Scrub scrub...

I like guidance. It provides one with a much needed sense of direction. Good guidance channels our energy, moving us out of headless chicken mode to a measured, planned and systematic mode.

Timely guidance is even better, it's a light house on a dark and lonely night at sea, the one sign-board 50 meters before an extremely complicated junction that nudges you onto the right path. It's not only humans who guide other humans, animals do it too, I've seen hundreds of hours of programming on Discovery Channel in which a bear or cheetah or lion teaches it's young on the art of hunting, killing and generally on how to not be hungry.

I have always benefited from guidance, both timely and otherwise. My family and friends have all guided me and protected me against many of the pitfalls of adulthood. I've even received guidance on how to identify good and not so good guidance. In fact, among the things I relished the most in my move to the UK was the amount of guidance given to me by my new employers on the different tools and facilities available. There was a good amount of overload, but it helped immensely, especially after my harrowing experience at Dubai where I was given a laptop and asked to come back with the deliverable!

Why am I waxing eloquent on guidance, one may ask. Well, Mr. One, here's why. A recurring theme of this blog has been to point out places where the developed nations' attitude to advice and guidance has been overdone, prime examples being the hot coffee advisory, 'station floors are slippery when wet' announcement on the Tube when it starts drizzling (which is all the time here!), 'