Cable ambulance

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.

e-CAT

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.

Mumbai Airport

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.

Future of the forgotten redboxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broken News

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

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

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

One of the news goes like this:

delhi hawai adde pe hua hungama

Indian airlines ki flight pe hua hungama

Flight 102D pe hua hungama

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

yatri subah 5:30 se airport par

Flight ka samay 8 baje

yatriyon ne plane par chadne se kiya inkaar

Plane par 104 yatri sawar

Plane ki der se yatri naraz

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

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

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

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

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

Durga Pooja

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

Camera : Sont Cybershot DSC T10.