Connected OnBoard

Have read it and heard it. Now I can claim to have personally tested it - On board WiFi, courtesy Emirates.

Speed is good enough, charges are dear.
However to start with, at USD 5 for 30 MB I think its a fair price for emergency usage.

Now that we have Wifi and phones working at 35000 feet, what next?

Conversations with strangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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.