me

Conversations with strangers

2011-04-09T12:11:00.006+05:30

When we were all kids, we were taught to not speak to strangers because they could be dangerous(they could have kidnapped us). We all took it so much by heart that most of us don't do it for the rest of our lives.

I somehow find it a tad interesting talking to strangers for no specific reasons. Strangers can sometimes talk about things we otherwise do not think about or sometimes just a random conversation which can leave a good taste in your mouth or may just leave you thinking.

Today morning I stopped at a traffic signal. Next to me stops an auto rickshaw.

Autowala: Where is the number JK from?
me: Jammu and Kashmir
AW: Hmmm(with a broad smile, kind of astonished and a cloud popping over his head, where is J&K on the Indian map etc.)..pause
AW: what model is this car?
me: 88 model
AW: hmmm(even more astonished. Another cloud above his head - thinking what was his age when it was 1988), very good car..always keep it..
me: thanks..

He and I both left smiling.

Not all strange conversations can be short and sweet. But, I guess to have a few we need to try more often.

7032

2011-04-05T16:06:00.003+05:30

When was the last time you set a goal for yourself, chased it hard and had the pleasure of achieving it. It was great to Sachin Tendulkar in that state on Saturday night - it took him 22 years to achieve his life's goal of winning CWC.

I have been trying to setup a goal for my self for the last few quarters and at the end of every quarter it remains untouched, not started.

This time I thought to pen it down here to see if I can come back 3 months later and hopefully see the goal achieved.

Code named 7032. This would be a big and tough goal to achieve in 3 months. However, the tougher the goal is the more is the joy of achieving it.

So let's see..

Customer service

2011-03-16T12:11:00.002+05:30

Last week while flying Delhi-Jammu, I bought a toy for my niece on the airport and gave it to her. However, policeman stopped my brother on the boarding gate as the toy did not have a tag. I had already thrown the bill by then. Helpless i just took over the toy back to put in my bag as I was flying next flight.

One of the Indigo ground staff on the boarding gate noticing this, assured us to carry on to the shuttle bus and mentioned it will take him just one minute. Thereafter he took the toy, ran back to the scanning machine, got a tag, got it scanned, got it stamped and got the toy back for the baby before the bus left from the boarding gate. Now that's a lot of effort for good customer care and is worthy of appreciation.

Who says, there is not much budget airlines can do to differentiate!

Airtel

2011-02-26T09:34:00.005+05:30

There were a couple of different names I was thinking for this post but either they would have been too long or only touching upon one of the aspects of change in airtel. So I stuck to what is this post all about.

A few months ago, when airtel changed it's logo I made a very foolish argument. My argument was - the logo lacks any creativity. It is almost like an inverse image of the Vodafone logo and this when Vodafone is airtel's biggest competitor at it's home ground - India.

This according to me was a loss of vision and differentiation and reduced focus due to it's immediate and major focus on Africa and widening the foot print.

Honestly, I knew my arguments were good fun for a water cooler discussion and did not make any real business sense to begin with.

With so many veterans and top managers at work from airtel and agencies this wasn't a school project. It was part of a Rs 300 crore marketing campaign airtel was to take on for its expansion to Africa and 3G roll out.

However, looks like the worsened logo and theme tune were signs of what was to come from airtel in future. How airtel has changed in last few months in it's network, service and marketing quality now makes me think - may be I said something right while I was giving gyan.

In the last few days some things that happened which make airtel look weaker than ever before.

- While sitting in my Bangalore office I got an SMS 'welcome to Airtel Chennai, enjoy great roaming rates'
- On requesting the Re. 1, one-time missed call alert, I got the first SMS for thanking me that we have received request and charged you, I never got the SMS with actual missed call details.
- I have had more call drops than ever before in the last so many years.
- I get 'number is invalid' response for calling numbers that I call every day and a few attempts later it starts working. It's the first time it's happening despite using airtel for over 5 years now.
- My friend requested for number porting to airtel. While the first request was rejected by VF due to billing problems, the second request did not even fetch a response from airtel.
- But since he did submit his documents in the first request, even though he does not have an active connection with airtel yet, last night he received an original hard copy of a zero rupee bill. Yes, it has his name printed and has bill amount 0 - while he is still happy and active on Voda.

Many of the above are not bad customer care or kind of bad reviews you will find on mouthshut.com, they are plain vanilla mistakes on customer focus and ensuring quality.

Not to forget their campaigns on number portability, 3G, DTH, VAS service have become more lackluster than ever before.

Being one of the ardent loyalists of airtel for ages it feels sad to see it loosing its qualities that led it to reach the heights it stands today.

No wonder as data shows, it is no longer leading the race and is managing to be at the end.

Would be interesting to see if it can do some magic again to be back in the race and lead the pack.

Till then 'Express Yourself'

Aptitude vs Attitude

2010-12-28T01:08:00.003+05:30

A couple of years ago I had written this. It was about hard work vs intelligence. I am still unable to answer this question convincingly enough to myself.

Rephrasing the question this time, what is easier to change - Aptitude or Attitude?

At that time, my thought was driven from peer comparison, from people who were working with me in similar profiles and observing them in two shades - hard working but not so smart and vice versa.

I still face the same question for people in my team. There are those who are smart and intelligent but lack that element of ownership and then there are those who are the most dedicated ones but short on smartness, a factor that could make a big difference to their results. Of course there are those who are somewhere in between too.

I think while hard work and dedication is a lot about attitude; smart, clever and intelligence are qualities driven out of aptitude. Challenge seems to be, which one is easy to imbibe, mentor and infuse into others. The intelligent ones are often not the keener ones, because they are the so called clever ones. On the other hand those who are working hard and trying their best, you can only guide them to act smarter, but picking up the smart things requires you to be smart in the first place.

Thus the basic question remains, what is easier to change in someone - attitude or aptitude? How do we go about doing it?

Profit sharing

2010-12-22T14:56:00.003+05:30

Why don't organizations do profit sharing with employees like they do with share holders in the form of dividends. Aren't employees share holders too of a different form?

May be organizations should take out some portion of profit to be doled out as dividend to employees. Each one would get in proportion of their salaries. Of course this would be apart from the Variable pays and bonus etc. Since that also depends on the roles of each person.

Quarterly, half yearly or yearly could be debated though. This could make people look at the organization as a whole and not just team, unit, function etc.

Yeah, top management could ask - when company makes losses? Well they do cut jobs and reduce salaries or don't give any hikes in such times. So why not, do it the same with profits too.

Imagine, 3% of profits of next quarter distributed among employees. May not be a big sum but still not bad.

Open feedback

2010-12-18T20:25:00.004+05:30

Do you think there are some good people in your organization and some so unwanted people. On top of that the unwanted are more prevalent than those better ones. How do you share your feedback for these people on a platform for their supervisor, his/her supervisor and HR to see it all. Obviously, you can't put that up on the intranet notice board.

How about, an open feedback system. Just log-in and search for the fellow colleague and share your feedback. Could be on a certain scale or just plain subjective description. Like may be an over all rating or detailed rating on certain traits expected from their jobs. Well, it could increase the scope of performance review, although it could have it's challenges too.

There could be of course some checks added, to ensure a more sane system, unlike a Face book group where every one bashes every one else.

- You may not be allowed to provide feedback for people 2 levels above you. I guess somehow we always see very little of those people and assume too much in framing our understanding. Hence, barred from putting those assumed understandings on
paper.
- You must have worked with your fellow colleague for minimum X number of days or have had certain valuable amount of interaction to be able to provide the feedback.
- Feedback will be viewable only to supervisor, reviewer and HR.
- It could also be kept anonymous to all except HR. So that it can be revealed only in critical cases.
- This could have certain weight in the over all appraisal scores of an individual.
- And of course a complex algorithm to convert the feedback into scores by identifying keywords from feedback provided with predefined scores for such key words.

Though it may sound so much like a cliche process again, but imagine kicking the butts of those unwanted people, on the system and actually letting the feedback translate into some action(may be).

Till then may be only cribbing helps.

Experimenting Smartphones

2010-11-14T15:18:00.003+05:30

Smartphones are all over the place - nothing new. They have been so for years now. You may have one too or may be planning to buy one. But, did you use it for a few days before buying it?

Before you buy an iPhone or HTC Android or a Blackberry for that matter, don't you want to use it for a few days before you finally swipe your card for that big, fat sum of more than 25K. It could just make you so much more confident about your decision to buy that very smart phone which you plan to flaunt in front of your friends, family and coleagues. You may have seen your friend's phone or even used for a few hours but that would have only given you a few hours of feel and may be tried a few popular features that you have read and heard. But, what about feeling the size fitting in your pocket, experiencing the battery life, varying touch senstivity of different phones, using the app stores and much more.

So what if I offer you the phone for a few days before you buy for a small rental fee? Would you pay?

Let's assume you come over, ask me for an iPhone, I swipe your credit card and block the card for the iPhone price and give you the phone for a week. You keep it, use it and make a decision. If you do not like it and return it, I will charge you Rs. 500(hyppthetical amount). if you like it and buy, I will not charge you anything? If you do not return, anyways the credit card will be charged as soon as 7 days are completed.

Now, if you do not like it and return it and want to try HTC HD2, then I keep that Rs 500 and take the iPhone back and give you HTC and we repeat the remaining cycle. If you are too thorough in your decision making, you could even repeat this over and over again for a few more weeks.

