Full Cycle

Every day you wake up, you find a depressing news of economy diving deep. Time has changed very fast. Just 6 months back no one wanted to join a organization which may ask you to sign a service agreement ( bond as we call it). It was treated as a obstacle in your career development. People will say what if i find a better opportunity in the meantime, it would be a compromise to career. Job security was no where in question. The only direction in which people use to look was 'up'. See now what has happen and is happening. If you will ask a job aspirant to have a service agreement he will be delighted. It has been a dramatic turnaround. Don't be surprise if candidates ask for it in their salary negotiations.

Sukhoi for office cabs..they don't face traffic

I was sitting in my office cab in the morning when all of a sudden we heard a roaring noise in the sky..it was sukhoi..on its routine flight in the skies of pune trying to wake every night owl and asking them to come and watch what is at display. We were driving close to air force station so could easily see its acrobatics. What a sight!! What a machine! I wondered about its pilot, what a nice experience it would be for him to fly this one of the most sophisticated machine in India. It must be thrilling and adventurous. I remember whenever someone used to ask during our childhood what you want to become when you grow up boy? our favourite answer used to be 'I will become pilot'. I am not sure what children answer these days. May be they will say they will become shooting start like abhinav bindra or a boxer and wrestler like 4 kumars. Well in our cab the sight of sukhoi triggered a reaction by giving people an oppurtunity to start complaing about their job.

Following were the main questions and comments.
What all are we doing?
We are just software engineers living a sedentary life.
We should not have become software engineers.
We stay in a artificial environment in office and sometimes we are not even aware that it is raining outside.
Our routine is so monotonous.We go in the morning and come back evening in a cab.
One person suggested that if you fly a sukhoi then you will not have to face the traffic as our cab was facing. Amazing thought!!

Customer Care Phobia

Please Call our 24/7 call centre executive. I am becoming afraid of this line. Whenever any service provider tell me this i feel challenged. Although if you think about it logically it is very easy and physically comfortable. You no longer have to leave the comfort of your home or office to get petty things done. But the way service providers market this 24/7 call concept, they have increased our expectations too much and when we don't get things done it leads to frustration. You feel you are not smart enough to get your work done over phone. The outcome of your attempt to call customer care is all likely events of a probability question.

Every service provider wants to automate every service. They are becoming too obsessed with it. They want to eliminate all queries, requests and confirmations having face to face. They all boast of their customer care ( Do they really care? ) In the process of providing all services automated through IVRS they have gone monolithic. They don't even present the option of speaking directly to any executive unless you navigate and explore all their marketing offers and menus. I usually get lost in this maze and cut my phone to escape from it. They have completely forgotten the term 'User Friendly'. As soon as you dial they will present you with some marketing offer for some time. Then you will be presented with a language option. It doesn't matter if you choose hindi, many of the executives will initially speak in English. Then comes the main menu which is most of the times too long and even for 1 category like credit they will again have sub menu. Suppose you select credit card they will ask for 16 digits credit card number to go further. As soon as you enter it and it will give your present due amount. Who the hell asked for it? I called in for cancelling my credit card. By the time you end logging your request you have spent more than 5 minutes. Huh, that's the revenue for telecom operator in most cases.

Its not so smooth and comfortable after all. I feel afraid of the idea that they might bring in the option of customer care very soon to take queries and complaints about customer care itself.

Leaders are produced at Traffic Signals

Infrastructure is a bottleneck ! I have heard and read it thousand times. It has become a cliche, used whenever we discuss problems faced by India. I think all of us agree on this. But one more question arises. Whatever infrastructure we have do we respect it? Take for example Roads. People break traffic rules as often they desire. Some of them do it for shortage of time, some do it to save fuel and some do it because they want to prove themselves smart.I also feel sometimes rules are broken because of lack of awareness and proper level of facilities available.

