ExpertDabbler

And where ‘a’ can stand for almost. I still have one paper to get through.

I conveyed the results to my mom, and her first reaction was ,’ Epdiyum paadhi paper dhaaan pass pannuve nu nenachen! Epdi ivlo pass pannine?’ Such lofty expectations have always been the hallmark of my mom. She always sees the glass as quarter full when its three-fourth empty.

She is the eternal optimist at home. The typical dialogue goes like this.

Me:”Industry seri illai… velai pochu na enna pannuradhu?”

Mom:”Seri ippo enna.. edhavadhu chinna ooruku poi epdiyavadhu pozhachukalaam!” as if i am complaining about a mosquito problem.

My university lived up to my stringent expectations by awarding me ‘80′ in my worst paper as an examinee. I myself would not give ‘80 if i correct it. I told this in office, and they are like,’Neenga vera prabu,subject maathi padichutu poi ellam pass pannirukom!

But then I have failed in one subject where I definitely would’ve passed. So there you go with poetic justice!

I’ve been taking the OMR on and off since 2004 but today is my first full day of travel in my company bus. The fact that they run A/C buses was never a pull factor for me. I was more than happy to take my bike. Nothing beats the freedom of commuting in a bike, even if its a lousy, beaten down Splendor who is as old as my time in this city.

However safety concerns, rainy season, and a need to cut fuel costs made me take the company bus today onwards.

Standing with all my paraphernalia and waiting for the bus for twenty minutes in the morning drizzle was a clear throw back to Carmel Garden days.

If waiting for the bus was reminiscent of school days, inside the bus was more reminiscent of the buses we take to far away places. Unlike the school buses, most of the folks continue their morning sleep and make up for their sleep deficit.

They circulate a register where we should enter our identity, department, From-To, time, etc. The register had OST travels in the header. It could very well have been KPN. I could notice a few water bottles. I looked around for that unique Puliyodharai smell. Thankfully we need not travel that far I suppose. I would definitely expect Puliyodharai, cucumber and Kumudham magazine in buses coming from Avadi, Thiruvotriyur etc.

Why not let the bus vendors supply morning breakfast in those ‘long distance’ routes to the ‘associates’ and make a neat profit as well? That should work so long as the Admin guys get a decent kick back, right?

Sure, its a flat world!

My mom came home from the nearby annachi store, shocked with the information that tomato is being sold for Rs. 40 per kg. Onion costs Rs. 38 per kg. In all probability, tomato should’ve been sold for Rs. 20 six months back. In percentage terms, that is a hundred percent price rice. Its likely that tomato would get a weightage of some 3% in some Inflation index based on some market price somewhere in India, and that inflation index would’ve gone up from 11.15% to 11.25% - As far from accurate as we are from Uganda.

I don’t think any small Annachi store owner in his right mind will file Income Tax returns. As far as I am acquainted with their scheme of things, they should be filing a largely fictional sales tax returns, the degree of imagination depends on the degree of corruptness of the assessing sales tax officer. Let’s ignore the legality part for the moment. If this is the state of affairs, how relevant are these GDP numbers and inflation numbers to us?

Agreed, every country including the US has an underground economy. But I read elsewhere that only 10% of India’s population come under the organized sector. The rest 90% are more or less underground I think. Please correct me if I am wrong. It goes without saying that India is a much much bigger economy than our numbers suggest. Given this ground realities, all this number based analysis about Indian economic scenario seem as odd as a Raymond coat suit guy carrying gunny bag in his back.

I now think there are many little Indias within a greater India, and each has its own economic cycle, not necessarily in synch with the ‘official’ Indian economy.

‘Pana puzhakkam illai’ was told as the main reason why the DMK lost power in 2001. Those days I thought the theory was largely unfounded. Not so sure any more. This, if true either means low inflation or low black money. Maybe we need to dig deeper into those years and see if there were any local, underground, unofficial economic reason for that.