You would end up using these phones for a few days each for Rs. 500 and be much more sure few weeks down the line, which one you want to buy. Now purchase it and see the difference it makes to your blood pressure during those few seconds when you see your card's magnetic tape passing through the iron machine charging you hundreds of rupees every few milliseconds.

Why don't you take a 3 question survey here Purchasing SmartPhones
and share your thoughts.

Freeze

2010-09-24T20:36:00.006+05:30

You would have seen those thriller movies, where suddenly everyone around you freezes. What if you are in the middle?

A few days ago, while I was with my coleague on one of he Metro stations here, he pointed and I noticed - everyone slowing down.

While we were still walking noticing carefully what is happening, a few seconds later everyone froze. By now I already had goose bumps, thinking about all those horror movies where some evil happens after every one freezes.

In seconds, every one was frozen where ever they were. On stairs, near ATMs, tickets counters, on the entrance, police men, ticket vendors, public - all.

We both decided to slow down and stop as well, because we did not want us to be noticed by those evil forces which might be looking for human with moving flesh and blood. Our Eyes still ticking left and right trying to see where are those ghosts who have cursed this evil to all these people except us.

We heard some music over us - too low to be heard clearly. With our antennas now trying their best to catch this sound and figure out what it is, I thought may be pide piper was calling.

A few seconds more while we were still trying to decode this background music. Life resumed like ever before.

It was 6 pm in the evening and giving it a little more thought, we realized it was the national anthem.

Horror apart, I think it is a good idea to run national anthem at 6 in the evening at all public places - railways stations, airports, bus stops and all else. At least everyone comes together for those 20-30 seconds and pauses. Every one does get nation on their mind, which we all seem to ignore otherwise. Could be one step to bring the nation closer and together.

Some times it happens

2010-09-18T21:05:00.010+05:30

Wedneday evening 7 pm I left for KL Airport like I have left before for the 8:55 pm flight. I know it's a bit a late, but sometimes it happens. I was hoping to be lucky like I have been a few times before. This was not to be one of those times. Reached airport at 9:15 having struggled and juggled through the traffic. Even though I did not want to go to the check-in counter, I still checked once to make sure I am not lucky - I was not.

Went down to the ticket counter to get the next morning ticket. I got 1547 token number, 1536 was running. I felt comfortable, after all it was just 10 people. Comfort was short lived. 30 mins gone and it was still 1540. At last at 11 pm, I get a shot at the counter. Well only a shot, the not so polite lady on the counter tells me - debit cards not accepted. Yes, the same debit card using which I bought my previous ticket on-line. But, no means no. Credit card already running over limit, I had no choice but to withdraw cash. My hard earned turn to get my ticket disappears. I go out looking for cash. No, not begging, i mean withdraw cash from ATM. With my prepaid travel card running on 0 balance I used my personal debit card to withdraw cash. Even though first ATM did not work, second did. I finally get a ticket for myself. By this time there was a brit guy hung with me, who was passing by KL for first time and is willing to just follow my plans for the night to stay in any near by hotel due to lack of any other information. As if I was a local.

With my limited knowledge I head to Tune hotels opposite to airport. These are similar to AirAsia - low cost. So I thought it would be good to experience these. But, I was late here too. No rooms! The girl on the counter, politer than the ticket girl, shows me a room next to the counter, where I could try my luck. In my search for a good night sleep, I take a shot at that option as well. To find that the hotel is about 25 minutes away by Taxi. The brit chickened out in fear of going away from the Airport. I braved my heart. This girl asked me for 100 Malaysian Ringitts for a back and forth Taxi drive between airport and hotel. But, did not accept any card either. Being 12:15 by now I agree. I step out of the room and use the ATM machine in front of me. But, by now this ATM machine had joined hands with other forces up aginst me. It declined both my debit cards. Searching my bag I pull out my last 100USD and ask the lady for an exchange. She directed me to the coffee shop. With my last 400 odd Ringitts and hotel rent to be paid, I chicken out too and walk back to airport.

To make some calls to update people about my missed flight and late arrival next day, I recalled those boxes hanging on the walls called payphones. I did not have a choice having lost my personal SIM and not having a local number. Bought a prepaid card to make the call. The instruction said, 'insert with the chip facing down' and I followed. But, the stupid box did not follow. After struggling to make calls for next 20 mins, i call for expert help from the shopkeeper who sold me the pre-paid card. He came in and turned the card over and dialled. It started rininging. You see prior experience helps over theoretical knowledge. It was a caller tune playing. First time I liked caller tunes, because they were like a hope to me that something is working. Only for 10 seconds! Caller tone stoped and no voice from other side. I call a few more times for that 10 second happiness. But then practice and patience both paid after 30 minutes of mission pay fone. At last at 1 in the night I finally connect for whole lot of 3 minutes and run out of balance - after all the ledendry 'pay phone' was not cheap enough. I give up and go looking for space for the rest of the night.

McDonalds - my supporter at all times, supported me for the whole night as well. After my laptop ran out of battery I changed my seat to find one near the socket. A few more like me were hanging around the powerful place. Opposite to me, a Korean girl, diagonally on adjacent table, a Malaysian dude and opposite to him and next to my table, an Indonesian girl.

While I continued working through my night, killing my time with some weekly reports, updates and boring document reviews, the girl next to my table was not able to figure how to power her laptop with non-matching pins of her powerplug. I helped her with a spare converter I had. A few hours later I see the Malaysian dude even adding that the girl in facebook, not that the girl was a babe for me to feel jealous of him. As a friendly gesture he asked me too if I was present on facebook. I could only answer politely "yes, but I do not use often". As a token of thanks for sharing that conveter, this girl gave me and that Malaysian guy a Belgian chocolate each. That too not the small ones, big ones like those Bourneville's we find in India and asked where I was from. 'India' I said. She said "oh you know 3 Idiots, very very good. I think very intelligent". I answer, yes I know with a smile as if I directed and produced. Then she said "and Slumdog millionaire". I say yes again, hoping she is not going to ask another one now. Finally picking her bags up, she said "and Aisswarya Rai, very very beautiful".

Finally at 7 in the morning with a few coca colas gulped, time arrived for me to not miss the flight now and I reach the check-in counter. Even though the day was over, some things did not seem to have changed - attitude of electronic devices on the airport against me. Check-in counter girl tells me, my credit card was declined for this ticket so payment not done. Yeah, you read up there that I paid cash to AirAsia. I said the same to her too. But, her system does not agree. Well her supervisor's did. I guess all systems wanted to have their say.

At last I get a boading pass, hop the plane and fall asleep to wake up when it landed again.

Thank God, it happens only sometimes.

Cable ambulance

2010-09-11T18:46:00.006+05:30

Last time I saw an ambulance stuck in the usual traffic jam, I felt a bit uneasy. I think most of us do. While we all do understand that we should give space to these holy vehicles carrying people between life and death, I think the traffic on the road is chaotic enough to not let us do that even if wished.

So while I felt uneasy, I also got this weird sounding idea - government should plan and work on cable ambulance. Something similar to cable cars that run between two mountains or as we have in amusement parks. While these could be easier & cheaper to lay than laying new roads or flyovers, these could be dedicated to medical emergencies only, making it faster and easier to make it to hospitals, bypassing traffic hassles.
These could have small stops every 100 to 500 meteres, for 2-4 people to hop over and help patients get on and off it, making it practical I guess.

May be some association or roganization needs to do some research about how much investment would be required for setting this up.

If someone's thinking why should we re-invent the wheel when no one in the developed countries have done this. I guess because none of them have to adjust so many people in as much space as we are doing and we will never have as much space on our roads as they have and we have no choice but to re-invent the wheel our way.

1-Device - II

2010-09-05T11:32:00.010+05:30

So in case someone did not have the patience to go through the previous post because it was too lengthy and difficult to imagine.

Have a look at the this interface and you could understand what the 1-Device could be like.

The 1-Device

2010-08-12T18:24:00.003+05:30

Recently I was discussing with my brother about mobile phones, applications and more on mobile phones(handsets in particular). That's when we were talking about what were the big leaps that happened in mobile space in last few years which changed the industry every few years - more on tehcnology front and not precisely commercial steps.

Considering the start of the road, when we got pocket sized mobile phones and excluding the history of evolution of mobile phones before that, some things which we thought could be considered as the big leaps were:

- Color screens. Gave birth to mobile gaming industry. Otherwise there were only snakes all over.
- Cameras in your mobile phone lead to so many sting operation.
- Touch screens. It's all about touching today.
- Blackberry and push email on the go.
- iPhone and the app store. Touch screen, multimedia, smart phone all in one. Applications is what is making everyone crazy today.
- Android and the opensource mobile OS. You design your phone.

So then came the question, what would be the next big leap from here!

I think next we would need something like a folding screen mobile phone, which could be unfolded into a laptop where we would need it. Even though iPad was an attempt to bring phone and notebooks together, but then it serves none of the two. Neither can I carry it in my pocket nor I can replace it with my laptop.

Let's call it, The '1Device'.
So this 1Device has to be something which I can carry in my pocket like I carry my mobile phone today. Then I reach the destination - let's say my workplace and I pull it out of my pocket, put it on table, unfold it's multiple layers, stretch it and I have my 14/17" notebook like I have today at my workplace.