Every system takes time to evolve and so do i feel for Indian infrastructure. Its only our response and respect to it that its evolution can be done at a faster rate. Today this rate in India is very poor and is unable to keep pace with our population growth. To increase it we need to respect it and response to it in a constructive manner. Traffic jams are commonplace these days. I encounter them more than once a week while commuting to office. What i have observed is, the cause of it many a times is lack of patience and sensitivity towards others. You can find people loosing common sense and coming head on with other from both side without realizing it will lead to a deadlock. Once i was coming to office on bike and was waiting at red signal to go green. Suddenly one auto rickshaw came from behind, went past the red signal without realizing that in doing so one of its wheel passed over my feet. I was fortunate that my foot was firmly on road and it didn't cause any damage.

And to my amazement the driver was looking back at me and shouting for my fault! I could only laugh. What was my fault? I guess my fault was that i was sincerely honoring the rule and keeping all behind me wait. I thought who said we don't produce leaders in India. Just go to any traffic signal you will find a person breaking it and triggering a reaction from others who follow him. Don't we call a person a leader who has followers ?

Airtel Ad!!

In Good Humor only!!

Recently there has been new series of Ads of airtel featuring R. Madhvan and vidya balan and one of them really forced me to think about how girls think?. I know i may sound male chauvinist. One of this Ad is about money transfer utility from your cellphone using Airtel operator. It goes like this
The man ( R. Madhvan ) comes from office and apparently looks tired. She asked ( vidya balan) the obvious questions:-"
Thak gaye?" ( Who will say he is not tired after coming from office ? )"
Aaj bahut kaam tha?" ( What else you do at office ?..work, work and more work )
"Lunch kiya?" ( As if she didn't want to feed him with dinner if he already had lunch..he he)
All this is i guess normal girls behaviour to show their caring attitude and how much they feel for their partners but here comes the final golden question for which i think she has been waiting the whole day anxiously to ask him --"Papa ko paise bheje?"
I have 1 question to her if she is so concerned about transferring money and if it is so important to transfer money then why didn't she do it herself ? I know she is not ignorant to use the cellphone because in other Ad of the same series she is shown giving instruction to him for a party over phone. I guess Airtel tried to play and make use of this quality of girls -- that they will always remember what has to be done but will still try to attack at his ego by reminding him and feel a sense of pride in it. Not good for females. Feminists should oppose this Ad.

Corporate Comedy - Communication at workplace

Dedicated to my friend Anmol who got sick of these "words of wisdom" but now as usual have learnt to make a mockery of them. Now he constantly entertain us using these phrases with us and make a highly comical and stress relieving gibberish. He has acquired the art of doing it so well that in between discussing general things he uses them so glibly like a hot knife passing through butter.

"Lets see how much bandwidth is available"

"It would be an issue"

"Raise it as an open issue"

"Issue ho gaya"

"Take it as your action items"

"Need to mitigate risk"

"What are your concerns"

"Its your own call"

"Lets see what are the possibilities"

"Be proactive"

"Take Initiative"

...and many more.

Double Victory

"At last"- These two words come to my mind as i start scribbling on this electronicosphere. I wanted to start writing and be a citizen of this world for sometime but my laziness won over me quiet frequently and somehow even after reading so many blogs over here i could not start( No i was not like this, i think one of my friend groomed me in this direction). But today, finally i have been able to win over this lethargic attitude and what a win it is - much better than Spain over Germany in Euro-08. I also won the bet for this final to the same friend. So its a double victory against him.
I think i should stop writing all this crap for now as its monday morning and office guys are starting to gear up. Soon i will hear the phrase "ISSUE HO GAYA" and that will set the tone for the coming five days.

Double Victory

"At last"- These two words come to my mind as i start scribbling on this electronicosphere. I wanted to start writing and be a citizen of this world for sometime but my laziness won over me quiet frequently and somehow even after reading so many blogs over here i could not start( No i was not like this, i think one of my friend groomed me in this direction). But today, finally i have been able to win over this lethargic attitude and what a win it is - much better than Spain over Germany in Euro-08. I also won the bet for this final to the same friend. So its a double victory against him.
I think i should stop writing all this crap for now as its monday morning and office guys are starting to gear up. Soon i will hear the phrase "ISSUE HO GAYA" and that will set the tone for the coming five days.