Why I didn't get a pay rise

An astute reader of the news would have found it really difficult to miss the recent 'crisis' that Dubai is undergoing. I am tempted to doc-link the news reports to "'crisis' that Dubai is undergoing", but I'm not sure if I will be able to doc-link 3,333,234 articles on the crisis to that one line, hence I shall leave it to the reader to understand what I'm talking about or invite them to Google the issue.

Having worked in the area, I'm reasonably familiar with the organisation structure of Dubai World. A rough representation of the structure is as follows:

However, according to the Ruler of Dubai, there are two key matters to take away from this:

1. Dubai World has nothing to do with the Dubai Government and is responsible for it's own mess; and
   
2. Dubai World is just a company that happens to be registered in Dubai. Problems it is facing are not representative of any problems that Dubai as a city may or may not be facing.

Be that as it may, what surprised me more than anything was the way the world economy tanked when this news came out and how convenient the timing of the announcement was to Dubai itself. The announcement was made a day before the Dubai capital markets closed for almost a week due to Eid. There would have been no alternative but to announce the problem, it would have to be done sooner or later. Announcing it just before Eid holidays would save the Dubai stock markets from a slaughter.

What caught everyone unawares was the way the world markets reacted to the news. It would be understandable if share prices of companies with genuine exposure to Dubai World were affected, but no, shares plummeted across the board, across the world. While it is common knowledge that we live in an integrated world, such a level of integration is scary! For example, why should share prices of Mannar and Company Public Limited with its registered office in Kaaterikuppam in rural Tamil Nadu crash because Dubai World defaulted on its loans? M'n'C Public Limited (Mannar 'n' Company) has no dealings whatsoever with Dubai or the Arab world, for that matter (except for a visit by its MD to Doobai on a holiday in 2008).

Why should Tonga catching a cold have anything to do with the world economy contracting a deadly case of pneumonia? I'll tell you why, because of the bally press.

In the early days, the press played good Samaritan, reporting things as they are, letting people in one end of the country know what happened at the other end. As communication improved and became faster, more and more was reported. The fourth estate became more and more crowded. As the population of this notorious estate increased exponentially, the struggle for survival began and 'sensationalism' became the order of the day. The more shocking, Earth shattering and deadly the news, the more revenue the press made. Hence a sneeze became the pre-cursor to pneumonia. Press changed their roles from good Samaritans to doomsayers.

This is where one really appreciates the Arab press. While pressmen across the world were busy predicting when Dubai would be wiped off the map, Gulf News carried an article that merely said Dubai World is restructuring its loans to become more profitable. Simple, effective and concise. A bit like the British way of talking. "I'm in a bit of pain!" = "I've been stabbed multiple times in the back and am bleeding to death and will surely die if I am not treated within the next 2 seconds".

Imagine a world where the trigger for the credit crunch, the sub-prime loans was merely a "re-organisation of debt with a view to streamline future profitability". There would be no credit crunch, there would be no recession and I sure as hell would have gotten that pay rise...

Imsai arasan 23am Pulikesi a.k.a Microsoft Windows 7

A person would have to be stone deaf AND blind as a bat in order to have missed the slew of advertisements Microsoft has been flooding the telly with over the past couple of months, with the launch of Windows 7. Even then, said person with said weaknesses would have had to be completely cut off from a TV/Radio/News paper to have missed these ads. In other words, the only person who could've missed these is a hermit doing some good old fashioned tapas in upper reaches of the Himalayas.

The flip side of this analogy is that the audience Microsoft's ads target, spans the spectrum of the human race and a few from the animal kingdom. With such a large target, boy, did Microsoft do a Pulikesi!

Most self respecting Tamilians would have seen Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi and would also recall the scene on the bear hunt. The emperor, deserted by his 'loyal' followers when a bear is spotted fires several arrows and misses at point blank range. The bear is insulted by the lack of skill of its foe and, instead of killing Pulikesi, simply spits on him and moves on. An insulted Pulikesi nurses his wounds by taking up shooting classes. A soldier is tasked with holding an apple over his head so the emperor can shoot it. As each soldier dies, the target grows and is eventually replaced by a huge pumpkin, which is also missed! I may have screwed up the narrative above and made it not funny, but this was a massive slap-stick hit and still has me in splits each time I see it. Each time I see it, I also think about how implausible the whole situation is. Until Microsoft proved me wrong.

You see, the target demographic for Microsoft is massive, to say the least. A catchy ad campaign would have to capture a 3 year old and a 75 year old and everyone in between. I'm sorry to say, in classic Pulikesi fashion, Microsoft's missed them all! I have multiple bones to pick with Microsoft:

• what do you mean you got suggestions from users on what they would ACTUALLY like to see in an OS and implemented them in Windows 7? Does that mean for 20 odd years you sat on your high horse and belted out sub-standard products that didn't care about what the user wanted to do? Even if you did, I think it's a pretty big boo-boo to be admitting this every 10 minutes on telly

• one of the key features being touted is that of faster wake-up. Hasn't Apple being doing this for eons now? I can't help but noticing that my 2 year old MacBook wakes up faster than the Toshiba being showcased in the ad for faster wake up!

• a couple of the adverts feature folks being flown all the way from the UK to Tokyo/Houston just to prove the new laptops are capable of 'waking-up faster' and they are better at gaming! Each of these adverts include a limo ride to the airport in the UK, a flight to Tokyo/Houston and a gas-guzzling 4x4 ferrying the passenger from the airport to Toshiba/Dell, as the case may be. Come on Microsoft, the whole world's in a recession, you have climate change and environment friendliness being bandied about more often than Kate Moss's drunken charades or Amy Winehouse's drug-fuelled antics and here you advertise that you proudly brought a person across the world just to open a freaking laptop? Know your audience Microsoft, is that so hard?

• scriptwriters for the adverts could do with being more creative. If you want to showcase people friendliness, focus on the larger issues and club the smaller ones into a single ad for heaven's sake! Why, oh why, would you want to waste 30 seconds of precious prime-time screen real estate by having one irritating advertisement that says your new OS can arrange windows or the task bar is simple to use (again, stuff that Macs have been doing since the dawn of time!)

It's not so much an argument about the superiority of Windows over Apple's Mac OS or vice-versa. Windows 7, by Microsoft's own admission, has just become more like a Mac to use. It's as simple as that. Some changes that ought to have been done years ago, are being done now and there is nothing wrong with that, better late than never and all that. Look at Mac adverts, they are clean, simple, devoid of loud music or ignorant users (who, by the way, feel proud that they suggested something the Mac has been doing all along!), straight to the point and focussed on the features. No wonder you have fewer adverts for the Mac than Windows and no wonder again that an upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard to Mac OS X Snow Leopard costs £30 compared to £120 for an upgrade from Vista/XP to 7 - Microsoft needs the cash to fund the ads!

The ads end with, "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea!". I guess PC here stands for Puli(c)kesi...

This week, last year.

The few regular readers of this blog are, no doubt aware of my marriage, which happened last year. It's the reason I started blogging and have occasionally (read: a million times) referred to said marriage. I would, in this particular instance, strongly urge the reader not to focus on the marriage per se, but on the words "which happened last year". That's right, at some point in this week (the exact date does not elude me, I just chose not to refer to it, for the simple reason that this post hasn't been posted on that date!) our marriage turned 1. And no, this is not a mushy post on what I did/plan to do for the anniversary and how much I love her, but this is a mushy post on the year gone by.

From the time my memory goes back to, I have been fed a healthy diet of motoring magazines and continue to feed on them. One common theme I observe is that there is always a 'long term test report'. In these reports, there will invariably be a few photographs of a knackered looking car or motorcycle with some notes on how it is taking said knackering. To those who simply love jumping the gun, there will be no photographs and neither I nor the wife is knackered in any way. This was merely a comparison to put layout of this post in perspective. And like they assess the vehicles under different attributes, I shall assess a few categories of my wedding in the past year, followed by a satisfaction score.

Conversations:

At some point in August 2008, I made nervous first phone call to a girl that lasted the best part of 59 minutes. In those 59 minutes, I spoke for a sum total of 6 minutes and 25 seconds, including hmmmms, okays, yes, no and other monosyllabic emissions from my throat. The girl happily batted the remaining 52'35". Keen mathematicians would have already worked out that I was able to only contribute around 10% to the conversation. I'm happy to report that I am now able to talk for a lot longer now. But I suspect that's only because we are now together for a lot longer than 59 min. Her ability to chatter on incessantly is a blessing for me, for after a long day at the office talking in geek, it is amazing how restorative it is to have someone come and talk in a language other than geek. It's become something I look forward to when I get back home battered and bruised.

Lonely bachelors would nod with me when I say that coming home to someone is good, but I can now confirm coming home to someone raring to start talking to you is simply awesome! 9/10

Food:

Visiting dignitaries to our humble little home have poured accolades on the wife's culinary skills. They may have been polite, I don't know. But I need no other proof than the fact that my waistline, which stands testimony to her cooking skills.

In large corporations, there is a practice. When they want to sacrifice a (scape)goat, they hire a few managers and human resource personnel to talk to said goat. When they are done talking with the goat, it voluntarily catches the cheapest mode of transport allowable under expense reimbursement policies, goes to a discount store, bargains hard with the vendor, buys a knife, then goes to the butcher, hands over the knife, goes to the butcher's table and tucks itself in, ready to be sacrificed. That goat is not me. Culinary experiments were carried out on me in January 2009. From there on, there's been looking back and she has gone from strength to strength in the cooking department. I'm completely satisfied. 10/10

Life:

The transition from a carefree bachelor to a 'grahasthan' has had its ups and downs. Luckily there have been more ups than downs. Thanks to her. She's been very understanding. "I'm going for a BNO (boys' night out)", I would say. "No problem, go break a leg", would be the reply. Although I still haven't figured out why she grits her teeth each time she says this, like she is chewing leather. There's been no shortage of happiness and I am more than content here, hence the score is 12/10.

Overall experience:

Nothing short of exemplary. The product has been extremely low maintenance and high on efficiency. Given a choice between a super awesome, exciting life without her and the comfort of domestic bliss with her talking in the background, I wouldn't bat an eyelid while I chose the latter. I enjoy coming home to the wife and will continue doing so for until I retire. Then, I won't have to leave the house in the first place :). Happy anniversary 'week', dear wife.

Minnd the closing doors please!

Some are quiet, some a loud, some are meek, others ferocious. Some use the blessed phone, others don't need to. Some mumble, some jumble, other scream and we moan. Some chitter-chatter, others are aloof...you get the point, don't you? An astute reader of this blog would have already figured out what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you're just not astute enough. Yes, I am talking about train drivers/engineers or whatever fancy designation is given to them. In this post, they shall be called train drivers.

No brainer wasn't it? Allow me to explain.

"The average Londoner spends an average of 2 hours in a below average train on the average day". It's a fact no one can deny. Around an hour of each journey is spent hurtling down a dark, narrow tunnel with nary an idea as to distance or direction. The journey is bumpy, noisy and prone to "earlier signal failures" (wonder why  none of delays are due current signal failures or even signal failures...). In these dark and confusing times, the only beacon of hope is carried by train drivers. They pick up the public address system and enlighten the dull lives of their passengers by telling them which station they can look forward to next, why the train is not moving and even give you the excuse you can give for going late to your meeting. Just keeps the general excitement level up, keeps passengers on their toe and all that.

As with all good things in life, sadly, train drivers are human. So you will hear different accents, tones,  male voices, female voices, males with female voices and females with male voices. You also have wheezers, mumblers, screamers, chatter boxes and quietly efficient drivers etc. That's a lot of jargon there. I'm obliged to elaborate. Along with, where applicable, phonetic representations of the announcement, "Sorry about the delay ladies and gentlemen, we are just waiting for the signal to turn green ahead of us."

Wheezers: These are the fine people who breathe into the PA system. Passengers are treated to their every movement, breath or lack of it. "phphphphphph Sorry about the delay ladies and gentlemen, phphphphphph, we are just waiting phphphphphph for the signal phphphphphph to turn green ahead of us.phphphphphph phphphphphph phphphphphph phphphphphph ..."

Mumblers: These people think aloud. The PA system just happens to be overhearing their thoughts and transmitting it, albeit in a muffled way. (Smaller font indicates a lower volume) "Sorry about the delay ladies and gentlemen, we are just waiting for the signal to turn green ahead of us."

Screamers: These people haven't heard of the wonderful invention that is the PA system. They've never heard of them, nor do they need them. They only hold that black phone-like instrument to their ears 'coz the manual tells them to. They have no idea why they should hold them either. "Sorry about the delays ladies and gentlemen, we are just waiting for the signal to turn green ahead of us."

Chatter boxes: These guys tell you everything happening in their very exciting lives at all times of the day. "Sorry about the bump in the track, ladies and gentlemen, the track is uneven every 200 metres and I'll be talking to you every 200 metres and apologising for the bumpy ride." " sorry about the smell ladies and gentlemen, I shouldn't have eaten that can of beans last night" and so forth.

The quietly efficient blokes are usually very pleasant, they don't utter a word and quietly go about their job ferrying people from one corner of London to another. The only time they get annoying is just before the train starts from the first station. Normally, irrespective of the type, the driver would say, "this train is ready to depart, mind the closing doors please, mind the doors" (they always ask you to mind the closing doors twice, is it because there are 2 doors to each entrance that we need to be mindful about?). The quietly efficient ones just shut the door and make like a jack-rabbit that's spotted the fox. So when one tries to save time by walking all the way to the end of the platform BEFORE the train leaves, just so he can be the first to get off, the train doors just close, leaving you high and dry!

The worst offenders, you will find, are hybrids, who as the name suggest, either wheeze and scream or mumble and chatter or some similar annoying combination.

For those among us who think I've lost my marbles, I'm only talking about this since I had to endure an hour with a wheezing, screaming, chatter box this evening on the long commute back to the cozy confines of my residence. At one point in the journey, I even contemplated jumping ship and getting off at the nearest station and waiting for the next train, only to be foiled by the lovely weather we've been having recently.

So, "thank you!" to the driver for keeping me enlightened every step of way and "thank you!" to my dearest wife for relieving me of my noise canceling headphones. I had a lovely journey home.

दिलदार बीडी नो: २०२

There I was minding my own business, like I always do on the tube, miserable and tired from the daily grind, eagerly looking forward to going back home to a hot cuppa and a lot of food when I was given the lesson of my life on globalisation.
 
I was on the 1945 train from Uxbridge to Aldgate, the precise geographic location eludes me, suffice to say, it was in England! Completely knackered from a hard day at the office, I could barely keep myself from drifting off over the book I was trying to read. As is normal, I checked my surroundings just to make sure I was not surrounded by any dodgy looking characters (wink, wink!!!). To my left was a slightly inebriated gentleman; opposite me was another elderly gentleman, the very vision of calm, with the wizened air that only age can bring.

Diagonally to my right, were two girls who were carrying a suitcase and carry on bag each, chattering away in a language I did not quite understand, it must therefore, be French. All this is regulation occupancy for the train thus far. What made it unusual was the luggage they were carrying.

The suitcase for girl 1 was nothing remarkable, regulation airline baggage, soft suitcase. The carry on bag this girl had was also not quite remarkable, it was a shoulder bag with a lot of paint dabbed on at strategic places, but not making any sense. A modern artist might interpret that as the calm waves an ocean creates or a soothing orangish river of lava flowing toward the sea. I'm no artist; leave alone modern artist, hence the bag shall remain, in my mind, a shoulder bag over which paint spilled.

Girl number 2, on the other hand was the one who gave me the education on globalisation. She too was carrying a regulation suitcase, hard plastic this time. Her carry on baggage was also cloth. The writing on it was in a language that was strangely familiar. The bag had a picture of a sunrise between two mountains. The square picture was divided into four quadrants, the bottom 2 quadrants were black, depicting the mountains and carried the writing. The top left quadrant was a bright orange indicating sunrise and the top right one was blue indicating night. A beautiful picture and that's probably why the girl picked the bag up in the first place. But the writing carried the surprise...

I squinted my eyes and jogged my tired mind before identifying the language as Hindi. My second language in school was Hindi, several of my friends are Hindi and the operational language in Dubai, where I worked for three years, is for practical purposes, Hindi. Having identified the writing, it took but a minute to read it. The writing read:


दिलदार बीडी नो: २०२
दाम कम, स्वाद उथ्थम
वितरक: निजामुद्दीन बीडी कंपनी 
दुलियाजान, मुर्शिदाबाद (पंजाब)

Translated, that is:
Dildar Beedi No: 202
Low price, supreme taste
Distributor: Nijamuddin Beedi Company
Duliajan, Murshidabad (Punjab)

I was blown to bits by this. A French girl in England holding a bag advertising a beedi from Punjab was such a stupid marketing strategy!!! Did the boffins at Nijamuddin Beedi Company think someone looking at the advert in England will hop onto a plane to India to buy their beedi? A beedi for heavens sake, who did they think we are, Rajnikanth? A few minutes of gaping open mouthed at the bag later, I realised NBC probably did not advertise, but it was globalisation at play here.

NBC probably didn't have a clue as to how the girl got the bag or what it's doing in the UK. For all you know, the owner of NBC probably hasn't stepped out of Duliajan. By some stroke of global networking, I suppose some visitor from Punjab left the bag in the house of the people he/she visited in the UK, who would have given the bag to carry some shopping to their neighbours, who in turn could have left it with the girl, it is a small world after all! Or quite simply the girl could have picked up the bag on her last visit to India (which is a little far fetched considering Punjab is not quite on the top of the list for 'foren' tourism).

In any case, NBC has presence in the UK and girl mostly likely thinks the letters form part of the artwork. Little does she know.

PS: I suppose you would have noted that the punch line for Diladar Beedi No: 202 is that it's cheap, agreed, but it also says that the taste is supreme...does tobacco have a taste? All I know is smoking makes you stink a stink that's not too different from a skunk, while a beedi makes you stink a stink that is not unlike a skunk, that's angry and has a serious gas problem after eating a diet of baked beans while it is eating raw garlic and onions.

Stick around and you are toast....burnt toast

I'm not quite sure who did it or when the fire alarm was invented and I'm too lazy to check it up on Wikipedia. It's normally an extremely useful device when things go wrong. Although I am sceptical at times on the real use of the thing in small houses. I mean, when there is a fire, one could possibly see flames, smell the smoke, feel the heat or even hear the crackle of burning furniture. For an alarm to be of real use, the person in the house on fire would need to be completely challenged of all sensory perceptions or they need to be unconscious, in either case, the alarm itself is moot. If a person cannot hear, see, smell or feel, I suppose there is no point in an alarm screaming its little heart out or flashing all colours of the rainbow. I am aware of a certain camp that insists fire alarms are creatures that warn you in advance and all that, they may have a point. Maybe it is, I don't know. The only experiences I have had with fire alarms have all been unpleasant, comical even.

Situation #1:

Back in the heady bachelor days, there was a strong urge to create food. I use the word 'create' deliberately since chefs in many hotels do believe they 'create' food and make sure this is adequately reflected in the description of the dish in the menu. Said urge to create food stemmed from the fact that I was too lazy to leg it to Chennai Dosa for a decent Indian meal and there is only so much pizza you can order for delivery. And don't even get me started on the costs...

While the mind understands these factors, the stomach wouldn't and it would begin nagging the brain at regular intervals and my brain, weak as it is in these matters, would let me know I'm hungry just to shut out the din the stomach was creating. Everyone knows the brain 'controls' all actions of the body, however, my body is more democratic and my legs would, well, put up its legs and say, "no way I'm going out in the cold all the way to the hotel, just so the lump of lard above me can fill up, I ain't movin' out of my place." The brain would then run to my hand and ask if it was willing to help out in the overall scheme of things. After initially rejecting any notion of movement, the hand would grudgingly agree to help. Persistent fellow, this brain of mine. Once the support of the hands was obtained, the brain would take the hands and stomach along for support and convince the legs to make their way to the kitchen. That's the story of how I began cooking. Each day. Bi-weekly to be more precise. God bless the refrigerator.

I digress, as usual. Countless films and an even greater number of youth have discovered that cooking is an unforgiving art and it takes only the smallest error in judgement or the lightest delay for the food to burn. I'm no artist; hence the burning function would happen quite often. All it takes is a bit of smoke from the burnt food to set the smoke alarm, lovingly placed just outside the kitchen, off and it would start clanging away. And boy, does it clang! It would take an adrenaline filled few minutes to fan the smoke way from the alarm to make it shut up.

My question is this, why did the blasted thing go off? Don't I know I'm burning my food? For heaven's sake, I'm going to eat the ruddy concoction, burnt or not, so I, of all people would know the food is burnt. I see no need to advertise the fact to anyone who cared to hear.

I have battled the urge to connect hammer to smoke alarm several times and got married before my resolve weakened. The wife, I'm glad to say, has only set off the alarm twice in her 10 odd months in the kitchen in our house. The fire alarm lives to this day...

Situation #2:

My job requires me to visit different clients, virtually one a day. An office is a commercial establishment. All commercial establishments are plagued by the misery that is health and safety. Different clients have different approaches to fire safety. While all of them would kindly advice you to run like the wind should the fire alarm go off, they have different approaches to ensuring the alarm goes off in the first place. I might need to mention that none of them test the alarms with burnt food; they should try it, highly effective.

Some client's test the alarm once a month on a designated date and time. Others test them only at the frequency required by law. Still others test them every week. There are client's who are in buildings with more people on health and safety than the number of people who built the building. Here the tests are insane. Twice a week, random tests, extended tests, PA test, this test, that test. It's bonkers.

The alarms themselves are different in tone and method of notification. I have tried to reproduce some of them. Since I am running out of ideas on how to emphasise the type of notification and the urgency of notification. The urgency is denoted by the space (dots) between the tones.

My office: beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...
Client#1: krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.
Client#2: tingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingting and my favourite,
Client#3: Attention please........attention please.........we are investigating an alarm condition..............it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building..........please stand by for further instructions.............................Attention please........attention please.........we are investigating an alarm condition..............it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building..........please stand by for further instructions.............................

You guessed it right, the maniacal testing of the alarm happens at Client#3. I've never quite stopped doubling up with laughter each time they test it. An alarm, as the word quite rightly puts it, is an alarm. The very sight/sound of it ought to invoke an adrenalin rush, which in turn is supposed to trigger the fight or flight mode in humans and make us get our backsides out of the place ASAP. Telling some it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building conveys no sense of urgency. If the makers of this alarm wanted to have a human voice for an alarm, it should probably say, "ATTENTION YOU LAZY BUMS, THERE'S PROBABLY A FIRE SOMEWHERE IN THE BUILDING AND IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR BACKSIDES OUT OF THAT CHAIR AND GET THE HELL OF THE BUILDING, YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING TO BECOME HUMAN BARBECUE AND THEN GO TO HELL ANYWAY, BUHAHAHAHA!!! MOVE, NOW!!!" Now, that would get people moving not someone telling people they MAY get fried if they stick around...

What I'd like to know is this: is the rage I have towards fire alarms normal?

The rat race or headless chicken?

Ever wondered why it's called the rat race? I've never had the inclination to look this up in the venerable encyclopaedia of encyclopaedias. I've never 'wikied' it. Until now. And boy, did it let me down. The first 5 seconds of scanning the Google results page did not yield a result that seemed to make sense. Then I found this at Wapedia and it seemed to make know what it was talking about.

Wapedia seems to think the corporate game of keeping that promotion or progression oh-so-elusive causes a rat race. I'm sure the term progression was the love child of Human Resources/Human Capital honchos who sat up at night wondering what jargon they could come up with to make this process any more palatable. I digress, as usual.

Apparently, rats run around in tunnels, pretty much in circles and end up going nowhere. I'll save my comments on what I think of the scientists who did the 'study' on rats running around in circles in tunnels ending up going nowhere for another post. I suppose, it turns out some amused CEO of a company saw the way his executives were keeping themselves on edge and running around purposefully - and knew they were going nowhere, just because he was the boss. He decided to call it a rat race.

I've always equated the race for progression to the final dance of a headless chicken. For one, its frenzied, its urgent and most importantly, the poor chicken probably thinks it can have its head back when it gets to where it's going (how it can think without it's head, I am not too sure). However, a rat race sounds more positive. The word race evokes thoughts of a competition, with an outcome and a winner. However, it does not reflect reality, for in a race, you cannot legally influence the outcome with contacts, making it look like you're running the fastest and sucking up to the guy who holds the timer. You do it by winning the race fair and square.

My gut feeling leans toward headless chicken, quite simply because, there is a mad scramble to get to the next level, often without a clue on direction, means or methods. The chicken that does make it to the next level fastest is the one that has taken the most direct route, by lying still and letting the butcher have his way. The only issue is that the poor little chicken doesn't know that the next level is a boiling pot of oil. Catch my drift? The next level is no better; in fact it is only worse.

Why am I having this long winded whinge? Simply because I am a headless chicken too. All my life, I have looked at the next level and thought life would get easier. Such frivolous thoughts were fuelled by not-so-innocent bystanders who have confirmed just that. When I let the rope slack in 12th grade, I was goaded on with someone saying the hard work now will lead to a life of relaxation at graduation for I will have that extra edge, in CA, the constant thought that accompanied me in all those sleepless nights was that this struggle will lead to a plum job and life of relaxation. I am now sure that 5 years and 3 promotions down the line, life will be cool once I make it to the next level. Pucka puckk puckk...

Note to self: quit smoking

Right upto a decade ago, governments in general and tobacco companies in particular vehemently denied any links between smoking and what's that called, cancer of the dungs or bungs or, ah, its lungs. They cited several very competitive studies involving, let's say, a 1000 people. If less than 10% of the population studied did NOT get lung cancer from smoking, the study concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support a link between lung cancer and smoking. So you could smoke wherever you wanted and the tobacco companies were happy with all the revenue, government was happy with all the additional tax revenue, celebrities were happy with all the endorsement revenue and the lousy lout who paid for all this was happy thinking it was cool to do so. All was fine and dandy. The sun shined and birds chirped and all that.

Around a decade ago, a particularly chirpy lad sat up and said, hang on, if less than 10% of the population did NOT contract a disease of some form or the other, it means 90% did. To add insult to injury for the tobacco companies, the lad found people around smokers, were more badly affected. That's not a good thing. This lad being well connected, lobbied and lobbied hard. Suddenly, the fashionable thing to do in government circles was to ban smoking in public places. 

Considering I'm not a smoker, and detest any form of smoke, I'm all for banning smoking in public places. However, like all good things, there was a catch. Anything relating to banning is required, by law, to be brought about by the government. Paragraph 1 above clearly demonstrates that the government is not very good at defining things. True to their reputation, they messed up on the definition of public places. They included almost every place but the kitchen sink within their definition of public places, making smokers an exiled species, who were forced to go outside every time the urge to light up got the better of them. It was no longer fashionable and they became the equivalent of social outcasts. In all their wisdom, the government forgot to include the most of public of public places, sidewalks and pavements.

This blasted oversight has created more smokers than before. Thanks to this loophole, non-smoking walkers were left with two choices. They could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nicotine, acetone, acetylene, formaldehyde, propane, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, and many others or they could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and particulates. Each option is less appealing than the other. However, most pedestrians choose the slow route to hell simply because they prefer not getting run over. 

It's extremely annoying when one is walking along the pavement, minding your own business and pottering about and you're stuck behind a block-head with a death stick, who is also, incidentally, pottering about. One then speeds up and overtakes said block-head, only to get stuck behind death stick toting block-head in front of the one one just overtook. The result is that one is always smoking if one is walking. 

In light of the above, I can do one of two things, I can quit walking or I can quit smoking. I have decided to do the latter, but in order to do that, I need help in raising money to do so. I will be gratefully accepting any monetary assistance from philanthropists who would be willing to help a poor bean counter buy a gas mask. Thank you.

Buzz kill(ed)

The noodle's been stretched thin, real thin. Faced with one deadline after the other, its been disentangled and laid out in a straight line. I've read somewhere that the noodle is at its best when its all tangled and messy. Combined with the fact that men in general are accused of being incapable of multi-tasking, I must admit that I'm guilty of not being able to handle more than 4 tasks at a time. That completes my leave letter explaining my absence from the blogging world over the last month.

With most of the storm now past me, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that said noodle is slowing getting knotted and messy again, so I'm going to take a crack at some posts I've been wanting to post for the past month, but haven't gotten around to doing so (provided I can remember what they were!)...

Racism on the internet

Ever wondered why many websites ask you enter random gibberish when you're trying to do something in a hurry? Blogspot itself is guilty of this. Want to read a post in a hurry and comment on it before the boss notices, sorry buddy; you've got to type "Ima-nid-iot" before your comment gets posted. Which in itself is forgivable since it protects the site from the scourge called spam. What makes it all the more difficult is the way the letters are scribbled and arrogantly lie sprawled across the screen at impossible angles. If your boss can't find out you're blogging from what's displayed on your screen, then the way you twist your face and hang upside down from the ceiling just to read the blasted code surely will give your game away.

I call it the monkey check, since you look like a monkey trying to read the code.

I only found out a few months ago that the monkey check was designed to deter spammers, until then I simply thought that was a cruel joke being played out on netizens by web designers. As spammers got more innovative, the text had to be more and more squiggly and unreadable. If a human struggles to read it, a computer sure as hell can't seemed to be the prevalent logic across board rooms the world over. I suppose the next step in anti-spam security would be to print out your comment, sign and date it, go to a designated building and hand it over to another human being who will scan the document and email it to another designated human being who would print the text out and get yet another human being to deliver it to the human being who posted the original blog on which the comment has been given. Wait a minute... isn't that called the postal system? The very system the internet is threatening to replace? I wonder if we are taking steps backwards here...

Without getting into the rather complex argument on backward steps, I should probably leave it to said occupants of board rooms to decide how to fight spam. The purpose of this post is different. It is to expose the true intent of this so called anti-spam check.

Like all other inconveniences, I often have a stiff upper lip when it comes to gripes and comply without complaining. I resigned to my fate and went about my fate squinting and groaning all the way. This morning, something pushed me realise the true intent of this check - racism. Allow me to explain.

I was, as usual, sneaking a peak at the good friend's rants on the Indian prison system and wanted to offer my 2 cents worth. I typed in a long winded comment and jubilantly hit publish, only to be confronted with this:

I thought, of course I'm a human you stupid computer, tell me which other animal can type so many words and click on publish and imagine what a coincidence it would be if the words mostly made sense! Never before have I actually been confronted with the truth on why the gibberish is to be entered, it took me completely off guard. And then the real truth stared me in the face - this check was born out of racist tendencies of humans. The designers of the internet wanted to future proof the internet so that only humans can comment on blogs and create email ids. Non-humans, i.e., animals and aliens, would not be allowed to benefit from the internet since this check is only for humans. I am ashamed and shocked! Innocent users, including myself, have unwittingly become accessories to this cruelty.

Having been scorned, I did what any human would do under the circumstances; I posted a blog about it and now more people can become monkeys to prove they are human!

P.S.: Should you want to post a comment, please enter the following text (and the text blogspot asks you enter):

De ja vu....no, this has nothing to do with Paris!

The news hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd seen this happen before a couple of years ago. Back then I wasn't worried for I was constantly around him and could see my 'touches' in a lot of his pranks, arguments and the way he wound my sister up like a tightly strung guitar. It all brought back some strong memories. Memories of my mother's strong hand to be precise. It was all very amusing and even a little helpful, for I could bust him just when he wasn't expecting it and in ways he hadn't thought of, for I had the benefit of hindsight and knew exactly what I, as a budding teenager would have overlooked.

I also knew that the moment I moved out of Dubai, my influence on him would diminish to some extent and he would go on to become a good boy and all would be peachy. The call from my sister proved me wrong.

I moved out of Dubai a few days into 2008. So, I haven't been around the fellow for a quarter under 2 years. He's only met me at my engagement and wedding subsequently. The import of that call from my sister was that he has begun eating thayir sadam exactly the way I do, almost 2 years later! I was, understandably shaken, but not stirred. I was secretly thrilled that my lineage will continue, that my eccentricities will continue to live on. Until last night. Now I can be openly thrilled!

Allow me to explain. I've mentioned before, that I have always loved writing, but until I started this blog, I've never had the discipline to sit down and write. As a teenager, the only writing I could get done was called homework or something like that, and that too only got done with a gun pointed firmly in my direction. The moment the bally homework got done, I'd be out of the house before you could say, "Jack Rabbit". My ultimate fantasy those days was to have a secretary to dictate to, who would write in my handwriting, while I played cricket or tennis or football or whatever it is that I wanted to play.

Unlike me, thankfully, my nephew is not a lazy bum and he has decided to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard as the case may be) and has come with this thoroughly likeable and frankly honest account of his trip from Fremont to Seattle while visiting my other sister. I couldn't help but reproduce it below:

"One fine day, my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin and I set off on a trip to Seattle on the evening of the 3oth of June. We drove for approximately 2 hours before we reached our first destination - Red Bluff, where we stayed in a well-known hotel named Best Western. It was very comfortable. We stayed for the night until next morning when we vacated after a good dose of cereal, bread and pancakes for breakfast. Barely half an hour passed when we entered into a long stretch of scenery on both sides. Saumya chitthi took control of the car and we were heading along to the day's planned destination - Mount  Shasta followed by a visit to the famous Crater Lake.

On the way we spotted a Chinese restaurant in which we had an enormous lunch where I mainly stuffed myself with large amounts of  Tofu, a Chinese souvenir to show the expertise of American chefs on Chinese cuisine: they had made it so well. We resumed our journey (Chitthi still at the wheel) afresh with food, toward the beautiful snow-capped Mt. Shasta (formed due to volcanic activity). It was quite a long journey but we made it pretty fast and had lots of time to gaze at its scenic beauty with eyes glued to the pair of binoculars I had brought along with me.

While climbing up we almost went hurtling down the cliff if it had not been Chitthi's sharp eyes and a big boulder at the end of the road! We laughed heartily at the near escape and my granddad and I started piling up more rocks along the edge of the cliff. We paused for a few minutes to take in the fresh air and stunning view of the mountain from that area. We took a few pictures, imaginarily pushing the boulder which we owed our lives to. We were quite low in gas and made to enter a gas station as soon as we descended from the mountain into a small village at the base of the mountain. After refuelling the car we resumed the journey toward Crater Lake which is one of the deepest freshwater lakes in the world with a depth of about 2000 feet below sea level. Upon reaching there we witnessed the natural beauty of the lake and soon found out, that its diameter was 5 miles across and was created by the action of volcanoes not unlike the formation of Mt. Shasta. When we looked down into the lake from the magnificent vista-point provided, it looked like still water but it was actually a trick played on the eyes. After many pictures (Keena included in most of them) we tore our eyes away from it and continued the journey downwards.

I dosed off while Chitthi drove through an unnaturally silent and lonely road for 3 hours without any sight of other cars and reached the yet another cosy Best Western in a village called Rice Hill. All the pictures we took had been uploaded on the laptop by Sri Chittappa who had brought it along with him. Keerthana who had had a tremendous time (with the exception of a lot of visits to the toilets in different places!) and was jumping around on the bed apparently thrilled with the sight of the mountain and the lake. I too was enthralled by the visit to these two famous landmarks and was eager to visit more of the planned sites. So next day as per schedule we started off in the morning toward the big city of Portland where we saw a very large port with many ships and boats dotting the bay. The view was outstanding from atop one of the bridges that we used to cross the port and we could see miles and miles of water surrounding us on our sides. We crossed the bridge and entered the main city of Portland where we entered a store named FRYS ELECTRONICS where we searched for a suitable laptop for my grandparents since there was no policy of tax in the state of Oregon in which Portland is situated quite unlike the regulations of San Francisco. It was the 4th of July, widely celebrated as the American Independence day."

I've not edited anything other than breaking it into a few paragraphs. At his age, I know I suffered from a horrible case of bad spellingitis and it warms the heart to see a clean essay from a hyper active photocopy of myself. Keep it up Sid! I'm proud of you and keep eating thayir sadam the way you are now!

P.S.: I can't help but notice the emphasis on food in his essay. Yet another trait of mine?

DON'T do that!!!

Eureka! It struck me like a bolt of lightning. The magnitude of the conspiracy boggles the mind. The clever deception by Church authorities and naïveté of the public which fell into the trap with their eyes open truly is something to admire.

No, I'm not talking about the latest book by Dan Brown.

What I am talking about is how the Church at Notre Dame is trying to shake its "Hunchback of Notre Dame" image. The Church belongs to an elite, elusive and nearly extinct genre of tourist places in Europe - one where entrance is free.

On approaching its hallowed grounds, I was getting ready to whip out the dusty old wallet and dish out the dough, just like I'd done at every other place in Paris. In return for this eagerness, I was greeted by the icy glare of the attendant at the entrance who muttered something in French, which I initially understood to mean, "You don't have enough money to sniff the air around this place, let alone coming in and looking around." The insult hit me so hard, I brought out the plastic in response - I'd rather live the rest of my life in debt than be insulted by you! Same icy glare, temperature reduced by a further 2 degrees.

Now I was perplexed. This was the first place since the road-side dhaba on NH47 just outside Perundurai that refused to accept a credit card. My super fast brain quickly deduced that the attendant must be trying to convey something. I frantically looked around for help and found it in the form of a notice pasted on the wall, in English, that said "Free Admission." Aah, the bloke was actually saying I can walk in for free. Nice.

Just below that sign and all way into the main Church hall, there was the symbol of a camera that was struck off. My keen sense of observation told me that this means, in return for letting you into the Church for free, you agree not to take any photos and peace and happiness prevail in the world. This was confirmed by another notice in writing that said so in as many words.

Those who know me would agree that I'm a stickler for rules and abide by all laws, as long as they are convenient to abide by, so the camera was promptly dumped in the bag. That's when problems started. Apparently, either I was eagle eyed to have spotted 4 million signs saying you're not allowed to take photographs or every other visitor in the Church was blind as a dingbat. The place was swarming with cameras, all with flashes blazing. Good thing this was Church, were it some other place, all it needed was some music for a new entrant to think he'd entered a discotheque of sorts with funky strobe lighting.

Stifling the urge to start dancing and controlling rage is an exercise I wouldn't recommend. That's exactly what I did. I began questioning why (mostly) honest, (mostly) law abiding citizens would want to so blatantly ignore the photography ban boggled the mind. When the dust settled, I concluded by blaming digital cameras behind the outrage. These small, handy little blighters almost talk to you and goad you into getting click happy.

However, even after I returned to London, I was searching for answers. This morning, I hit the jackpot. As I was sitting on the Tube, travelling at 5 MPH, it struck me. Tell a person there's wet paint on the wall and they will always touch it to make sure its wet. Telling a child not to break the window is the most certain way of making sure it is broken. Similarly, after being taunted for years about the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Church suddenly found out that nobody wanted to take any photographs of an ugly thing. So, at a brainstorming session, one bright spark must have come up with the idea that putting up signs of "No Photography" would certainly result in photographs being taken by the millions, simple, clear reverse psychology.

So, while everyone else came back with this:

I came with this: 

There is a problem with my theory though. The hunchback of Notre Dame might be trying to re-invent its image, but what about the Lido? The exact same thing happened there the previous night. There is a photography ban at the Lido while the show is going on. Fair enough, considering the show is exotic and a work of art, you don't want it all over YouTube. Further more, the last thing Lido authorities want is for a dancer to get distracted by a rogue flash and trip over his or her step bringing the house down, for all the wrong reasons. All clean, undisputable logic.

However, here's the important part. While the Church at Notre Dame has a reputation to correct, Lido is no hunchback, Lido is associated with beauty, among other things. Thinking about the Lido shattered by theory on reverse psychology, somewhat... until I had a hard think about the Lido's runaway photographer - he was Indian. Then it all made sense again. They were two separate incidents, Notre Dame is still trying to shake its image, while at Lido, the photo was just an Indian thing - we don't follow rules, simple!

Follow up: I now save £20,000...every month!

It is common knowledge that I saved £9,970 (£10,000 depending on how you look at it) by buying an, ahem, 'not so original' Rolex watch. Some might argue that it's not a big deal and that by buying an air ticket as opposed to buying the plane itself one can save somewhere in the region of $19,999,000 (assuming the plane is a small second hand exec jet and the ticket is a long haul one. There is no real upper limit on the amount you could save. However, you can sell the jet after the journey and recover some money out of it and the same can be said about the Rolex.

This week, I discovered I've been saving around £20,000, on average, EVERY month, for the past 288 months, that's around £5.76 million. With that kind of money, I should be richer than my wildest dreams... to date. Sadly, I'm not. This is a matter that's worth some deep introspection. And introspect is exactly what I did. Why didn't I save that kind of money? Where did I go wrong?

Some really deep analysis later, I realised something profound. In order to save money, you should have not spent it on something and in turn, in order to have the choice of not spending money on something, you should have had the money in the first place - present or future, which, sadly, I do not. Having made peace with myself on my shortcoming, I decided to spin a tabloid isstyle tale to the world (kuppura vizhundalum, meesaila mannu ottalai and all that) on how I am saving the money.

On a related note, have you heard of the Russian billionaire* who gets into a limousine in Moscow, gets stuck in traffic going to the airport, jumps into a jet and flies 6-7 hours to London Heathrow airport, gets onto another limousine, gets stuck in traffic coming into central London for a couple of hours and 2 hours later does the same thing all over again to return to Moscow?

For just two blessed hours, this monumental idiot spends around a day in travel! What does he do in those two hours - he gets a haircut. That's right, he gets his mop cropped and to do that, he comes to London all the way from Russia. Makes you wonder:

• Is there a serious dearth of barbers in Russia? Have all of them gone digging oil wells to make said moron richer still?
• Does this guy have anything at all to do in life other than getting his hair cut?
• Is this barber better than Veluchamy who used to trim my mop in school?
• Don't even get me started on the 2 hour long hair cut. If there was a way to burn my hair in a controlled manner that would rid me of extra hair in 10 seconds, I'd willingly burn it, without a second thought. I can't sit on a barber's chair for more than 15 minutes (of which I nap for 10).

The haircut itself doesn't seem too over the top to begin with (pun intended!). The reporter of one of the newspapers that came out with this story took it and in his before and after photographs, I can't really make out any difference, it looks like the hair wasn't cut at all, and it had additionally been tumble dried for good measure.

For the money you pay, according to the barber himself, you get his services for the whole day. I immediately have problems with that:

• not to be offensive, if I wanted to hang out with barbers, I can do it for free with any of the barbers I've had so far right from Veluchamy to Imran, thank you.
  
• if a Russian oligarch wants to hang out with his barber rather than his I'm-a-bigger-snob-than-you golfing partner, there is a slight problem with society at that level.
• Not only is the guy (the barber) being lazy by only servicing one client the whole day, he's actually minting money out of this!
  

Apparently, one of the highlights of the 'experience' is that you get to eat the meal of your choice WHILE your hair is being cut. Who does that? Tell that to my parents! They don't let me eat anything AFTER my hair is cut before I shower, let alone while! Imagine this conversation:
Barber: "what would like to eat, saar?"
Me: "I'll have a caviar salad, thank you"
Barber: "Will that be with or without dressing, saar?"
Me: "Without, please"
Barber: "Wokay saar, but you do realise that we cannot avoid garnishing it with hair?"
Me: trying not to be sick.

* while I could find the link to the £20,000 haircut story online, I couldn't find the link to the particular story I've referred to here. Please bear with that

P.S.: We very often tend to dismiss the work done by hairstylists as petty and demeaning, it is not. Having said that, a barber by any other name is just a barber, just like a bean counter by any other name is just as boring. What offends me is the obscene money that is spent on the act of keeping said mop clean.

P.P.S: I admire this bloke for he is making more money doing over the top work than any of ever will! Who knows, for one day, he just might engage my employer to audit his company's books with me being the audit manager, so might as well suck up to him :)!

French for Dummies

Being a person who has just returned from Paree after a rather grand 5 nights and 6 days, I can say I'm a bit of an authority on French, if I may say so myself.

The French language is beautiful, eloquent and poetic. There is one small problem with it though. Any poor soul who lands in France without an a French degree will be completely lost, at sea, helpless, you get the drift...

This is exactly what happened to me, I can't understand French even if my life depended on it. All I know is "Parlez vous France" means understand French or something similar to that, so I would tell any Frenchman trying to converse with me, "No parlez vous France" and he'd look at me like I ate a toad in front of him.

My long stay in the country helped me learn the ways of the French and their language and I have come to a simple, yet very effective method of learning French. It might sound very complex and difficult at first, but when you understand what I'm saying, it will be a piece of cake. The trick is as follows:

"In order to converse/write in French, one must append the fifth letter of Anglais alphabet to a word population comprising 95% or thereabouts of the Anglais language."

For those of us who grew up reading _______(fill in the blanks with any topic) for Dummies, it translates into this - add the letter 'e' to 95% of the words

in English and you have French. If you really want to become a French literary figure, you would only have to add a whole lot of letters in between each word and simply forget to pronounce them. Confidently silence critics by saying they are silent letters.

Memories of a drama by Crazy Mohan came flooding back to me when I heard the French pronounce words. In it, a superstitious Crazy Mohan's (his name in the drama is Sivaram) wife concludes that the name Sivaram is the cause of all their woes and promptly calls a Nameology expert in to change it. Names suggested ranged from Savaram to Savam to Sivaaraajxtpm. With jxtp being silent letters in the last name. At that time, it sounded extremely far fetched and funny, however, in France, no one would have batted an eyelid to a person with a name like that pronounced Sivaram. Here are a few prime examples:

• Fresnes (a place name) is pronounced Frene
• Val d'Europe (a mall) is pronounced Val d'hope
• Montevrain (another place) is pronounced Montevrey
• Calais becomes Calay
• English becomes Anglais

Sitting a quiet place and brooding on life makes you wonder how much of money must be wasted by the French. Just imagine, on the road they have huge signboards where precious space and materials are used to point you in the direction of Fresnes, when all you need is Frene. In fact, I bet a French book of 500 pages would come down to around 200 if the silent letters are eliminated. Think of the environmental impact of this! Come to think of it, do you think the French language is in its present state because of classic French writers who tried filling pages?

London to Chennai...by train!

On the 14th day of the 8th month of the 9th year of this millennium, I boarded a train at an unearthly hour at London's St. Pancras International station. In my sleepy, groggy mind, I had no idea that in a few hours, I'll be one of the millions of people who have travelled from London to Chennai Central station. By train.

Allow me to give you some perspective. The normal flying time between London and Chennai is 10.5 hours, and that's if you get a direct flight. I covered the distance in 2.5 hours flat.

Before I start gloating over the achievement, could someone please tell me if Chennai has been renamed Paris? I'm aware there is a Parry's inside Chennai, but have they named the entire city after that corner? I ask, because, when I got down at Chennai Central, for some strange reason the name board read Paris Gare du Nord. I was going to Paris for a holiday with the wife, so you may say, if it said Paris Gare du Nord and you wanted to go to Paris Gare du Nord, it must be PGdN. Wrong. It was Chennai Central, I'm sure.

Here's why. We got onto the platform and immediately noticed the following:

• It was almost uncomfortably warm;
• None of the sign boards were in a language we could understand;
• The tracks were littered with, well, litter;
• The station was extremely crowded;
• The people looked at us as with more than a hint of suspicion; and most importantly,
• The toilet at the station charged us 1 Euro to take a leak in a dirty, smelly loo.

Now tell me, was I wrong in thinking I'd dosed off on the wrong train and somehow landed in Chennai Central? I only realised I'm at the intended destination when I left the station. There were no auto drivers fighting over who got the honour of my business.

Once outside the station, we had no doubts in our minds that we were indeed in Paris. Except while driving. The city was reasonably clean, well laid out and the buildings were simply amazing. The roads were comparatively wide (you must remember, I'm comparing the roads to London where roads are no wider than an old man's komanam).

However, Parisian drivers are a different thing altogether. They have the patience of a bee in a bottle - much like their Chennai counterparts. If you don't start moving at a brisk pace the microsecond the signal turns green, you can be darned sure that the driver behind you is going to glue his/her hand to the horn. This comes as a bit of a shock considering I've come from England where the drivers would allow you to complete your tea party and say tally-ho to your friends before a polite toot to draw your attention to the fact the signal changed to green last year and you're holding traffic up.

Quickly recovering from initial confusion and shock, I made swift progress and landed up in Disneyland, where we were lost in the magic of the place, with only the heat reminding us of Chennai.

PS: I just got back from a foren trip, so I am going to write a number of posts on crazy things that happened/occurred to me while in Paris :)

The art of doodling

Its summer, the sun shines, occasionally, the birds chirp all the time and life is generally hunky dory because everyone in Europe is in some other country on holiday. Especially bosses. So its all good.

Clients tend to take holidays too and generally the priorities of the big bad world of business shift, not everything is due yesterday and there are less fires to fight. So now is when companies bring out the artists in their employees.

With the focus shifting partially from business, companies now use this time to train their employees. Accounting standards that have long been forgotten are refreshed, ways of auditing that are alien to you are taught and expected to be applied.

However, none of this interests me more than to help me earn my 3 square meals a day. What I would really like to do is to spend a day after each training course analysing the doodles each person has indulged in during the training.

I'm not quite sure what it is that triggers the scribble happy hormone in the body, is it the free paper, free pen, free coasters or the extreme boredom of a classroom session, one will never know, but without exception, everyone doodles. I'm sure it would make an interesting case study on doodling trends. We could probably learn truckloads about the employee from what they doodle.

Some are inherently artistic and draw exquisite pencil sketches while pretending to take notes and listen, others who are less gifted, like me, simply settle down to identifying fancy, out of this world ways of writing/signing their own name.

During the 8 hours I was in training this week, I would have signed my name at least 450 times (I kind of lost count around the 300 mark). The person sitting next to me put Picasso to shame with around 4 master pieces while two others on my table tied their cross-knots duel at 30 each.

So tell me, what do you doodle when you're in training? Answers which even vaguely imply that you listen to the lecture will be taken with more than a pinch of salt.

How (not) to run a marathon

This post, much like the rest of me, is terribly late. This seems to be marathon season, full marathons, half marathons, 24, triathlons, 24. Except for marathons of the 24 variety, of which I am a veteran, I admire the tenacity and discipline marathoners of the physical exertion variety display, whether it is for a cause or simply to prove a point to themselves.

A recent case in point is my sister who just completed her first half marathon.

Most women, particularly Indian women tend to use childbirth as an excuse to lay off exercise and conveniently blame children for their being unable to shed weight (I know I'm going out on a limb and being very stereotypical here, apologies to all hurt feelings). This, in many cases, is a valid and true fact - one that I find very sexist since men cannot use the same excuse for not losing weight. I digress. My sister has always been an oddball fitness freak of nature in the BBC household (BBC for those who are wonder what it is, stands for Bala's Belly Corporation, an affectionate nickname my father had when in school). So it comes no surprise that this freak was the one to complete said marathon. Kudos to her and I find myself sadly short of words that adequately describe how I feel.

You know what I think about marathon runners? They're nuts, dumb, don't know the ways of the world. Don't get me wrong, but there are marathons that are run and marathons that are participated in. Most marathoners fall into the former category, yours truly falls in the latter. That, I believe, is the smart way to do it. Sure, with the right training, one can run the whole distance, but what if one does not have to run, but still finishes the marathon? So how does one participate without the road runner act? Simple, take an auto rickshaw for part of the way.

Allow me to explain. When I was in school, we were required to run a torturous 10km run every morning come rain or snow (unfortunately snow never came to Lovedale, but rain did come, in bucket loads). The route was as circuitous as it gets. We'd have to start off from Top Flats and literally patrol the school campus and come back via Junior School to Senior School. Now, the distance from Top Flats to Senior School is 500 metres, why one would take a 10km route in the first place was beyond me, but no one listened to me. The genius in me, on this occasion, was suppressed. That, however, did not stop it altogether.

A group of around 6-7 of us would amble along at the very end of the crowd making sure no boy is left behind, wounded or otherwise eaten by a passing leopard. In a gratitude-less world, this free, selfless service was rewarded with reprimand from KB, the physical instructor. However, reprimands never stopped us from doing what we loved, service to society, so this happened every morning.

One day, said genius had an epiphany. Every morning we pass the school garages and the school auto rickshaw would just be starting off on its daily milk run. Why not save the environment a little bit by taking a ride on an otherwise empty auto rickshaw? So we all piled in. We would have travelled the sum total of 549 metres when the vehicle was stopped, by none other than KB. What's worse, the checkpoint was right outside my house.

Like most teachers, KB had lost his sense of humour and ability to recognise genius somewhere around year 33 of his career. Needless to say, he did not take kindly to our little act of innovation and we were made to kneel down for half an hour, outside my house. It was a case of so close yet so far.

So, I ask my sister, you were the clever one in our family (and I've always been the black sheep), pray, why didn't you take an auto rickshaw on your half marathon? Shortage of 'ricks in your part of the US of A?

Nevertheless Saumya, I'm proud of your achievement (despite running like everyone else in the marathon)!

I blame the recession.

The recession does funny things. For one, who would've thought it possible to have discounted airfares in the middle of summer? Well, there were offers galore and I decided to relieve the wife of some of her home sickness and send her to India on a month long holiday. The time for travel came and I soon found myself staring at the lonely end of an entire month home alone, bang in the middle of the British summer. Almost cruelly, the weather was perfect for going out; Wimbledon only suffered a day or so of rain. For those of you who are already squirming thinking this is just another lonely lover post that is a long-winded rant about how much I miss and love my wife, rest easy, this isn't. I did miss her like the dickens and I do love her, but I'm not one to wax lyrical about it. If I was, I'd be a poet, not a bean counter.

This is about the tremendous journey of self discovery that happened during the one month she wasn't around. The loneliness compounded a pre-existing, but unknown medical condition and made it get even worse. Thank heavens for air tight windows and relatively dust free Britain. Had this happened while I was in India, God knows what would have happened to me, I would probably have contracted deadly diseases like Malaria, Dengue and such, simply because this condition worsened.

The amazing part is I didn't need to go to a doctor either to diagnose my condition or to take corrective medication, self medication if you will. The disease began rearing its dark ugly head on the first weekend alone itself. However, it was around week two of this ordeal that I diagnosed it as Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia (pardon my Latin). Like a bum who is speaking at his first AA meeting, I told myself, "I am butt lazy!" It came to me like an epiphany. Corrective action was extremely easy after that.

Allow me to explain. Wife and parents left on their respective 10 hour flights in different directions on a Thursday. Friday was spent slaving away at the office making up for lost time. Saturday came and I got up at a rather leisurely 10 AM, settled down in my usual place in the drawing room with a few slices of bread and steaming cuppa' and switched on the TV. I must have moved from the place around 10 hours afterwards, to go straight to bed. I got up on Sunday at a more respectable 8 AM and decided to get some work done, came to drawing room and my jaw dropped. What I saw was a semi-circle of assorted junk starting with 3 remote controls, 3 coffee cups, the plate I used to eat the day before, the X Box controller and a laptop. I kid you not; they were in a perfect semi-circle around the place I sat in. I gave myself a mental kicking and excused the action, or lack of it, as the first day of 'freedom' and that things would be back to normal, with the house remaining squeaky clean, just the way I like it. The rest of the day was uneventful, but only because I packed my bags and headed out to a friend's place for lunch and to watch India get hammered by England in the 20Twenty world cup.

The week passed reasonably uneventfully until Friday. The sink was full of dishes, the dustbin was overflowing and stinking to high heavens and I had only opened the fridge to take the milk out and replace it each time I had coffee - once a day. End result, rotting vegetables were stinking the fridge up. Said epiphany struck then. I was uncharacteristically living in squalor. I had become a lazy lump of trash. Before 7/12 happened, I enjoyed living alone, I enjoyed keeping my house very unlike a bachelor pad and I loved cooking alone and experimenting on myself. Now, I hated living alone, while I still enjoyed keeping the house clean, I had no will to do so and I hated cooking alone.

I am a man of knee-jerk reactions and hence I embarked on a zombie-like cleaning spree and chucked out 3 garbage bags of potentially fly, rodent and disease attracting junk. The remaining two weeks of wifey's absence passed off just like the good 'ol days minus the cooking.

I'm happy to report wife is back in town and all is well, the birds are singing, the sun is shining (although occasionally now 'coz when she came back, she brought a classic wet British summer back with her) and I've been cured of Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia. For now.

Moral of the story: Want to live a happy contended life in a small corner of your world, don't live in a recession.

Of customer service and the lack of it...

Let's dream up a scenario. You're running a customer service organisation. How do you keep customer complaints to a minimum? Did I hear someone say, "provide bloody good service"? Wrong. You provide world class service when you don't answer the phone when they call to complain.

Let me explain. A large telecom company in the middle-east has been in the news because it tried to allegedly bug Blackberry users' phones so they could conveniently tap into the messages and emails sent from these devices. All in the name of national security and upholding the religious, cultural and moral values of the country, no doubt. Such high objectives must always be saluted. However, said nanny software implementation went very wrong and Crackberry's started heating up and running out of juice faster than you can say "tally-ho!".

I'm no master of human psychology, but life experience tells me that humans like to complain when things go south, so I am not completely misguided in thinking that the telecom company's call centres must have been flooded with calls from every bloke whose ear was scalded by a hot and dying Blackberry. You see heat is the last thing one wants when the ambient temperatures outside hovers in the late 40s, degree Celsius that is.

I also feel it is my duty to clarify what I mean by a flood here. The Blackberry population in this country is around 145,000 out of a total population of around 3,000,000. Which is not a frightful lot, but by any standard 145,000 callers at the same time surely come within the definition of a flood. Here comes the fun part. The company issued a statement and I quote, "This has resulted in reduced battery life in a very limited number of devices. Etisalat has received approximately 300 complaints to date, out of its total customer base which exceeds 145,000". A beautiful statement and I can almost visualise the PR exec who wrote this statement giving his colleagues a hi-five on a totally truthful statement supported by verifiable figures that completely clarify the magnitude of the problem, putting an end to this circus once and for all.

Nope. The same paper that carried this statement also carries another article on this subject and I quote, this time from the newspaper, "Gulf News alone received 239 complaints about the issue since running an article on the troublesome patch on July 13.

Many of the complaints cited either a lack of response from Etisalat’s customer support lines, or a lack of awareness of the glitch among customer support agents."

Did I just visualise the PR exec scurrying for cover? I guess I did!

So there you have it, to provide the best customer service and get the least amount of complaints on your service, don't pick up the phone.

You want the icing on the cake? Etisalat has now found a solution to the problem - wipe your device, delete every scrap of data on it and make it as clean as the day it was born in the factory...

Wimbledone

Wimbledon came and Wimbledon went. My interest in Tennis waned quite a bit after my teen idols Sampras and Graf retired. I found that the blokes who came afterwards didn't exactly play the same brand of tennis that the players of the '90s played. Gone were long rallies, fast volleys and Boris Becker style diving returns. In came a sort of "wham-bham-Thank you ma'am" brand of tennis where big servers and bigger ground strokes spelt the death of interesting matches.

The way games are played changes and I'm all for change, but more than anything, what caused me to lose interest was a combination of quick buck stars who had short careers, made a quick exit. There were no more idols to look forward to. I also sorely missed long standing rivalries a la Sampras-Agassi, Graf-Seles. In a world of short careers, there was no time for outstanding duels.

When Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal started vying with one another for top marks, it rekindled my interest, but again the brand of tennis played didn't quite appeal to me. All that changed on 5 July 2009. Watching the kind of game Federer and Rodick played in the final made me wonder as to how many other gems I missed in the past 5-6 years. Blow for blow, shot for shot, these two players matched each other. It was like watching two gladiators fighting it out in a Roman amphitheatre, each one looking for that moment of weakness that would give them the break they needed. That moment did not come for 4 hours and 14 minutes. Sure, they was the one instance in the second set tie-break when Federer won 5 points in a row to come up from 5-2 down to take the set. In a match which had upwards of 75 games, Federer broke Roddick's serve in only 1 game and that game won him the Championship - that's what I call the mother-of-all-breaks!

Rekindling of desires aside, there were a few things that bugged me to no end:

Commentators. In the era gone by, commentators used to say something relevant, something intelligent, some interesting information and gave us, well, commentary - what was wrong in the shot played, better ways of doing it, strategies going through the players minds etc. Not any more. I have high regard for the likes of Boris Becker and, in my opinion, he's right up there with the likes of Pete Sampras, but he just doesn't cut it as a commentator! The blokes these days say stuff for the sake of saying stuff. No more match analysis, no more strategies, no more opinions. Here's a typical example. Federer hits a cross court winner. Commentator: "Federer going for the forehand cross court shot, getting it in. The score is now 40-0". I can see that you knuckleheads! This is the type of commentary you'd expect to hear on the radio, not on TV! Oh, and this would be followed by 6 million replays of the shot from every angle perceivable and as if that wasn't enough, you'll have a graphical representation of the same shot, just to spice things up. This observation, many would agree, is not restricted to tennis. Sports in general seems to have gone to the dogs where commentary is concerned. Most of us would remember the havoc Mandira Bedi created in the world of Cricket a few years ago when she "showed" (wink, wink!) up on TV and had nothing intelligent to say, well, this is something similar, only instead of looking at noodle straps and hearing dumb talk, you get to hear stuff of the same IQ level from a suited and booted Boris Becker or Tim Henman! The prevailing logic seems to be that commentary is the retired players' club with automatic right of entry.

Andy Murray. I know I'm being cruel to Andy here. Bless him, he's extremely talented and young and is definitely going to make it big and have a 'Murray Hill' in the not too distant future. That said, when he was denied entry to the finals by a stellar performance from Roddick, I heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn't have handled another day of Murray Mania that took over the British Press over the past month and half (ever since he won the Queens or whatever). He was portrayed as some kind of demi-god who wields a magic wand disguised as a tennis racket and at one stage, some papers even seemed to hint that he is the solution to the economic climate by providing the junta with something to look forward in these bleak times. If this was India, there would be temples at ever cross road (in the middle of the junction, no doubt) in Murray's name, such was the idol worship. One may argue that coming from India, I have no right to say anything about idol worship. One may get a fat lip for saying so. In India, we need idols. In a land of a billion plus people, there is such a dearth of talent that we need blokes to look upto and talk about endlessly. Leave alone talent per-capita, talent in its entirety is conspicuous by its absence. Take Cricket. We have 15 people who are on the national team. 4 of them sit out each game secretly hoping someone from the remaining 11 fall and break their legs so that they get a chance. Of the remaining 11, 6 misfire at any given point in time. So we have 5 people with talent representing 1.3 (?) billion people. You do the math - I can't handle such large decimal numbers. Britain is not like that, they have talent overflowing from every nook and cranny in every sport. Footie (hell yeah!), Rugby, Cricket (they've got a team that misfires most of the time, so I'll discount that one), Tennis, Swimming, Cycling and God knows what else. But you've got to give it to the press here in the UK. They build temples for every sportsman whose sports happen to be in the news at the time. I only follow the Tennis news and was a bit claustrophobic with all the coverage of Murray that vied for my elusive attention.

Speaking of attention, I'm now looking forward to watching matches which Federer plays and hope Nadal gets alright soon, for they have now captured said attention.