I think the 1Device could be the next big leap.
What's your take, whats the next big leap?

How small is the world?

2010-05-15T02:46:00.002+05:30

VERY.

I stepped out of my KL office today evening and was approaching the near my mono rail station when I felt an Indian lady walking besides me on the foot path.

I glanced once to see like I do for every Indian walking near by. I felt I had seen the face some where and turned back again, and now I was sure I knew the face. I stopped to make sure and realized it was one of my friends from the previous company whom I had never met since I left the company. She was as shocked to see me as I was to see her in Jalan P Ramlee, KL, which is no where related to either of us.

But, it was amazing to have met some one after a long time in such an unexpected place. It has made me think a few hundred times since then - the world is really a small place, something I had never though before.

And for icing on the cake, when I reach Bangalore in the night and call my room mate to tell this - he says he already knows this. Just in about 8 hours. Well that's Social networking though, but its made the world a smaller place too.

So while Thomas Friedman wrote - The world is Flat. Its time for the next book - The smaller world.

Consistency galore

2010-03-03T23:33:00.002+05:30

How do you measure someone's consistency? You make them do the same task again and again and monitor the outcome. If the the outcome is more or less same everytime, you consider the person to be consistent.

In case you are thinking what could be the task - I say, write CAT every year. Why ? because I write it every year. Here is the consistency part of it - I have now appeared in CAT for 6 times in a row(not a small feat). How many people do you know, who have done the same? I am pretty liberal and I assume may be a few. But, how many people among that score the same percentile year after year - same 2 digit figure. I have done that and now I ask you again how many people you know who have done that?

With CAT scores out on Sunday, if there was one percentile I was not expecting to score it was X. There is only 1/100 probability of scoring X. the probability of scoring the same X 2 times is 1/10,000. Ok now coming to the point - scoring that same percentile X in 4 out of 6 times in CAT is 4/6 and in percentile is 1/10,00,00,000. Thats better than six sigma. Becuase the probability of error in 6 sigma is 1/10,00,000. So is scoring the same percentile in CAT 4 times is more difficult to achieve than six sigma ?

Anyways, what ever the case be? In case you know me then I can challenge that you dont know any one else who has done the same, so be proud of your self that you know me.

And in case if you do know someone who has scored same percentile in CAT for 4 times then please drop me his/her email ID - would like to go out on a drink with him/her and discuss how and why CAT format should be totally re-done.

Enough of CAT posts. May be next time I will write on something better.

Boosted by CAT performance consistency, I will apply to Toyota soon to rescue them from their recent quality issues due to which they had to re-call thousands of cars.

Who earns it?

2010-02-02T00:43:00.007+05:30

Why does he get so much salary man ?? Who ?? There is a different guy in contention every time in the canteen!! So I just recalled what I said in my 2 minutes of gyan session at Peco's on that day(yeah after all gyan become more gyani after 2 pitchers of beer).

2 important factors for that high salary are D&D(no no, not Do not Disturb), but - Deserve and Demand.

To get high slaraies in the long run, one must deserve it and then demand it. Those who demand it but do not deserve it, get spikes only in short term but that does not sustain for long term.

Those who deserve it but do not demand it assuming some day god will smile on them and shower them with his benevolence, do not get it either. Once in a while someone may just show good gesture at them but again sustaining it needs that demand.

And then those who neither deserve nor demand it, well hard luck for them. But, then I think such people should be respected for understanding that they do not deserve it :).

So if you deserve it then demand it. Because you have to earn it, like Cadbury Bournville.
What the heck?

Happy and Healthy

2010-01-03T15:39:00.003+05:30

The new year frenzy is over now as the end of the winter break comes to an end today. Last 10 days have been very much like the school days winter break since 4 working days with very little work were squeezed between 2 long weekends.

Now, the time is to be back to work and start the new year like every year.
The motto for this year is - Be happy and stay healthy and be Good.

Wish you a very happy new year.

e-CAT

2009-11-30T23:56:00.003+05:30

We have e-tax, e-governance, e-commerce and so many 'e's that IIMs decided to join the race and create their own electronic version of the age old Common Admissions Test.

As usual I was there for my annual affair with CAT. Though it was my nth time(6th to be more precise), it was going to be different - CAT has become Computer based test. I had my share of fun in today's exam(the real reason why I still write CAT - It's not just admissions anymore, it's fun).

Got up at 6 to leave at 7. But it was to start at 10. So why so early? Because the Big BOSS(IIMs) had asked to reach 2 hours in advance. Infact they mentioned entry denial in case we reach later than 1:30 hours in advance of the test start. Well they were right - the amount of complexity they had put up for such a simple test did demand so much of time.

On making it to the hall, there was a queue at the main gate of the institute adjacent to the wall starting from the gate and going about 15 meters. It reminded me of my 'making of a passport' days, when I used to go and queue outside the passport office early in the morning. At the door, the security guard asked me to leave my weapons at the door(pen, pencil etc.). Ok, I recalled they did mention somewhere online that we would be provided with ammunition on the warfront and no need carrying the weight - I just wanted to make sure. After walking in, passed through a hall where a ppt was running explaining the CAT rules - not sure who was it for - there was no one in the hall! Going 1 floor downwards reached the door of the computer lab. Now it was time to check-in(yes that was the terminology used by IIMs). The check in security diligently collected all stuff from my pockets, including keys, wallets and sealed in a polythene as if these were some confiscated drugs. At last got a seat. But, it was still 8:15.

Now the real prometric stunts began. Each candidate was invited 1 by 1 and asked to submit finger prints of right and left index finger 3 times. Got photographed by that 1.3 megapixel web cam and landed back to my seat. After the invigilator entered some 2 unique usernames and passwords(what the hell were they for - no idea), the exam finally began. 2 options came up on the screen - "tutorial" ad "start the test". Wow - a tutorial at the begining of the test. The idea sounded good but no instruction. No information on what the candidates should do. I decied to skip the tutorial and start with the exam. Soon after I begin, the invigilator mentioned, please do not click on 'quit' button on your screen otherwise your paper will end and nothing can be done. I jut wondered why did the option exist during the exam if it had no purpose. Actually none, because one could not even click quit and go home. You would still need to be there till the last man standing has finished exam. To my surprsie, as soon as I clicked on 'start the test' it throws first question - no instructions, no idea about how many questions in all , how many sections, score per questions, negavtive marking. Nothing! I guess IIMs were so busy organizing the computer labs and card boardsbetween adjacent PCs that they forgot these details. 2:15 hours later with the answer of the last question on my rough sheet i looked up and it showed - time up! I realized how good were the old paper sheets. No one could have stopped me from marking that answer.

After all the magic from IIMs, the screen shows - your results will be aviable on 22nd January. What ?? So much in the name of hi tech stuff and still 45 days for results, like those board exam results. If they were to take 45 days for the results, I wonder what was the whole pupose of this e-CAT??

Was it really a need or just a drama? Was it a gift from NIIT and Prometric(the test makers) to CAT with other unknown gifts to the CAT committee?? Was it a need to copy GMAT without copying the quality of education provided by GMAT schools. Or was it just a 'go green' initiative from the IIMs? Were the quality of students not good enough with the traditional CAT. Would love to hear from CAT team some day.

My take - There was never a need for CAT to go online. Neither because it was ready nor because it helped it in any known sense. Neither it makes muh sense in India. Instead the money spent(rather wasted) on the whole IT infrastructure and prometric outsourcing could have been either saved and reduced from the application fee from 1400 to may be 1000 or 800 or the money could have been collected under a basket for scholarships.

Here was another example how the teachers of the local and global curriculams copied a western(global) idea locally without much analysis on local needs.

Re-starting from KL

2009-04-11T10:39:00.010+05:30

After blogging for close to 2 years it just ended abruptly when I shifted to Gurgaon as I did not have an internet connection at home. Today, when I visited my blog, I realized it's been precisely 1 year ever since I wrote my last post. I think these milestones like completion of 3 months, 1 year, 5 year, 100 years et al can be good occasions to re-think, re-vitalize and re-start.

So here I am trying to re-start, this time from from KL(I started from Botswana in 2006). I reached KL(Malaysia) on Wednesday for work. So may be, I would have a few pics(this time from my mobile camera as I lost my Sony an year ago) and some stories to share. Hope to see you more often for the next few days while I am here.

For now, my first view of petronas tower from hotel room.

IPL could be the next R-Power

2008-04-10T16:53:00.033+05:30

Newspapers were splashed with its news, everyone was talking about it, the whole nation was following up every bit of information, every event was a record in itself- listing of Reliance Power. This is happening again and this time it is IPL -Indian Premier League.

Could IPL be the next R-power? IPL is creating the same buzz before opening ceremony as Reliance power did before listing and it may also repeat the results after opening as R-power did.

Anil Ambani used to call it the great Indian story so is Lalit Modi saying about IPL. Every one wanted a pie of R-power and corporates are having of IPL. Though the ordinary man (aam admi) does not have much to do this time around as they could do in case of R-power by applying for Rs. 100,000 worth of shares. But, everything will depend on this very aam admi(they have to watch it for it to be successful). While R-power made millions dream about earning a quick buck IPL is making the rich dream of becoming richer and it has already made a few not so rich Indian cricketers richer by a few crores.

But, Why would IPL be the next R-power?

