ExpertDabbler

Consider this. There was some openings for freshers in my organization. Some one was looking for job and once I got her resume, I referred it to our HR team. All those having 77 percent and above with no history of arrears were shortlisted and asked to come for interview. So far so good. The one I referred was asked to attend the interview as well.

On Saturday afternoon, I get a call from the person stating that she has not been selected. Both she and her father made statements like the management asked for 2 Lakhs deposit out of which 1.5 lakh will be paid to the candidate as stipend for one year and the salary will start only after the end of the first year. The remaining fifty thousand will be retained by the management.

I was cursing the management for being so ruthless and taxing poor students just because they were freshers. I even wondered if we are running a software training company or a proper development company.

As it turned out, one informal inquiry with our HR today revealed that all this was baseless.

The HR presentation has talked about a salary of 1.5 lakhs per annum. They had indeed asked for a 2 year bond to make the candidate stick to the place so that all the training which goes for a fresher does not go into the trash if she decides to quit, say, in 8 months. They had also indicated that the candidate would need to indemnify the company if they decide to quit mid-way for some amount.

I think that’s a reasonable step given the current job market.

I call her again today to clarify what she told me and what the truth is, and she is backtracking all that she told on Saturday.

I think its ok for a candidate to get rejected in the selection process but that does not mean they can spread rumors about the company.

I am not sure if the candidate twisted the facts just to create some sympathy or plain did not understand at all. I even apologized to the candidate thinking it was all our HR’s fault. I was hitting out at our HR to some of my friends over phone and in person during the weekend.

Thinking hard, I realize I got into embarrassing situations just because I chose to refer some stranger.

I think the whole experience should go under the label of Lessons Learnt.

Writer Sujatha, in his Katradhum Petradhum in Vikatan has mentioned about Blogswara, which was in my opinion, a fantastic attempt by bloggers. But Sujatha has been patronizing at best in his comments. And I’m miffed, to say the least. Miffed, not because he did not agree with me, but because he has different levels of political correctness for different types of people.

Sujatha is usually all praise of the works of film and other celebrities. At the maximum, he would hardly say anything negative at all due to fear of raking up a controversy. Diplomacy? Maybe. But all that diplomacy goes for a six when it comes to first-timers, amateurs, who do things out of interest and who go to him seeking his opinion/feedback.

I’ve never seen him criticize any well known person in his Katradhum Petradhum, or in any other writings of his, even remotely.

Even in today’s Katradhum Petradhum, he is all praise of Kani Mozhi’s poem.

Sujatha has written in a particular tone about Blogswara. But will Sujatha dare to take on a mediocre music album that is put on sale by a professional music director? I bet NO.

In this sense, i appreciate the likes of Cho much better. Atleast they have the guts to say what they really feel, no matter who the concerned person is.

It is pertinent to note that Sujatha did not have the guts to voice his opinion even on such straight forward, black and white issues like the ‘Kushboo Karpu Episode.’
He simply sidestepped saying there is no freedom of speech in India.

I admire Sujatha’s fiction. His Padhavikaaga is still one of my favorite political novels. But i dont quite agree with his selective criticisms and subtle “thudhi paadals” to biggies in the industry - be it the media or films or politics via his columns for whatever reasons. The fact that he is such a popular writer works to his advantage.

This brings me to another question and had me thinking. Why should we bloggers look for recognition from main stream media? Just like Kamal Haasan does not need the recognition of Motion Picture Academy to measure his greatness, we too do not need the recognition of national/regional mainstream media.

We know how good the following are in their own domains

Ammani with her quick tales,
Keerthi in his collage works.
Ganesh, Jo and Murali, with their music,
Dubukku in tamil humor,
Anand, Kaleidoscope, Srikanth in photography
Sidin, Abhinav in english humor

Do we need a Sujatha to tell how good they are?I don’t think so.

The above mentioned are just a tip of the iceberg. That fact is there are hundreds of people like them.

Each medium has its own dynamics, its own audiences and quirks. Be it Tamil cinema or print media or blogs.

We don’t necessarily need to have ‘MSM certified’ as a criteria to celebrate the best talents in blogosphere.

Let people like Sujatha go ga-ga about Shankar, Mani Ratnam or Kamal Haasan for whatever reasons.

We bloggers have our own heroes and heroines and I think it’s high time we realize it.

My buddy started like this over phone.
“You know what!, It took me 7 hours to reach Coimbatore from Bangalore, Idiots!!

Me, innocently “Cool dude, 7 hours for 300 odd kms is ok da. You have made it in decent time.”

“Quick time? My foot! I took the flight man! Can you believe it?? My entire Saturday is gone. This damn thing was scheduled at 9:05 in the morning. Cheats!
It’s time these people wound up their business and started running buses from Virudhunagar to Madurai and learn punctuality from bus operators.”

Ouch! Apparently he had taken Air Deccan.

With AD, one would imagine the dialogue going on along these lines.

Passenger: “Excuse me, boarding pass for Flight number AD- 420”

AD staff: “Sorry sir, the flight has been delayed by 3 hours”

Passenger: “What? 3 hours ? Why?”

AD staff: “Some turbulence, Sir”

Passenger: “Turbulence? Where?

AD staff: “In the pilot’s tummy, Sir. He’s been having diarrhea”

Passenger: “Diarrhea? WTF? Why didn’t you inform me earlier?

AD Staff: “Oh! you are a doctor, Sir? Sorry we did not know that. We will tell him to meet you. In that case, Sir me too have some skin problems. It would not go with Itch Guard, Can you help?”

Passenger:“Doctor? Who? WTF, why did you not inform about the delay?

AD Staff: “As a policy, we wait till the turbulence gets over, Sir, be it in stomach or mid air. Actually, it’s a funny world sir. You can get turbulence in your tummy and you can also get diarrhea in mid-air. HaHaHa”

By which time, the passenger thinks about his messed up appointments and he would get his share of diarrhea.

Frankly, to hell with passengers of the kind mentioned above. These are the typical snobbish lot. “Born in London brought up in New York” types. Let them take Jet and languish in hell by being punctual. AD is India’s low cost airline and we only need to encourage such tribe.

I think it’s only that AD should position itself well and cater to a different set of customers. The following are some of the points that I sincerely think will lead AD to greater prosperity, on-time most of the time, more customer satisfaction and such other four-letter words.

1. The fundamental thing about AD is that they tell upfront that they are delayed before the passenger boards the flight, which annoys the passenger no end. Rather they can take cue from the vans which ply between Saidapet and Madipakkam. The van wallah, if you have ever noticed, will always keep the van on the move, but the van would hardly move! That is their trade secret. One small kid will keep the door half-open and would keep on shouting, “Vijayanagar 5 Rs Vijayanagar 5 Rs“. Likewise, Air Deccan can have the door half open and the aircraft can go round and round in the run way while some cute thing stands near the door and shouts “Bangalore 420 Rs, “Bangalore 420 Rs”. And I can close my eyes and imagine passengers running towards a moving flight in the runway!.

2. Fire all existing in-flight crew. Instead they can hire group dancers from Kollywood. For without doubt, these babes will be look much better. And they can also add value. Like how? They can provide in-flight entertainment. Imagine a group of girls dancing for “Rakkama Kayya thattu” and ‘Choli ke peeche kyaa he?” in mid-air. Who would resist such a spectacle?. To hell with punctuality. I can visualize executives saying,” Once more, please. Please don’t land.”

3. Replace the captains with Auto-drivers from Chennai. This would reduce cost. We can fix a ‘soodu vecha’ auto-meter in the cockpit and the drivers would be happy if they are paid accordingly. The auto-drivers have the knack to make up for shortage of time too. They drive their autos like jets in Mount Road. Such creativity should be encouraged by all means. So they should be given real jets for once. Anyway the ATRs that Air Deccan flies are nothing but glorified autos.

4. There should be standing tickets. Yep, just like standing in buses and trains. For one, this would help in increase revenue and another value add being, if at all the flight stops mid-air for problems in carburetors, we can anyway make a rough landing in some paddy fields and then ask the passengers to help tilt the plane in one direction, revert, restart the plane and go on till the next petrol bunk, just like we do for scooters and bikes. That’s another advantage of having ATRs.

5. They can enter into some contract with some Kai yendhi Bhavans and let them do the catering. People would be standing in Queue inside the aircraft for menus like ‘2 Idlies with ketti chutney, undiluted Sambhar and Chilli Podi for 5Rs, Kothu Barotta for 10Rs. and Kaakha Briyani for Rs.5 etc.

6. They can hire Abdul Hameed for their Ad campaigns and launch innovative schemes like 50% discount of their already 50% fares during the tamil month of Aadi. Abdul Hameed will proudly come on television and smile, ‘Aadi ku AD vera enna solla?” in his impeccable tamil.

All in all, what matters is some good flight experience for the traveling lot and some effective branding. Readers you are more than welcome to add your points. C’mon
let’s make AD a grand success.

Here’s another Air Deccan Horror Story

I think its only a matter of time before Air Deccan’s punctuality will be the butt of all jokes just like the Sardarji’s intelligence.

Of course I should not have lost my cool. But you should’ve known better. Certain things just can’t be undone. It’s all over now. A fit of rage and it has left a scar in both of our lives. What a shameful way to end my last day in the field!

Here I am mulling over what had happened in those few dreadful seconds.

I was on a hot pursuit of my target. You, one of the nut cases I’ve seen in my life, did not think twice about coming at my back and pulling me from behind. You said something, probably demeaning and laughed. I, in a moment of rage, charged at you like a raging bull, struck you in the chest, flattening you instantly on the ground.

Someone caught me in this act.

Oh, how I regret that now! We never realise the consequences when we do certain acts. My world came to a standstill. It will never be the same again.

A group of men gathered around me and you and separated us by a distance..

A few minutes later my manager came to the spot. He did not even come near me. He just stared at me from a distance. I’d let him down and put him in trouble and he will never forgive me for that.

He went over and looked at you. Talked to you for a few minutes. I’m sure he would’ve got your coordinates.

Then he called one of his assistants and was now walking towards me.
I could hear him since he was closer to me. Perhaps his subconscious was aware of the fact that today was my last day. And so he wanted to come close to me.

“Our Lakshmi had charged at a journalist!. He is the Madurai correspondent of HINDU.
Apparently, he was trying to write an article on stray cows roaming the streets near the temple. And our maadu had charged precisely at him. I told him Lakshmi does not charge at strangers unprovoked. I told him he should’ve tried to catch her tail! But the fellow would not accept. He is making a hue and cry about stray cows being a menace to the people of Madurai, especially near the temple.
Anyway we had planned to sell Lakshmi to Kerala beef vendors tomorrow. Today was her last outing. We’ll do it a day in advance. Just in case the journo fellow creates a big issue, we can say we don’t even have the cow with us now! Okay? Just get a lorry to Kerala as soon as possible!“

What a shameful way to end my last day!. Certain things can’t be undone now.

Why open source software community is relatively non-existent in India? I’ve pondered about this for sometime. I’ve been searching the net and reading too.

Occasionally, I tried opening this topic with some of my developer buddies who are equally divided between the Microsoft camp and the Sun camp but not one in the LAMPP clan as yet. Ask any fresher and he is 1000 times more likely to idolize Gates than to even know about Richard Stallman or Torvalds. Why is that?

And then I thought about myself.

What do I, the IT professional do in my spare time? I read books, blogs – usually time pass stuff and nothing even remotely technical. I travel 45 mins. one way to office in city traffic and I have to consider myself lucky. For I know some who travel 40 km one way using buses and trains. For them coming to office and going home is in itself a project.

At work, we, the typical IT junta in India, do what is expected of us. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing bad either. We go to work because we want to earn good money legally and ethically at the end of the month. We take pride in working for big companies with big customers in established platforms.

For most of us, IT is a job. But for most of the folks in the open source community, it’s a passion.

Open source allows one an opportunity to not only use a product free but also contribute to the creating the tool we would use everyday. But for that we need to devote as much of our free time as possible,and slog without any monetary benefit. And for that, we need to have passion for what we do. Where do we stand in terms of passion for what we do? Not very high from what I’ve seen.

Whatever little passion in us is being dozed of in no time when one enters large software companies. A bulk of the productive time is being wasted in unnecessary meetings, pointless discussions, long lunch breaks, leisurely tea breaks, irritating politics and long work schedules at the behest of the project manager. Not to mention most of the time, one works on projects that suck big time.

There is another contributor to this - our education system. Here we have one system which almost always peels a banana and thrusts it in our mouth and moves our jaws so that the banana is eaten in a time frame and pace chosen by the system rather than to our interest. Our system does not care if we like banana or orange or pomegranate. It’s solely at the discretion of the person who sets the course.

Our wonderful employers, the darlings of the stock market and papers like Economic Times, don’t help either. They have a simple yardstick for recruiting people - BE/MCA 65% with no arrears. They are less concerned about if a guy is passionate about his job or not. They would rather worry about if a recruit will convince the Visa officer when he goes for his H1 stamping. They would want someone who will slog if being asked to like a dog 24/7 without asking questions.
That means more low-end work, more projects, more money, better Q1/2/3/4 margins, better returns in the stock market. And everyone is happy.

India has lakhs of people who are employed in software. But then I realize there is a world of difference between employed in software and being passionate about software.

This is all the more reason why we worship and defend and admire Kamal Haasan or Sachin or Rahman or Ilayraja as if our life depended on it. For unlike us, they are passionate about their works.

Just like a mason is unlikely to think about sand to cement ratio at home, we don’t think about software in our free time. We’d rather talk about Mani Ratnam’s GURU, gossip about Surya-Jothika and be happy. No wonder we are called IT coolies by some. Maybe we can call ourselves Coolie No 1, If that would make us feel any better.

Good sense seems to be prevailing at last.
click here for more

There are two culprits in this whole fiasco.

a) The bureaucrats like Dr. Gulshan Rai who dont know what they do nor talk.
Atleast i am prepared to forgive them. After all we’ve come to expect this from them.

The other and the more idiotic of the lot and whom i will never forgive - the ISPs. How dare they block my website when they make money out of users like me?

I am thinking about talking to a lawyer and file a case against my ISP in a Consumer Redressal Forum for ‘Deficiency in service’. Any lawyer bloggers who can contribute their thoughts about the implications of this would be most welcome.

Another counter point is my ISP, till date is one of the best service providers with minimum outages. If i sue him will it make sense to remain with this fellow? Should i move out and suffer medicore services for ever from others??.

On the contrary many who have suffered for long with stupid ISps should use this opportunity to sue them. One notorious ISP is Tata Indicom broadband.

I’m in a dilemma now. But ‘Deficiency in Service’ is definitely in my mind horizon. Let’s see where it goes…

Here’s some one who has taken a dig at Vairamuthu and i have to say a very interesting one at that
Click here for more
via karthik

UPDATE 2
http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/blog-blackout/

UPDATE 1
It’s official folks! The Airtel Tech Support guys called me last night and informed me that indeed they’ve received communications from DoT to block all the blogspot sites! They cited some security issue.
Going by this logic, it looks like since the terrorists also use Highways, Railways and Air transport for travel and for carrying out their Anti-India activities, its only a matter of time before they are blocked as well.

And the DoT has clearly indicated that they could not care less about the thousands of bloggers. Apparently they’d issued this directive on Friday. It’s tuesday now and
am yet to see even a terse official communication from DoT.

Those of you who are addicted to my ranting, by any chance can also look for

http://prabukarthik.wordpress.com

Indian ISPs, apparently under a directive from http://www.cert-in.org.in , have decided to block access to all blogspot URLs. The funny thing is, we can all access our blogger accounts, post new blogs, edit existing blogs etc but we can’t read any blog in a blogspot URL. Click here for more

I dont know what next.

How about banning Google in this information age?

The Government by this single act has demonstrated that it has as much respect for Freedom of speech as the Taliban have for civilized societies.

Make no mistake folks, the present Goverment under the well educated Mr Manmohan Singh is no different from Musharaff, China, and other stone age places when it comes to Freedom of Speech.

Sigh!!

Check it out, this was awesome!

I dont want to predict how useful it will be, but brilliant effort in my opinion!

Cross posted in my thozhilreedhiyana blog

To all those who like to think, and more importantly act. Read this

And to all those who sincerely believe that this jihadi juggernaut will halt on its own if we are nice, “secular”, peace loving etc please read these sites…

http://www.danielpipes.org

and

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

And its being hereby convied through His Highness Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav Ji that those organisations which hoard huge quantities of RDX do so not for any terrorist cause but only as a social service measure.