ExpertDabbler

Admittedly, that was long for a heading.

A few weeks before my travel, my mother had fallen sick. I took her to a doctor nearby. The doc hardly saw my mother, asked the nurse to give injection, took 80 bucks as consulting fees, scribbled out medicines for another 100 but the end result was zilch. Eventually i took her to another doctor who charged much less, listened to my mom better, understood the problem and voila my mother was fine in the next few days.

There are some doctors in chennai who charge 300 Rs. for a consultation on common cold and fever, scribble out prescriptions for another 200 Rs which never work whilst there are docs who would not charge more than 40 Rs and yet cure their patients. I want to see more patients coming to the latter and less to the former.

Say, I go to a doctor and find him very reasonable in fees and efffective in his treatment for ailments. I get his contact info (name, phone number and area of operation) and put it in an accessible, manageable online repository. It will be managed by a group of like minded people who have no conflict of interest (no doctors). Sooner or later, we will have a sizeable database of docs with good referrals from the common man.

Once we reach a threshold, we can enter into a tie up with some mobile service provider where people can SMS and get results. The ones with good rating will get good ranking in SMS results. Any negative feedback about a doc will result in lower rating and lower ranking in the results.

To be frank, i started out with docs but i would any day try this for any or all independent service professionals.

With due respects to Google, we necessarily have to find a way to make good use of our personal experiences and build a bank of good independent professionals with their contact information. In short we need our own electronic word of mouth.

My philosophy is this, honesty and good service should result in more business, the sooner it does the better it is for society as a whole.

We have listened to people talking politics in tea kadais, clubs, buses, trains, etc. But ever heard of people talking politics at a crematorium?

A family friend’s grandma passed away on Sunday early morning in Coimbatore. Even when I saw her three weeks back, the 85 years old lady that she was, told she had no more desire to live and was waiting for her time though was doing alright then. She did not suffer much either. She was alive and present at 10 PM and gone by 12 mid night.

I was told the funeral would be around 3 PM on Sunday. So I took Kovai Express early in the morning and reach Coimbatore on time to catch a glimpse of her.

En route, I was told there was a change in plans and I was asked to come to the crematorium straight from the station. When I reached the crematorium, as suspected I was the first person to be there. Standing alone in a deserted crematorium in Chokkampudur, on a Sunday afternoon was not something anyone would relish. I was getting restless and kept calling friends I had not spoken to in the recent past – a way to kill time and also to keep in touch.

About ten minutes later, a fully loaded van came to the spot. A group of about 10 got down. This was not the group I was associated with. Most of them were middle-aged men and Coimbatore locals to boot. They had no body to cremate, guess they were here to get the asthi or something. The way they started in Kongu slang, I was more than eager to listen to that after all these years J. The topic, predictably turned to politics. One guy seemed to a die-hard DMK supporter, the other an Amma follower. Most of the junta were neutral (Sothu katchi).  The ADMK follower was making allegations about the frauds that is happening in the name of free color TV, gas stove, cycle, acres of free land schemes. His main charge was that people use this to their advantage and even those who get these from the government, promptly sell this to outsiders to make quick buck. He was quoting actual incidents. The DMK fanatic was vehemently denying all this and that idiots like the other person will never understand the heart of kalaignar. He said when Amma can give bicycle, why not kalaignar? He was also quick to point out that the Amma follower was a well to do person who does not need all this and that such people will never appreciate the plight of the poor blah blah.

When i think of it, talking like a politician is never easy.  First and foremost, it requires a special training to never answer to a question even while pretending to do precisely that. For eg. When someone says,” Ennaya unga thalaivaru, ipdi ellathayum free free na ellam makkal vari panam dhaney?” A person like me, would by default try to answer that question. Since I cannot counter that question with any valid facts I would quickly accept defeat. But a seasoned politican will never do that. Empty rhetoric is elevated to an art form in a politician’s tongue. All in all, they provided good entertainment for me till my friend came to the venue after 40 minutes. I have another aspect to write and discuss about which I’ll do later.

But before that, here’s one more airline to rely and travel in India - PARAMOUNT.

Please do not hesitate to take PARAMOUNT.

Everyone who has someone in Coimbatore will know about the skyrocketing real estate prices there. Last week I was in CBE for some personal work. As I had some time to kill, I went to some brokers in familiar areas posing as someone interested in buying a property. The rates they are qouting had me stunned.

I am one who felt even Chennai’s real estate was overheating. How else can you explain a demand of Rs. 1 Crore for a ground of vacant land in Perungudi?? I saw a quote in IndiaList.

If Chennai was bad enough, Coimbatore was just insane! The only reason people could come up is that some IT companies are planning to set up operations there. Try a google search for IT companies in Coimbatore right now and all you get is some innocous list of small time companies. Not the ones which would pay salaries high enough to settle the monthly EMIs.

Wipro has bought 12 acres of land in the TIDEL coming up in Peelamedu, TCS has got about 5 acres there. These two projects will take its own sweet time to come to reality. About 18 months is a realistic estimate. Others are expected to follow suit but god knows when. My hunch is that these two would hire about 20,000 people at the maximum. It is an irony that these companies are coming to Tier 2 cities just so that they can hire people at lower costs than metros!.

So, if a 1000sqft. flat in a decent area sells for 2500Rs per sqft in a city like Coimbatore, the EMI. would be about 22K per month (Rs.900 per lakh for 20 years). Right now, there are not many companies which would be glad to give 25K, leave alone 40K in Coimbatore. This leaves the real estate market completely at the mercy of NRIs and other local folks with black money.

Interestingly, the rentals have remained fairly stable. A1000 sqft flat would hardly fetch anything more than 6-7K per month. So, if some X, purchases a 1000 sqft flat and lets it out, he would be paying 15-16K Nett. per month out of his pocket so long as he owns the flat. In that case, I wouldn’t call that an asset. I think it’s a liability. I am no good in predictions but to me, this market trend has ‘correction’ written all over it.

But I guess people are buying because they fear prices are going to go up even further. They come to this conclusion simply because it has doubled up in the past 2-3 years. In the process they’ve forgotten a basic rule of thumb - Never buy in a seller’s market.

Indian Economy had a very good post on the real estate scenario sometime back.