aired the information on radio all the taxi drivers have. They have also informed me that they will get the driver's name and contact information from the database based on the taxi number. They have left assuring me to relax and wait for tomorrow morning.

It was good to see police arriving quickly, being nice in behaviour and understanding. But, i still havent found the bag. The bag contains David's Laptop!!!!!

For some reason i still think i might get the bag back (i dont know why i think so). But i can only pray and try to chase around for that tomorrow as well. Lets hope and continue to pray that i will find it and be able to sleep properly tomorrow.

:-(

My Dream

These days my dream is to somehow manage getting up early in the morning. I wish i could get up at 6AM but 7 AM will also be fine. But, i do not want to continue getting up like this every morning - 9 AM on weekdays and 11 on weekends.
This is pathetic, annoying and outrageous!!!!

Any solutions for forcing oneself to get up at a good and respectable time would be appreciated!!

I am catching up!!!

Yes, i am cacthing up with cricket WC.
I still remember the time when i had a dream to be a batsman in Indian cricket team. Now, my wish(not dream ofcourse) is to somehow be able to watch atleast some matches in this World cup. Though some of my friend have told me some links where i can watch live matches, i doubt i would do that(i hope i do that).

Today at last i tried finding some latest information for this world cup and relaized there were some new teams like Bermuda also included this time.

I think bermuda might have been included because cricket is played in pants and players might have complained to ICC that other sportsmen tease them and make their fun for playing in pants and not in bermudas(shorts upto knees, the ones used in Tennis).

So ICC might have decided including bermuda in WC(no disrespect to bermuda cricketers), thus now players feel better in boasting the fact that they also play with Bermuda(not in bermuda but, with bermuda).

Anyways i hope to get some more info over the next few days so that i can feel like an Indian(anybody from India not knowing about cricket should not be called a native Indian, only a residential Indian). I need to prove now that i am a native/by birth/by soul/by body Indian.

Till then, lets hope Indian players too feel like that!! Best of luck to them. They need a lot of luck in the form of important players of other teams getting injured, rains gods smiling at them or may be even umpires watching a bird while the player is LBW(in other words full body before the wicket).

Best of Luck to men in Blue(is the uniform still blue, i read it is under change)?

Shangahi trip

Chinese New year is celebrated on 17-18 feb, and here it is a week long break. So we(I and Vikram, he is the only fellow Indian i have with me in this city) dicided, to go out for some trip and planed for Beijing-Shangahi trip.

Day-1 : 17-Feb

We checked out of the hotel at 7:00 AM, to catch the flight. Flight was at at 8:40. We reached beijing at 09:40. But we were a bit confused whether we must take a 2 day break at beijing and then go to shanghai or we go to shanghai straight away.
I wanted to go to shanghai and be in Beijing while going back. Vky was thinking the other way. Anyways, because Vky's friend (Sachin) was there in Shanghai so we concluded to go their first.Checking tickets to shanghai, much like a bus ticket(jao aur ticket le lo) we loosers just asked one counter and bought it, didnt even check at different counters for available prices. Boareding the flight for shanghai, I found air hostess to be really(trust me) beautiful, best till date i have seen. We named the best among them as "cute kitten". On reaching Shanghai at 2:40 PM.
Sachin told us the way home - where to board metro, station to get down etc. And there he was to pickup us from the metro station.
At Sachin's house, i had something Indian to eat after 2.5 months(it was like a heavenly feeling)
We kicked off freaking out by visiting people's square. It was quite desserted and lull than it should have been. May be due to spring festival people were at home(this being the last day of chinese calender). Pudong(this river flows through the city) is close by
and after spending some time next to the river we went to the top to get some good view of the place. "M on the Bund" was a open terrace bar, where we spent time waiting for Bipin(Sachin's Friend). He joined us at around 9. By that time we had been doing some picturing
Bipin being the connoisseur of places to visit after sunset to late night suggested for a sports pub, "Melone Americal cafe". Playing darts there we ate some fries and stuff and walked out looking for New year celebrations. The celebrations were gala, with people playing crackers as if it was the last day they can ever play crackers.

Choked of the cracker smoke for more than 1 hour we entered Blue frog, a nice descent place. Watching a white man talking to the mascot of the pub we realized may be its too late and its time to go back.

Day 2 : 18-Feb

We decided to shop some and check out some more places. Bipin suggested going to the science meuseum.
At the science meuseum on checking movie timings we found "Straigh Up helicopters in the action" in "dome theater" would be starting in another 10 minutes. The ticket girl said "i must inform you, the movie is in chinese", so nice of her. But what a dome it was. I have never enjoyed watching a chinese movie so much!! It was worth being part of the science meuseum and not just any cinema hall.

Underneath the meuseum is one of the biggest markets for fake stuff and Vikram utilized it optimally by buying 12 CK Undys. But, the electronic market next to it was closed for new year celebrations. At "Nizang", a nepali restaurant serving Indian food i got what i have been waiting for - Naan, paneer, daal(mmmmm), papad!!Life mein aur kya chahiye?
While looking for the next destination, Bipin recalled they have not taken us to Xintiandi.
With a European built up this place was full of restaurants with german french and italian names. Sachin being a Paulaneer(german beer) fan, we enjoyed Paulaneer in "Paulaneer" and cracked some jokes for about an hour and then started looking for next destination. Based on Bipin's expertise we took the cab for "The House of Blues and Jazz".
If you are a Jazz fan you cannot afford to miss this place. If you are not a Jazz fan, then you must visit this place to find out what Jazz can be(I fall in this category). For three hours the sexophone, the guitar, the drums and the trumpet they played were simply awesome. We did not wanted to leave untill they stop. Sachin is a great Jazz fan and a professional photographer, so it was a wonderful combination for him to get some great pictures. Lots of pictures of House of Blues and Jazz and a better view of Shangahi at Sachin's Photonet. Bipin wanted to play pool and we both went out for searching some place where we could play pool. I did not inform him of my level of expertise and after my first hit he realised the blunder that was now done. He was more than kind to let me place the white ball as per my wish to somehow make the game go on(but no use). Thank god, vky and Sachin joined us in a shortwhile and Bipin got better players to play with(I was saved of hitting the ball only on the table edges and not to other balls).

Day 3 : 19-Feb

Since we were not able to do electronic shopping previous day so Sachin said may be we can try Xujiahui electronic market.
While going to Xujiahui market we passed through people's square and Sachin took us to a pearl market assuming we might buy some. On enquiring the prices we did not buy some but, we bought many. Vikram - 10. Me - 24.Prices in electronic mall were impressive which resulted into reckless shopping in the form of an external hard disk, MP3 payer, USB stick, Sony Cybershot T10 and Mobile Phone. Sachin pushed us out of the market stating reasons like mercy on the shopkeepers, ATM machines running out ot money and police raid for smuggling. Our hunger for Indian food was still not satisfied with yesterday's dinner and that led us to this very nice place "Vedas"Bipin had joined us at Veda's for dinner and now we were waiting for him to come up with the plan for rest.The plan was unfolded in this club "Zapata" where we enter and see 6 whites dancing on the bar counter. Despite reluctance to go beyond the entry gate we decided to hang on for some time and checkout. But, what we considered as hanging for a few minutes became few hours. On the first floor, there were more blondes than i have ever seen at the same place and same time(live). We even met a philipino who asked us "so you guys are also hopping from one place to the other every night, i saw you last night at House of Blues and Jazz". After talking to this guy i found phillipines has similarities to India too. But it was time to leave(2 AM) and Bipin was missing. On calling him we came to know he was at another nearby bar "Cancan" and there we find him with this fat guy from Texas. Before leaving we did not miss out table football and pool at Cancan. Ofcourse even after leaving Bipin was worried about the young girl at cancan because of the bloody American. Finally we hit the sack at 4AM.

Day 4 : 20-Feb

3 days passed by so quickly that we just hung on for one more day and since my apetite for shopping had only grown afetr previous day's shopping, i looted the Xujiahui Market again. After buying one MP3 player Vikram looked happy. In comes my turn and i say 10 MP3 players. The sweet girl only smiled, laughed and brought in more and more boxes. While Sachin was still helping me arrange the mp3 players stuff, I asked the girl for 10 USB sticks. Girl's reaction - smiles and laugh. Sachin's reaction - if he had his way probably he would closed me in some loo and leave me there for a few hours untill i promised not to buy anything more.Since we(I and Vikram) did not wanted to miss out any opportunity of Indian food, and despite Sachin and Bipin's reluctance we went to "Shanghai punjabi Indian Cuisine"
But since it was the last day we planned to make it a little quite and went to "Wa bar", a place where beer in menu was sorted based on its country and even KingFisher was available here
Playing dice game there and looser's turn to drink i kept on drinking, till three of them felt mercy on me and called off for the day. Thank god i was not playing for clothes. We closed the day early evening at 10:30 PM, assuming we would be leaving the next day.

Day 5 : 21-Feb

Sachin just said once "why do you guys have to go today, stay for one more day", and we unpacked our bags like immediately. Now assuming this would be the last day we went to a park and just roamed around the place doing lot of picturing.


Bipin joined us at the meuseum where I did some kiteflying after a few years. But Bipin and Sachin were more than bored of Indian food now and they took us too a pure vegetarian Chinese restaurant(A Unique combination of chinese and vegetarian). It was worth the praise that they both had for it. But, now began hunt for post dinner landing area and we zeroed into "JZ Club". So close we were sitting to the band that i could just jump onto the small podium where the band was directly from my seat. Exiting with just one drink we obviously could not go back so early already having done so last night. Bipin suggested trying "ARK" at Xintiandi. We were told by both of them that they have been told, it is THE place in shanghai. But, Sachin went in and came back telling - it is not "THE" place. So we decided to be at the tried, tested and best place - "The House of Blues and Jazz". It continued to be the best place we had vistied in Shanghai.

Day 6 : 22-Feb

We finally left. For our own welfare and for their welfare.

Statistically:
Number of pubs/bats visted in 5 days - 11
My total consumption of drinks - 10 litres
Home made food - All 5 days(god bless Sachin)
Shopping - ???????
New names i got - Baby(i was the youngest among them), Maggu(thats baby in kannada), smuggler(for looting xujiahui)

But finally baby's day out is over.

For more on the same if you have lots of free time and are interested in reading useless stuff on the net(which you do, if you have reached this point of this post of mine) then you can read much better stuff about this shanghai trip at Sachin's Spring Festival Posts

PS: I am posting too late since i forgot my adapter at Sachin's place. Thanks to Sachin for quickly sending it via post. The welfaare did not happen for us even after leaving.