T20 world cup was a great success and so is English Premier League. So BCCI (Lalit modi) decided to mix the two and come up with a winning formula. It indeed is a good idea but every idea has a right value and I think IPL is over valued in terms of the money being thrown around for everything from tournament sponsors to TV rights to buying players.

IPL is a twenty-twenty tournament, which is all about cracking, blasting and lightning - hitting sixes and fours, scoring runs at breakneck pace. T20 world cup was successful for this very reason especially after Yuvi's (Yuraj Singh) 6 sixes in one over to Andrew Flintoff. EPL is about local clubs contesting against each other with international flavor and high standard of the sport. But, T20 world cup was also about nations competing, which IPL is not about and EPL is more about football with many more nationalities participating in the form of players which also is not the case with IPL.

Nation vs. money

IPL will have teams comprising of people from different countries with different languages and different creed. Some of these players have been through recent brawls and will not have the same spirit towards each other that a national team has on the field. This will be an important factor and will reduce the intensity of the teams to win. On the other hand there will be players with long history of playing on the same side who will stand against each other. The question here is what bounds the team together, the feeling of belonging to the same nation or being paid by the same employer? Since money is the only reason for all these players to get together in the same team, they will not be able to perform the way these very players performed in T20 world cup. For some the performance appraisal pressure will not exist either because they are already standing at the end of their career. We may see matches as we have seen before that of India XI vs. World XI etc.

Player combinations

The Indian public is much more emotional than that of many other nations. Now imagine Rahul Dravid and Misbah-ul-Haq celebrating Sachin's wicket when Bangalore Royal Challengers clash with the Mumbai Indians. This may not go very well with the crowd unless the batsmen and the bowler smile and laugh while being bowled or being hit for a six. In either case intensity of cricket will be down.

Less cricket more bollywood

The organizers have already promised a lot of music and dance, which is also very much visible in team advertisements. But, do we not have enough of music and dance on Indian television? Adding more and more masala into the same dish does not make it more tasty! This masala may just make IPL another entertainment show and not a sporting event. Leaving the viewers with a bad taste.

Fans

I am a Sachin and Rahul fan. I shifted from Bangalore to Delhi a month back. So whom shall I support? Well there are many like me who will not have one team to cheer for and hope to win so we will follow the matches just to kill time while not doing anything else.

So while I do not say that IPL will fail, I think IPL will not be a massive success or a run-away hit as expected. It will end up as just another event with respect to TV viewer ship! let us wait and watch on 18th April.

Sabbatical, before and after.

2008-02-28T19:10:00.005+05:30

Last Friday, I was off the pay-rolls of my firs job. Though I was happy to be moving on, there was a small element of sadness for leaving a job that was my first, one that gave me the taste of money that I could claim as mine. I also completed 2 years and 6 months on that very day. Though I did not sit down and reflect upon these years but I felt having come so far and only so far!

I am already 4 days into my sabbatical and I am really liking it!(unfortunately my so called sabbatical will last only 2 weeks). There is so much more time to read 2 full newspaper, read books, practice music, follow stock markets, write blogs and more.

One side effect of a sabbatical of my kind is - I have not taken bath for the last 3 days. I guess this side effect is locational as it did not create problems in Bangalore weather but survival with this in the north India may not be feasible. If god wishes then may be I will take one tomorrow and may be come back with another post - more meaningful.

B-Schools and the ranking mania

2008-02-13T16:35:00.009+05:30

In India, B-school rankings often get published around September as applications start rolling out at that time. So when Outlook and others came out with their rankings in September I thought of expressing my own take on the same but as usual missed like I miss on so many other occassions. Last week there was news of ISB, Hyderabad appearing at #20 in global rankings and as always blogs, newspapers like ToI, mint and portals all were flooded with this news. So I thought, why should I be left behind in writing about this frenzied B-school rankings(this is why I say I am just another mortal).

First of all I think B-school rankings should not be taken by their face value and instead should be used as a resource for data they provide.

Though many people have started believing that these rankings are all crap but I think they do offer some value though not in terms of the rank they assign to institutes but in terms of information they provide in the process of arriving at the rank. If, you go through the methodology of every ranking you will feel their are factors that help one institute over the other. Magazines are often blamed for being biased in setting up those parameters in order to skew the rankings. But, any ranking will have parameters and any amount of parameters will always be in favour of one or other participating members. So why exactly blame those rankings? Instead students should actually come up with their own rankings based on their own order of preference.

Here is my wish list of parameters that I expect magazines to publish and consider while compiling the rankings.

Growth in salary of alumnus over a period of 0-5-10 years of period.
Average salary, highest salary and information like that is already taken into consideration. But, today anyone with an MBA degree from any institute is walking out with a handsome package of 4-5 lacs/annum. Fairly good students are getting above 8. But, when the wheel will slow down the first to face the heat would be the bottom layer of students who managed a job today because of the surging economy. A B-school's worth in terms of real value addition to its alumni and industry preparedness would surface only in long run.

Career growth of alumnus over similar periods.
Now, if we were to measure only salary growth over the long run then those placed with huge organizations with stronger brand value or better work quality would rank lower than those placed with some of the smaller unpopular companies just because they shell out bigger sums to fill in for their other weakness. Sometime monotonous work is offered along with better pay cheque and there is no growth either. So an individual choosing a high growth career over high salary career should at least stand at par if not more than the other way.

Diversity quotient of the last 3 batches.
More and more is being written about how institutes are trying to have a mix of students in their batch in order to have a more heterogeneous pool of potential managers/leaders as this stimulates diversified thinking. But, having 1 candidate from arts, science and medical each, a few from commerce and rest engineers is not a heterogeneous batch. Only if there could be a diversity quotient to find out how much hetero a batch really is?

Average input score of last 3-5 batches.
Institutes accepting applications based on scores of various entrance tests can also list average scores of their last 3-5 selected batches. This will inform if quality of input students is improving or its the other way. There is a catch here though - with increasing number of candidates year after year, if an institutes invites same number of candidates as it invited the previous year, the percentile of the last invited application would be higher.

Average experience of the last 3 batches.
As experience is increasingly becoming important during the course of Business education and placements. It would be interesting if institutes provide data on no. of experienced candidates, average experience and average salary of experienced candidates before and after. ISB provides this data.

Average experience of the faculty in industry and as faculty.
Now getting over my obsession of the selected candidates. Having huge number of faculty is easy but the tough task lies in having sufficient number of good quality faculty. Quality is always subjective but still basic criteria - qualifications, total teaching experience, total industry experience and research papers published etc. could be a good starting point for assessing
overall faculty quality.

Entrepreneurship(E)
This is another cliche which everyone is using obsessively. But, it can still be judged more rationally. E quotient of a B-school could comprise of star-ups coming out of schools, initiatives from institute etc. E.g. what percentage of the graduating batch opted out of the placement process to start something of their own. Though this may be attributed to students and not institute but institute initiatives like IIM-A's followed by IIM-Indore's similar action contribute a lot.

There can be many more things that one can look into while opting for admissions depending upon personal priorities. Do share if you think of any.

Till now if you stuck with this post then I really admire your patience.

P.S I was missing from the writing scene for nearly 3 weeks now. But, with this post things will start rolling again.

Weight accumulation

2008-01-25T08:33:00.000+05:30

No, I am not talking about weight gain or loss. I am writing about the limited weight that we can carry on air travel.

Different airlines have different limits. While Air Deccan did not increase it from 15 to 20 kg even after becoming Deccan some others let u carry a 20 Kg of maximum. Business class travelers have it 25 Kg (in some airlines).

Why not accumulate it?

Now coming to the point of accumulating it. More often than not during my travel(especially traveling home) I carry way beyond that paltry 15-20 kg cap. Then I go requesting, insisting and citing instances where I was waived off a few Kilo grams last time and all that. But, once in a while I carry only a hand bag too. Now, if an airline could actually create a loyalty card where I could accumulate the unused check in luggage weight, how great it would be. Just as the last time I traveled by Deccan I checked in only 5 kg. I would have been so tempted to travel by Deccan if the remaining 10 could be used again in near future and letting me carry 25 kg next time. Most of the premier airlines like Jet airways, Kingfisher and Indian airlines do have loyalty pro grammes where by customers do get freebies for enrolling and then accumulating free miles. What they cannot accumulate is unused weight limits. I would definitely become a loyal customer to an airline that could offer me something like that. In fact most of the Indian people traveling to or from their native would be delighted by this as they have to carry lot of ghar ka khana etc.

Benefits:

1. Loyalty could substantially improve for family customers as families often tend to carry more average weight.

2. This could be a great differentiator for an airline in the highly cluttered aviation sector.

3. It could be a great feature to advertise.

Limitations

There would be a possibility of having passengers once in a while who would come with 200kgs of luggage smug smile on face and their membership card in pocket. Keeping air safety in mind the airlines may not be able to permit that and keeping the loyalty pro gramme in mind they may not be able to say no to the passenger either.

But, if the accumulated weight would lapse on a regular basis like half yearly or so then there could be way out.

Well, till when something like this does not come up, I can only think of requesting, insisting or finally giving up and paying more.

Mumbai Airport

2008-01-15T15:58:00.000+05:30

Last weekend(extended weekend) I was in Mumbai just for a break. Being from Bangalore entering the arrival terminal on Mumbai airport almost felt as if I had traveled a few seas across and reached another country.

No exaggeration! Just look at the help desk in pink, orange and white. It looks better than a privately run internet cafe.

