Friday, June 22, 2007

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.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

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.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

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

Saturday, June 02, 2007

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?