I have lot of questions but no answers. But the more I see this, the less convinced I am about the barometers we use for measuring our economic health.

I saw the ‘108′ ambulance while coming to office today. Which means the system is working. I hope, pray and beg this system works fine for ever. I hope I never get a chance to write anything negative about it in my blog.

This is a step in the right direction and one hopes a lot of good initiatives like this come through in India.

Kudos to Satyam’s Ramalinga Raju for funding such a neat initiative.

I had a flat tire this morning in Besant Nagar. I had the same tire flat yesterday as well.

Yesterday the vulcanizing shop was hardly 100 feet away. No such luck this morning. I roamed Eliots beach road, and after a few inquiries was redirected to a shop near the Besant Nagar bus terminus. Since I had similar experience yesterday morning, I decided to change the tube this time.

Two kutti fellows were manning the shop.

‘Enga? Beach road a? angellam vara mudiyadhu saar.. kadai la aal illai… neenga vandiya kondu vaanga!’ Not a very exciting prospect since I had already done my morning exercise routine. But still I was okay.

‘Enna tube poduve thambi?’

‘Nandhi brand saar!’

For a second I wanted to tell him I am not buying any agarbathi dabba! He also said it would cost 180Rs + 20 as his labor. After much thought, I called JustDial and enquired for mobile puncture service. That’s how I got Basha’s number.

Basha came all the way from T Nagar. He told me he starts from Parrys and roams all around the city. He made me wait for an hour, which he informed. I utilized that time to check out the quality aspects of Idly in Murugan Idly shop – not bad.

One thing is for sure - Basha is expensive. But his expertise and speed is amazing. He fixed my tyre in less than 10 minutes. Basha can also fix car tires.

Basha can be reached on this number: 9382819164. Number updated - Thanks to Ravi

Oh by the way he is remarkably well informed. ‘Office enge saar?… Sholinganallur a saar?…Wipro? CTS?.. software laam paduthidum nu solraanga saar…America la rendu periya company puttkichaame?…’

Wow. I was not prepared to handle that in the morning Overall, if you are prepared to pay something extra and be prepared to wait in a place, Basha is the guy to fix your tires.

கண்மணி அன்போட….காதலன் நான்..உன்னை பார்த்து எவ்வளவு நாளாச்சு? கிட்டத்தட்ட ஒரு மாசம்… நீ இல்லாம எவ்வளவு கஷ்டப்பட்டேன் தெரியுமா? அது என்னமோ தெரியல என்ன மாயமோ தெரியல.. உன்னை பார்த்த அன்னைக்கு நான் படுகிற சந்தோஷத்துக்கு அளவே இல்லை! உன்னை பார்த்த முதல் வாரம்.. உன்னொட நினைவுகளிலே சுகமா ஒடுது.. அதுக்கு அப்புறம்.. எப்படி சொல்லுவேன்.. ஒவ்வொரு நாளும் போராட்டம்.. மறுபடி எப்பொ உன்னை பார்ப்போம் ணு மனசு தவிக்குது…மரங்கள் அசய மறந்தாலும் காற்று விடுவதில்லை மாதிரி.. நானே உன்னை மறந்தாலும் நான் பார்க்கிற ஒவ்வொரு பொருளும் உன்னைத் தான் நினைவு படுத்துது…என்னை மாதிரி ஜென்மத்துகெல்லாம் நீயே கண்கண்ட தெய்வம்…

போன வாரத்திலே இருந்து ஒவ்வொரு நாளா என்னிட்டு இருந்தேன்.. 7 நாள் 6 நாள் 5 நாள்.. நாளைக்குத் தான் உன்னை பார்ப்போம் ணு இருந்தேன்.. நானே எதிர் பார்க்காம வந்த வங்கி விடுமுறை உன்னையும் என்னையும் ஒரு நாள் முன்னாடியே சேர்த்து விட்டது! வாழ்க Sep 30!

உன்னைக் கண்ட இந்த நாள் ஒரு இனிய நாள்!

PS:
Salary credited

It was all fine till I started to calculate the calories burnt by my morning jog/walk.
Apparently a 4 km jog/walk helps me lose a miserly 250 calories. A single idly (and it is never a single idly for breakfast) will add roughly about 70 calories. Maybe add another 20 calories for ‘ketty chutney’.

I learn that it takes a deficit of 7700 calories to lose a kilogram of body weight. Deficit here refers to the difference between calories lost and calories consumed. My Base Metabolic Rate is about 1800 calories. Assuming I consume exactly the same calories I burn (which is optimistic to say the least), I would need to run for 31 days to lose a single kilo of body weight. Or more realistically, I would need to keep running just to prevent from adding further weight too soon.

Last week, after a heavy lunch in ‘Ente Keralam’ I asked my friend how many calories would’ve been added to the system. It was an unlimited meal with two special pradhamans - he mentioned a ball park figure of 700-800 calories. And we are not even counting the many butter dosais, podi dosais, nendhram chips….Aah… Life is difficult.

One of my colleague, a married man, was leaving from work at around 8.30 PM when this other guy was just entering the office.

“Enna indha nerathula office, edhavadhu meeting irukka?”

Guess the answer?

“Illai, veetla current illai!!”

Staying late in office may or may not translate to getting work done, but it definitely means free uninterrupted power with A/C. Here are some of the other freedoms enjoyed by the folks, atleast in my office:
- free internet with WiFi,
- free unlimited coffee/tea,
- free unlimited packaged drinks (Tropicana and the likes),
- free DTH television in state of the art gadgets so that people can watch TV anytime (my company provides one on every floor),- - free recreational facilities like foose ball, table tennis, pool, and very recently Nintendo Wii,
- free visits from doctors from corporate hospitals,
- free cab facilities from various points in the city – either catch the bus near home early morning, or come to select points in the city and avail cabs every hour till 11 AM, house drop late in the night, flexible working hours, free concierge services, etc.

I am not the one to grudge anything here. Facilities are there to be used. But are we using it responsibly and judiciously? Not everybody at least.

For e.g one of my other colleague will come to office every morning with a To-Do list.
If you are in a hurry to say ’Maintaining To-Do list is good’, hold on.

His typical schedule is like this

11 – Come to office
11.15 – Finish checking mails – gmail, yahoo etc. Official mails can wait.
11.15 to 11.45 – Tea time.
11.45- he will start his first call - nothing official here as well. Sitting in Chennai, he is the undisputed Naataamai for his sister’s family back in his native. That Naataamai cum counseling session will go till lunch.
1 to 3 – a good lunch in Amaravathy, an Andhra restaurant nearby.
3 to 4 – Another call, this time to his parents back home.
4 to 5 – Tea break.
5 to 5.30 – call to his fiancée.

This is not to suggest that I eavesdrop. The only way I can stop listening to that guy’s outbursts over phone is to become deaf.

Usually something mysterious happens at 6. Maybe the power of his romantic love spurs him or whatever. He opens his daily tasks around this time and will wrap it all by around 2-3 AM, with due breaks for ‘Dhum’, ‘Sandwich’, ‘Orkut’. Since it is obviously late night, he will book a house drop and go back in company cab for free. One can imagine if some other team mate has a dependency on this guy’s work, chaos reign supreme. I am sure the guy would never go home if only the company provided him a dorm and a laundry. I am sure he is secretly praying for a ration card and voter ID in company address as well. I suspect he would even take a salary cut. Bachelor guys who stay away from home are the prime culprits in matters like this.

Recently, I came to know a good percentage of folks download movies for their viewing pleasure using RapidShare while in corporate network. When I gently asked them, pat comes the reply

“Prabu, adhu thappu na inneram block pannirupaanga la?”

I got reminded of some tamil proverbs which may not be appropriate to be quoted here.

If the administration provides for free pen and scribble, how to deal with people who take scribble pads and free Reynolds every day?

Result: they made pens and scribbles available on request.
Response - Some people request almost every day.

Of course not everybody is like this. But I fail to understand why even some percentage should be like this. There are some who simply do not have the maturity to work in a corporate environment where you are kinda free but expected to be responsible. The incidents I am observing in the last few months have made me conclude that a good percentage of people always find a thrill in abusing the freedom given to them.

In our previous facility in MEPZ, four people had to share a desk phone. All external calls were routed to an operator who would manually connect to calls once we tell the number. All downloads were prohibited, irrespective of whether it is for official purposes or not. How long does it take to go from the present freedom to the one in MEPZ? In my view, it’s only a matter of time.

I think IT companies can cut down their expenses by a substantial percentage by doing the following

- ask a percentage of their employees to work from home,
- ensures most of the folks do not stay back except office hours,
- and make an announcement that the top ten percentage of people who do the most number of outside calls from their work phone, and those who use company bandwidth to download non work related content will find their names exposed with data and a specified amount will be deducted from their salary. If they are non-productive resource, they should just be sent home.

I honestly do not think such people deserve any privacy or anonymity or even their job.

- That I can run. I am kinda surprised that I could run around 2.5km despite being overweight. I am sure most of the folks who confine to walking can graduate to jogging. Crossing five minutes is the hardest. It gets better after that. My friend Madhu keeps pointing me to the Chennai runners website. I don’t want to see that till I hit five km

- Adobe comes with lot of options to edit and manage RAW files. Long way to go for me:(

- The more I think about Nanganallur, the more I realize that it is a fantastic suburb for the middle class makkals in Chennai. There is a temple every 100 mts. It is well connected by trains, and almost walkable distance from the airport (if you are prepared to walk 4 kms that is). It has two star hotels nearby if you are in a mood to spend. Cost of living is also relatively cheaper in Nanganallur than areas like Velachery. All IT bus routes touch this place one way or the other. An evening walk to Anjaneyar temple is part of the routine for locals I guess. The temple is crowded all the time. Two rounds of that ghee dripping prasadam there should take care of your dinner needs if you are not in a mood to cook. What more do you want?

Worldwide Kisukisu headlines

- One important cabinet minister from TN holding a very important portfolio, who also goes by the name of a famous Shiva temple venue is all set to be replaced by a former RBI governor who goes by the name of Lord Vishnu. Good riddance!

- The shares of a well known bangalore based mid sized software company which is into embedded communications solutions is likely to go up as the SAT has approved its buy back plans. It is well known that the shares of the company plummeted from 550-600 in Dec’07-Jan’08 to as low as Rs.84 in Feb ‘08.

- The worldwide well known web search company launched yet another product which lets people see websites. The product as such is lightweight and cool. But two years back, people said they are going to kill PayPal with their checkout product, now Firefox and IE is expected to be killed with the latest offering. But all this killing talk seems to be just talk. As such the company believes in Ahimsa and haven’t killed anything yet, not even the spam ridden Yahoomail.

- Desi ka pundits portal had a piece about how a galeej Times news paper of India had stolen yet again a photograph from Flickr. The photographer cum blogger, like all bloggers including this writer had lamented about ethics, copyright violations blah blah in his blog. Not sure if the Windows and the Adobe Photoshop the blogger used was an original one or pirated.
Bloggers in general are not exactly exemplary in respecting IP laws. In matters between MSM and bloggers, the issue is always big vs small, not fair vs. unfair.

Bloggers Kisukisu
- The taste of a young research minded blogger makes anyone say ada paavi. The video he sent recently is actually (A)g(h)ory.
- Another blogger is celebrating his b’day today.
- One blogger remains the ultimate source of all news and information - from a shop lifting case by an Indian H1/Li junta in Tampa, Florida to the premiere of Slumdog Millionaire in LA, he knows it all. Adengappa!