The amount of space available is so huge it raised the question in mind - where was all this space till now?

Ofcourse GMR(builder of the new mumbai airport) is spending a good time, effort and space to make the travelers realize what it has done. But, it is only adding to the looks of the airport.I do not have pictures of departure longue with me but that was equally good.

Like a few other international airports they have come-up with their own magazine too - 'Mumbai touchdown'.

Did you ever see a feedback form drop box on any of the Indian airports? Well, I have seen one on Chennai international departure terminal and it was being used properly to dispose of small litter like chewing gum wrappers, shopping bills etc.

Visiting the Mumbai airport after 1.5 years I was highly impressed to see all this and decided to fill the feedback form with positive comments. My cousin with me picked up the Hindi form, which was tough to understand with so much of pure Hindi(its disappointing though that we in India find it difficult to understand Hindi). Well you think who reads all the feedbacks, don't you ? To my surprise someone seems to be doing that as I received an SMS from 'MUMBAI ARPT' thanking me for the feedback.

Message - Thank you for your feedback. It will help us continually improve passenger experiences at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. *Empowered by Moveo systems* Some advertisement there at the end.

But, so much gesture by an airport - to enter my phone number into the system, only to send me an automated message is commendable. For the rest I can show only this. Yes, again from the same airport.

The Blue Umbrella

2008-01-04T20:17:00.000+05:30

I haven't written movie reviews here before. I will not be writing them in future either(I mean frequently). But since I found this one worth watching, worth reviewing and may be among the more unknown movies of the year bygone so here is why you should watch it.

Colors are as vibrant as they can be. In fact once you watch it you would feel that urge to visit Himachal pradesh during your next vacation!

Cinematography is beautiful with camera showing views which we often miss out in real life even when we go for those vacations.

Acting had to be outstanding with Pankaj Kapoor playing the lead role. But, even the child actor has done her role well enough and is fitting in very well as a north Indian kid.

Script has a lesson for most of the kids but there is a surprise element every now and then keeping predictability of next scenes low and hence making you wait for the next scene.

It has been popularized as Child movie because it has a theme which could be a lesson for kids but then watch it and you realize isn't this the case with all of us. Why only kids?

Yes, it is a tad slow but if you like watching movies for more than songs, dance, love making scenes etc then this one's worth it.

Stress testing

2007-12-29T01:39:00.000+05:30

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

2007-12-27T14:47:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-12-22T19:38:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-12-12T12:31:00.001+05:30

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

2007-12-11T23:17:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-28T00:57:00.001+05:30

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

2007-11-26T01:18:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-22T15:47:00.000+05:30

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

2007-11-15T17:14:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-11-06T18:04:00.000+05:30

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

Projecting performance.

2007-10-30T10:43:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-26T19:41:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-10-23T15:50:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-20T22:13:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-19T13:30:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-18T11:21:00.000+05:30

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

2007-09-30T14:49:00.001+05:30

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

2007-09-21T14:08:00.000+05:30

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

2007-09-19T15:45:00.000+05:30

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

2007-09-18T12:22:00.000+05:30

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

2007-09-14T18:31:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-09-11T16:08:00.000+05:30

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 ?

2007-08-30T08:27:00.000+05:30

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

2007-08-24T11:25:00.000+05:30

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

2007-08-23T19:48:00.000+05:30

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

2007-08-08T17:49:00.000+05:30

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

2007-08-07T15:13:00.000+05:30

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

2007-08-07T15:01:00.000+05:30

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

2007-07-30T16:28:00.000+05:30

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

2007-07-09T23:24:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-07-08T09:13:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-22T09:03:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-06T23:03:00.001+05:30

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

2007-06-03T21:40:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-06-02T23:46:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-28T23:11:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-12T17:54:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-10T13:01:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-05-08T18:34:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-17T14:27:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-04T08:33:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-01T17:06:00.000+05:30

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.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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

2007-04-01T09:47:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-25T08:17:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-18T08:39:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-16T16:25:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-03-11T08:39:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-11T00:18:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-10T09:26:00.000+05:30

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!!!

2007-03-07T21:17:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-04T23:50:00.000+05:30

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.

Blogger hunt

2007-02-08T08:34:00.000+05:30

Great Indian blogger hunt :

ibibo

Though i came across this quite late(i just noticed its ad. on Yahoo yesterday).

It looks interesting since to become a great blogger on ibobo means achievement of a certain score. The score can be increased by adding a new post or by someone's visit or by somebody rating your post.

This is quite hilarious as the best to way to increase your score is by continously adding more and more posts, and that means one must have umpteen amount of free time with 24*7 access to the internet. All you need to do is keep on writing everything and anything into different posts and you end up with a great score.

About ibobo: It is very much like indian version of blogspot. 1 feature that i liked is availabilty of an option for the readers to rate the post. This is a great feedback for some serious bloggers as many times people read but do not comment, but rating is much easier for the reader and possibly there will be more people rating a post than commenting on it.

Rest you can check out!!

Yahoo Answers

2007-02-06T23:10:00.000+05:30

Abdul kalam asked solution on terrorism, and then Sri Sri Ravishankar and Leander paes answered him. Kiran Bedi asked something yesterday and now Sri Sri Ravishankar is asking something again.

How come suddenly all the who's who are present on yahoo Answers? I guess because yahoo wants them to be !! isnt it?

What if there is a comment on my Blog by profiles named Amitabh B, Sachin T, Mukesh A, Manmohan S?? I guess that would indicate my bolg is very popular, great content and well read.

It could be so because somebody is just having fun with me!! or may be, it could be because i am having fun with the very few comment readers i have.

It was intersting to notice that Our honourable President sought Yahoo Answers as a medium to communicate with common educated people(because to use yahoo, one needs to be educated). But, it was even more interesting that suddenly some more important people wanted to communicate to the President through yahoo Answers!!

Bottomline: It was a good and innovative idea to advertise through a popular and respected personality via a serious question instead of the so common celebrities. But regular use of similar names will reduce the sheen of surprise it brought to people. Even if new ideas take time to come in, the same successful idea must not be used so frequently that it looses it's value.

Customer as Partner

2007-01-25T01:40:00.000+05:30

I was just talking to a friend of mine today when we came across a point of customer as business partner.
My take on the point is, it makes a lot of sense to consider the customer as a business partner to increase customer satisfaction. There are a number of reasons why a customer can be directly compared to business partner:

1. Customer's benefit is organisation's benefit.
2. Customer's loss is organisation loss.
The above points are reasons why a customer should be treated equivalent to a
business partner, but the same points can also be used to understand the effects of considering the customer equivalent to a business partner.

1. Increased customer confidence in organisation will result into smoother running of deals and hence will result into operational efficiency as lesser roadblocks will be faced.
2. Better confidence will result into more customer satisfaction.
3. Better customer satisfaction will result into positive word of mouth.

Hence better business prospects.
But i think this proposition will stand water in a B2B scenario and B2C segment might have to be looked from a different perspective.

Analysis on B2C some other time!!

WOW!

2007-01-10T13:37:00.000+05:30

I press the button outside the lift in my hotel.
We are three guys standing outside the lift, feelng a little sleepy as we have been
working quite hard through out the day and its past 10 in the evening now.

The door opens and there are 2 girls inside the lift, really beautiful!!

And yes did i hear that right, one girl looked at us and said, wow!!(before we even enter the lift).

3 of us once again get life back in us like we are going to work in the morning.

Vikram asked them, Russian?? - pat comes the reply , yes!!

This happened last evening but the WOW is rolling here and there in my mind, ears, eyes!!

wowww!!!

The 09:30 - 17:30 Strategy

2007-01-04T11:04:00.000+05:30

This is just one more attempt of mine to improve efficieny at work.

Start with the list of work that you need to finish for the given day before you leave for work. This work needs to be finished between 9:30 and 17:30.
I know that looks like saying there you can see everest just throw your anchor up there and climb it.

Let's break it down into smaller parts so that while climbing the everest we know what all equipments we need and which all intermediate stations we would reach and what kind of hailstorms we will have to face.

When you get to work obviously your boss will have an additional list of tasks for you, and this might be totally exclusive of your list. If you are lucky then there might be some tasks in the intersection of your list and your boss' list.

Now is the time to spend a few minutes and prioritize work keeping both the lists in mind. Breaking this into parts again, prioritize the two lists independently, then compare and merge the two. While merging the two remember - in case there are tasks from the two lists with equal importance then the common list must have task from boss above your's(because at the end u are answerable to your boss).
The list of task might have already gone on to page no. 2. Never mind!! Draw a line under the task that you think is realistically possible to finish by 5:30 PM.

Do not spend more than 15 minutes on this small thing of organising tasks.

Now attack the work. Keep in mind 17:30 is only a few hours away. Initailly it will be possible that you will be slow, in such cases even if it means that you have to skip 11'OClock or 4'Oclock wala coffee break or may be even lunch, let that happen for a few days. It is only a matter of few days after which you will not have to do that.

Bell goes off!! It's 17:30, stop it now!!

I know there will be times when your work will not be finished but, if your really want to finish your work by 17:30 regularly then stop it here, right now!

The assumption for this whole thing is that you dont like non-performance and especially hearing this word from your boss for you. So when you will hear this for the first time from your boss you will not be able to tolerate it, right ?
But that does not mean after hearing this you go back to your seat and sit down to re-start the day from 18:00 to some late night show.

Either go to the canteen or may be just stay back in the office and chat around with people. You might as well leave the office to chill out at your own place or may be some other outing.
But now you know the agenda for day 2(next day).

Let's start again but i assume we would have found the reason why we did not complete the expected work yesterday.
There can be following reasons:

1. We drew the line at wrong place. The expectation we had set of ourselves was too much and it can be termed as over committment. Hence this time it is expected of you that this experience and failure both help you commit what is more practical and feasible.

2. Tasks involved had dependencies which were out of your hands. Like you require
information from somebody else and this somebody else dose not gives you that or may be your boss pops suddenly out of nowhere at 4 in the evening and says there is this new task which is most important. This is genuine and can happen anytime with anybody. This is something that you will have to specifically mention to your boss when he uses the word non-performance. Of-course he will not agree(thats ususal, if he agrees then it is un-usual). But remember often managers dont do so intentionally but because they have their own deadlines.

3. You were slow and still did not compromise on tea,coffee breaks so the schedule slipped. This is what we are trying to improve.

4. Work given was really too much(i know this does not happens more than once in a month, more on this a little later).
There can be other such reasons and one will have to find out them.

The reasons can be identified after 17:30.

I am hopeful this can ensure atleast some improvement in the efficiency of work and time spent at work.

Even if your boss does not likes the site of you walking out at 18:00. Stick back doing things other than work.

Of-course the above story does not mean that work should suffer. There will days when not going back from workplace at all will also not result into anything great. But that happens only once in a blue moon and in such cases stretching beyond normal or even beyond not so normal is OK(only if you do so occassinally). If you do that everyday then iti not work but you who needs to change.

Working late is not any sign of higher productivity but only a sign of Bad management!!

An Year on Airport

2007-01-01T00:03:00.000+05:30

31-Dec-2006 18:00
I am sitting in the office working like morons since there is no holday here even on this sunday, in this chinese office(Just because they will give a holiday on Monday for new year). I dont even know what will i do and where will I be at midnight.

18:05
My chinese colleague(David) says. shall we ask the customer for a leave of three days and go to beijing?

18:20
Customer has rejected our request of going away and wants us to support the system.

18:30
We three decide(Me, Vikram and davdi), "hell with the customer", lets get out of this place, we will go to beijing now and come back on 2nd morning.

18:50
We get out of the office saying to the customer that we will leave early today so that we can have nice dinner since we are not going anywhere. Customer smiles as if he is very generous and has granted us freedom for life.

19:10
I am back in hotel and ask the receptionist for a check out. In the meanwhile David has booked tickets for beijing.

19:45
David calls me to check if i am leaving soon from my hotel to pick him up and then go to airport.

20:15
I am still moving my luggage and David has called me 4 times asking if i have left my hotel. He is worried we will miss the flight since we are late.

20:30
I leave my hotel to go to David's place.

20:40
David is impatiently waiting at his place and this Taxi driver is driving as if i am on some sight seeing. But, it is not his fault, the road is layered with snow so he has to drive slow.

20:45
I reach david's hotel, pick him up. He is so upset with me that he is not even talking to me. I know he will not talk to me as long as we dont board the flight.

21:10
We reach Airport bang on time.

21:20
David has collected the boarding pass and he is finally smiling. But the flight is late due to fog and so we need to sit on the airport for some time.

21:45
This is when the right is suppose to take-off, but this flight is suppose to come from beijing to hohhot(this is where i am) and then go from hohhot to beijing. The flight has still not left from beijing, so we expect to leave around 11:00.

22:15
We decide to go through security check-in to avoid any last minute hassles.

22:45
I am feeling hungary so i get some cup noodles and somehow manage to eat them.

23:15
We see a number of people arriving on airport. Hurray!! we think the flight has come and its time we would depart soon and would spend the new year on the air.

23:25
We discover this flight is coming from another city and since it could not go to beijing due to fog so it had to land here.

23:45
I once again have no idea where i am i going to end up.

00:00
We guys hug each other and cheerup for the new year. We have been on the Airport since 2006 and now it is 2007.

00:05
There is an announcement, since the flight that was to arrive here has not left beijing till now, flight is cancelled!!!

00:15
The only possibilty is to cancel the tickets and re-chedule them to morning. We three are in split minds. David has to go anyways as he has some work in beijing and he has his family there. I dont want to go anymore as i have to return to work on 2nd morining and i dont want to go for less that 24 hours. But Vikram wants to go because he is afraid that he will not get another chance to go to Beijing.

00:30
I decide that i will not go but David and Vikram will go.So David can book two tickets for the morning but cancel my ticket.

00:45
I come to know David has booked only one ticket and Vikram also decided he will not go(achha dost hai).

01:00
We are in the shuttle bus to get back to the hotel.

01-Jan-2007 01:30
We reach back to our hotel. Hotel sweet hotel.

02:30
I am thinking i went to the airport last year with sparkles in my eyes and beijing in my mind and i have come back from the airport without going to beijing with smiles on my face and sleep on in my eyes. Since I and david had checked out, so we are left with only one room.
I will be sleeping on the floor. After more than a month i will sleep on floor so i am feeling like i am in banglaore at my place!!

Happy New year!!

Festivals and Happiness

2006-12-25T22:59:00.000+05:30

I have often believed that festivals are for happiness and people to come together.My belief was firmed up yesterday when i saw people celebrating christmas here.

I am here in a town called Hohhot, in china and there is hardly any christian here.
But last night people were on the road dancing, shopping and playing crackers.

Here are some moments that i spent along hundreds of people i dont know but was happy to be among them.

People are happy and they are enjoying with their families then why should it matter what religion the festival belongs to.

If a vendor can sell some crackers on some festivals and earn even a quick 100 bucks on this day, where as his normal income might be just 30 bucks, then the multiplying effect of happiness is more than visible as it will transcend from him to his family.
If all the shops in the mall sell more. If all the roadside bendors can sell more eateries and all the taxis can carry people overnnight.
I wish there could be one such festivals atleast once in a month!!

Kids singing carols..

Its great to see the festive soon going on as it brings more happiness around the planet and more cheers among people. May everybody have a share of this happiness and fun.

laila o laila

2006-12-03T00:29:00.000+05:30

"laila o laoila, kaisi hun laila, har koi chahe mujhko, milna akela".This is a song i expect to hear in an indian pub or disco, but when i heard it in this chinese pub(not even the capital) it was a cracker for me.
Although i and my friend were the only Indians in that big crwod out there and i could see that no body was able to understand that, but i did feel happier to finally listen something Indian in this mandarin land where even english is an alien language.

Frozen Pond

2006-11-30T22:55:00.000+05:30

I knew it is going to be cold(below 0) but i realized how cold it was when i saw the frozen fountian pond in my hotel.Here's one snapshot of it.
Right now it is -8 Celsius outside and thank god i am not outside.
At this i really felt like saluting our Soldiers who stand in the open on a border at temperature as low as -60 in Leh, and we sleep safely in our room at cozy temperatures.

I wish we never had any borders so that we never had disputes..

I was there again

2006-11-19T18:40:00.000+05:30

I wrote CAT for the third time today and i still love the paper for its surprises and its simplicity to scare people.
Though my results continue to remain same but it was interesting to find only 75 questions in the paper besides the total duration having increased by 30 minutes.

That clearly meant, there is no space for leaving questions which you dont know and doing only those that you know. Time given was enough to do all if you knew the answers unlike other times when people used to sweat out for lack of time.

On the whole it was a good surprise, but i do belive that reducing the question from 150 3 years back to 75 today the CAT is more about aptitude and less about attitude than it was before.

long time - II

2006-11-10T19:38:00.000+05:30

Its oen again almost 15 days since i wrote the last time. As if either i am too busy or i just dont like blogging anymore.
But none is the case, i still love blogging and and i dont think i have too mouch work. I think the real problem is i am loosing too much time because i dont know much about my work.
So once again i will try and organize things to get back on track. Lets see whats the outcome this time.

The leave that i did not want to leave

2006-10-26T20:26:00.000+05:30

Finally my leave got over yesterday. The 18 day leave(not something people often get) was amzing since it was the first time i had taken a long leave since i have started working.

It felt amazing to be at home relaxing on the bed watching TV and always eating and drinking something.

Though i spent a lot of time travelling with my parents(a long time forgotten affair for me), it was more fun instead of sitting at my house here in banaglore.

This time i had a holistic aviation experience as well since my travel inclsded 4 different airlines unlike the normal single airline travel i always have.
It included train travel after a long time.

A cherishable leave in the end, one i will wait for eagerly till the next time.

More details on where i went how i went in my next post.

Amazing Singapore airport

2006-10-02T13:03:00.000+05:30

Now this is what i call good governance. At least somewhere or the other the government does plays its role in making things better.

I am at the Singapore Airport transiting back to India from China, and writting this from one of the hundreds of treminals put up for free internet browsing.

This time i am lucky that i have a wait of 6hours on the Airport. While i check out the remaing airport in the remaining time( i doubt i would be able to do that, looking at the size of the airport), will try to log in once again before getting onboard again.

But i am loving it and i am eager to see indian airports coming upto this standard(atleast some percentage) in some years from now.

Chopsticks

2006-09-22T16:39:00.000+05:30

At the end of my 2nd day in China, i ate noodles with chopsticks and was somehow able to manage to finish my meal. Though i tried to eat rice as well with chopsticks(since my coleague was doing so) but realizing my lunch might end with dinner i decided to use the spoon.
Fortunately he always takes me to places that have a few spoons.

But i still dont know what i am eating except that it is vegetarian. Vegetarian because my parents told me that these days are some specific days when only veg should be eaten.

What has amazed me is the fact that besides english being an alien language in China, china has been able to make so much of growth in business and is leapfrogging ahead of all the big countries in the world. But India has been able to grow through the IT sector primarily due to huge number of english speaking workforce.

Now the day China starts gaining momentum in english(since it has already been made compulsory language in primary education), it would be interesting to see how India competes against China.

For now i am thinking what surprise is going to popup in the dinner!!

less than 100% degree

2006-09-15T18:51:00.000+05:30

I was going through this article on Azim Prem Ji today on rediff.
Prem Ji had to leave his electrical engineering from Standford in the midst, due to sudden demise of his father and take up the family business.

But the last line from premji states that he went back to standford in 1994 and completed his degree.
I think more than prem Ji's will it is the institute's flexibility to permit ex-students to complete their half or so degrees.

Though i can understand that PremJi had become a big and rich businessman by 1994 for any university to day no, but does the indian eductaion system allow anybody to complete such less than 100% degrees after a break(that too such long).

Will have to find out the answer.

Human efficiency

2006-09-01T21:19:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking on Time management for a long time now. Almost 4 months have passed by since when i had come up with 5 important points to improve the efficieny at work.

Well those points have been there in my sheet ever since without any implementation. And this being so, besides i being an implemntation engineer.

I am once again thinking about those points because i see tasks again slipping from the schedule, and delays creeping in.
This is what i had concluded to get work done in time and to work efficiently:

1. Identifying the goals.
2. Prioritizing tasks.
3. Staying focused.
4. Effective communication.
5. Time management.

Time management being the most important since that would help organizing the other things.
But for now will not bore on the elaboration of these points and will do so some other time.

With weekend right on the brink will see if i can get atleast something right.

long time

2006-08-31T14:38:00.000+05:30

Its been a long time i wrote last time. More than a month indeed.

Initially i had thought i will start writing again only once i reach back on my home(sarzameen).

But its almost a week now that i have been back but no updates yet. so will try to start regularly soon.

Lets hope i live up to the plans.

Till then Chao!!

17 websites

2006-07-30T18:38:00.000+05:30

Now that the blogspot ban is almost over or may be already over as most of the bloggers dont seem to be reporting the issue on their blogs how and why they are not able to access other's blogs and others are not able to access their blogs.

I incidentally found this list of the 17 websites that were ordered by the GoI to be banned and which resulted in all the havoc. I thought of just wandering through and finding out what do the websites really contain that the government had to carry out take such a great( greatly futile) decision.

I was able to find the list of the 17 websites online as published by "The Hindu".scanned copy of the original governmemnt orders here : http://www.hinduonnet.com/nic/banned.pdf

So lets see what each of them contains and how justified does the GoI's decision is in banning these 17 websites in the name of action taken against terrorsim*.

1. http://www.hinduunity.org/

The website is definitely pro-hindu and even to a certan extent anti islamist. But primarily what seems to be major reason for blocking this is the dedication it is showing towards bajrang dal, VHP. Now i am sure congress would have been waiting for a long time to find a reason to ban this website, but then why didnt the NDA government ever declare this website in their india shining campaign or give it a status of national importance for cultural preservation. But more from a neutral perspective, their would be so many other religious websites publishing equally agressive content, then why were all of them not banned??

2. http://www.mypetjawa.mu.nu/

The blog is based on the terrorism activities happening around the world, but more on what is happening in middle east on a regular basis. Also the information and the titles of the topics are against the jihadi terrorism, but then what is wrong in that, or may be the government had to show that these blogs/websites had atleast something to do with terrorismm, then whatever it may be.

3. www.pajamaeditors.blogspot.com

Mission Statement: Mission statement? Who needs a friggin' mission statement?! I'm not out to change the World, just screw with those who are. Yeah, that means you, Lefty!

Thats the description of the blog by the blogger. So what does it look like a terrorism site , of course yes, and the victims being all the leftists so the government had to protect them else the government would have become the victim of the left. What i fail to understand is why is the left afraid of all these blogs after all their main vote bank is the unions and i wonder how many labour union guys read these blogs??

Other than that the content is not very outrageous. But yes, one of the recent posts suggested that the blogger was unhappy with the ban being lifted as he was happier to be getting the attention for being among the bannaed blog from so many millions of blogs( and why would he not be).

4. http://www.exposingtheleft.blogspot.com/ (Opini Pundit)

Now what does the name suggest?? Ok, i will not write much about this one as it falls on the same lines as the above and the name is good enough even without visiting the URL. But the left on these urls is more of a global left and thats why the posts are often about the US.The other thing that i discovered by visiting this one was that the JAWA blogger is a co-blogger for this one. So you see the government really worked hard to find out the links, not between the terrorists and the mumbai blasts but the bloggers who are hand in hand against the left.

5. http://www.thepiratescove.us/

This was also one of the displayed blogs on the exposing left blog. Didnt i say there was a lot of hardwork put by the investigators to find out who's linked to whom!!

6. http://www.commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com/

If i didnt go to a wrong url, it was in chinese so ???????????????
But i am sure there might be some chinese terrorism based content on this blog, but the archives were in english and had only 2 months displayed: June, July 2006. Lucky chap got so much popularity so early in the blog life. I wish my blog would have been banned.

7. http://www.bamapachyderm.com/

Pachyderm means fat foot specially for mammmals like elephant or the hippo. But the blog is not about the animals, the title is "My Vast Right Wing conspiracy". There is so much of content on this page that you got to spend time and brain to understand everything. I have time but no brains and so did not attemp to delve too deep. As usual has content on US, Israel etc. Is the indian government fighting terrorism agains indians or fixing or blocking all the pages that contains or touch the israel issues??

8. http://www.princesskimberley.blogspot.com/

This blog has/had only two posts as of today. I am not sure if they had same number of posts when it was banned but if so be the case, then why, why, why ??? was it banned.

9. http://www.merrimusings.typepad.com/

I think i am too late to carrry out my investigations, this page is not opening may be they have moved or may be i need to check again after sometime.

And yes my guess was right, it has moved and the new link is www.merrimusings.mu.nu The blog is just another blog with a nice creative tempelate. But then why didnt the government issue another order for
banning the new webpage??

10. http://www.mackers-world.com/

Now this is an absolute genral blog from the guy writing about walmart to wishing his mother a Happy Birthday. Now if they ban such pages then i think the ISPs were much better in blocking all the blogs atleast that makes more sense than blocking some unknown, harmless blog.

11. www.dalitstan.org

This page did not open for me as of now. But searching on google, first two lines speak that the this page is by a human rights oranization working for the upliftment of the dalits(backward classes), and this ban comes from the same government, the Human Resource Department of which is roaring to give another 27 percent reservation to the dalits. arjun singh ji, please ask your government to delete this site from the list else you may loose some votes, i am sure our HRD minister will say, dont worry kid the real voters dont read all these news an blogs. ??

12. www.hinduhumanrights.org

The website enlightens/exposes/updates about the vrious atrocities faced by hindus around the world. So, any website that tries to do anything hindu should be banned and let every one lese do everything else. great !!!!!

13. www.nndh.com

Again too late and could not find the link.

14. http://bloodrovaltriped.com/

I have missed the action....... cannot find this one too. not any great results on google too.

15. http://imagessearchyahoo.com

Looking at the page name itself the link looks wrong. Else if you try to figure out similar links then there is
http://image.search.yahoo.com/ , which is nothing but image search engine from yahoo, just like the image search of google. Whats wrong with yahoo image search thats right with google image search?? mmmm??
16. http://imamali8.com
Again the closest match i found was http://www.imamali.8m.com/ and it contains "Information on the life and qualities of
Ameer ul Momineen" so no need to explain. one more informative page i would say, as its always good to know about people. But
then our dear government does not believes much in information.
17. http://www.rahulyadav.com/
ha ha ha. let me laugh first and then i will write something about this one. I am plannning to put all the religious
websites, political websites, anti left websites as my most read and viewed links on my blog soon. So that government bans my
blog. bichara rahul yaday, but he is unhappy with the ban. I suggest he should be happy, the whole blog thing is all about
eye balls game, you want your blog to be read by as many people as possible and he got it for doing nothing, not even posting
regularly. Important links: on the cover page are: my resume,my blog, my college, my workplace. ha ha ha again.
Good things that came to the front from this ban:
1. Some pages really benefited through the popularity, and yes the owners were happy too.
2. Shallowness of the government exposed.
3. Technical inability of the ISP's to ban only a few pages( as they have removed the block even from the listed websites in
order to avoid banning the complete domains).
4. The blogging community has become strong enough and it was clearly evident as the government could not continue the ban
for mere 2 weeks.
5. The ordinary housewifes and all other non technical people also learnt how to use proxy servers in order to bypass the
block and access the pages that they wanted to.
6. pkblogs shared their script for bypassing the blogs in order to create inblogs. Clearly evident ordinary citizens dont
wnat to fight and would be happy to help each other when required.
So i think it was good that we had these bans for some days. But yes i am definitely disappointed from the government that
they did not ban my blog.

* I am not any expert and this is more than brief description of each page.

My costliest haircut

2006-07-24T12:21:00.000+05:30

I was reluctant to go for a haircut(yes i was being over conscious about the african hairstyle).

I could imagine myself in all the possible new hairstyles that the saloon guy would come up on my head. There was another thought that crossed my mind very frquently, almost all the local guys are balled( what could be the reason?? ). What if, after the 20 minutes of head down when i raise my head and look into the mirror and there are no hair on my head??

But the question "when are you planning to change your hairstyle", which i had heard from a number of people (including the receptionist of the hotel i am staying in, the guy who sits next to me in my office, the project manager from the customers side for the project i am working on) made me reconsider my decision of a hair cut only when i go back home.

Well they were not wrong, my hair had grown really long and being curly as well, they clearly looked out of control. But i wasnt wrong either in making such a decision of no hair-cut in this new place. My intial schedule being for less than 3 months, i really might not have reached this stage. But now with almost 3.5 months gone it was time to look for a descent place where i could go with less inhibitions.

I went to the near by mall (that was the only place i knew for a hair-cut). I felt at ease after reaching the saloon. When i sat on the executionary chair, i asked the man to only trim the out of order strings and not to shorten them. He did a good job, except that he made them a little short( thank god i didnt say him to make them short, god knows what he would have done).

Now comes the leaving time and he gave me a receipt for 82 pula, i asked him again is it 8 or 3. i dont know what he would have thought but he replied vey calmly "sir: 8". I showed equal equanimity and gave him P 82. But i knew what i had done. with currency rate of Pula1 > Rs8, i just paid more than Rs650 for a single hair-cut. Trying to figure out the gravity of the situation further, i calculated that even if i go to a better than normal place in bangalore for my hair-cut, pay Rs50 for 1 time, and keep my frequency of once every 2 months(ususal for me), i could have managed a hair-cut for the next 2 years in the same amount.

May be i should have just let my hair cover my ear so that i did not listen to those who had said to me "when are you going to change your hair style".

100 days

2006-07-18T02:05:00.000+05:30

It just occured to me this morning, yesterday it was my 100th day outside India.

It was my first time outside India when i was leaving on 7th April but its been more than 3 months now. When i left i had a scheduled return on 25th June. Things have been moving forward and its been quite long, and now i am desperately missing ghar ka khana (woh roti woh rajma). Infact i am even missing that dosa from the near by sagar that i used to hate eating every day. But I still believe i was lucky, and came to a much better places than so many other countries.

Botswana(in southern africa) is a very nice and small country. Has a sound economy and low population. Everything here is in order and readily available (except dal roti).

People have been nice enough to me that i never felt running away from this place. The best thing being that i arrived here in april and would be retreating by July end, so i fortunately escaped the worst Indian summers, instead i faced winters in the month of may for the first time in my life with temperatures going down to 0 in June.

It has been a great experience for me and i have learnt a lot of things by meeting new people having so much difference in culture than ours. By seeing things totally unlike ours, detailed description of that some other time.

For now i am just searching to eat something, lets see i eat pizza or burger.

There goes the plane >>>>>>>>>>

2006-07-15T02:24:00.000+05:30

Thats a flight going to India and i am not inside it. I am only standing on the ground and watching it going away.

Though my tickets were ready and i was supposed to be there, my schedule got postponed and that too without any confirmed date for my final return.

This happened becasue there were some plan changes. Sometimes i fail to understand why do we have plans if we have to change them.

After spending 3 months away from the home land, it was exciting to pack my bags to
roll back.

But sometimes things dont come by that easily. May be it has to be more exciting and thats why some more wait.

Now the only thing i am sure about is, i am not travelling tomorrow, and when would it
be? i just dunno.

Lets hope i move soon.......

Mumbai Blasts : what, when, where, who, why ??

2006-07-13T12:46:00.000+05:30

8 explosions took place on various Mumbai local trains, the life line of Mumbai public on 11 July. This was a very sad incidence. But has this not happened ever before?
Since its first serial bomb explosions in 1993 there have been 6 terrorist attcks in Mumbai alone, one in delhi last october (many more oevr the years) and almost every week in J&K. In 1993, death toll was more than 250( 257 to be precise), in 2003 it was 48 and now more than 200 have been killed and close to 500 injured.

But will it not happend again ? to say no!! is being over optimistic rather it is being naive (who will change the situation, was some minister's relative a victim that he will take some action?), but at the same time saying yes it would happen again is more than painful and disappointing.

Where could it happen the next time? does this really have any boundaries ? it could be any where , the malls that you go to every weekend, the bus or auto u travel by could be carrying the packets, the cinema hall you go for a movie once in a month, railway station, airport, bus stand, a school, college, car parking, a road crossing, it could happen wherever life exists.

Who does such henious crime?? As an ordinary citizen i can only guess based on the previous culprits ( anyways Indian government has not been able to find out that too, and there have been no guilty sentenced ever), but isn't the government, the police, the authorities supposed to know this. But in India they wait for some terrorist organization to claim the responsibility ( the government waits as long their is a media report announcing the name of the organization which claims the responsibilty as if they have done job worth appreciation) and government acknowledges it with equal respect , as if it will verified so that only the authentic owner is honoured for the act.
This lackdaisical attitude of government is the key reason that attacks have become just a regular thing in India and to hide their own misgovernance the government calls it the spirit of mumbai( but what option do people have, but to get back to their work as they obviously cannot sit at home). Look at USA after 9/11 its almost 5 years now and not even a small grenade has not exploded there ( i dont mean to say that it should happen there , but why cant the Indian goverment do atleast 50% of that).

Why does this happen at all ? Those who do it call it freedom struggle( freedom against whom , from what, i am sure even these a**h**** dont know). Those who face it know only one thing, they never ever wished of something like this to happen to anybody and still they are at the receiving end.

what can be done ? as an ordinary mortal citizen i and u can only do some small things before and after such incident. Being careful and attentive when in public places. Avoid thinking, who's got the time to report something unusual to the police, and why should it matter to me. Helping those in need at this difficult time, it could be the injured or the ones out there helping the injured ( indirect help is often more valuable as it reduces the chaos and panic). But then government is not as helpless as we are and it can definitely do more than just condemning ( Manmohan Singh said we will not be cowed down by any such thing) or expressing shock( sonia gandhi expressed shock over the incidence, as if it happened for the first time in India, ofocurse this might not have happened ever in Italy, and she might still be having the FIFA hangover as she might still be celebrating).

Mumbai help (http://www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/) is a good blog that is doing a commendable Job in providing information on almost everything from injured list to hospital numbers.

And all those who cannot help directly or indirectly, can pray for those who left us, can pray for those who are in pain, and pray for some miracles to happen and bring an end to these things (where wll this miracle come from?).
But surprising was the extensive coverage of these blasts on CNN and BBC, and annoying was to see them comparing it with 9/11, please some body explain it to Americans, what they faced was what India is facing since 1989 and not what we faced was after they faced something for the first time from the terrorist attacks.

What will you do with 1 Million ?

2006-07-11T22:42:00.000+05:30

Thats what i saw on a bill-board today morning (it was an advertisement by a mobile operator, announcing its prize money i could win by choosing their new scheme on offer).

I knew no body will give it to me, but then what would i do if i got it by chace (i assumed). My mind started ticking fast looking at everything as if i could buy it.

All things that were ever on my wish list, started appearing in front of my eyes in flashes.

How about a Honda city I thought, but that is too much (0.68 million). I said to myself lets make a compromise and go for Maruti Swift ( only fifty percent of the total money i had won).

But then flashed another thought, what about making my parents go on some foreign holiday and becoming a great son. And suddenly i heard a voice from somewhere "keep your feet on ground"( i dont know who said that, but i followed the advice).

So i thought, may be i can put this money into some sort of business or start-up, make some profit and then plan for the bigger things. This looked more sensible to me. But wait , what if the business fails:
(1) i will loose all the money that i got by mistake and

(2) once again i would be left empty hands.

I said to myself, its better taking professional help from some fund manager and investing wisely.

The brakes were applied, the car stopped and the taxi driver turned back towards me and said " sir, 20 bugs".I looked at him and then looked outside the window, my office had arrived. I got out of the taxi, opened my wallet and had the last note in it, but it was a 100 ( only two 0's ???) .

I again stared at the driver thinking about the remaining 0's as if i had lost some money. The driver gave me even a dirtier look ( i am sure he thought i am going to run away without paying him).

I realized thats the advantage of sometimes not driving the car, you get to see some dreamy bill boards, which otherwise i would have missed because of the eyes stuck on the road.

Everything ends finally but only for a new start

2006-07-10T05:06:00.000+05:30

Two big sporting events ended today - FIFA world cup 2006 and Wimbledon 2006.

Obviously each had a winner and a looser( now this is not some secret. since every sport has it).

But this also makes me think about life, this is how it is supposed to go on , isnt it?? where the phases keep passing by, with the ups and downs coming and going but the life not stopping by any phase.

There is something to learn from everything and this is the most important lesson i have learnt from sports : there is a winner and there is a looser, both have there share of glory till when it comes to the final moment and then people forget the looser. But then life does not stops, it only tells you to look forward so that u do not become a looser the next time, and for that you neet to start again.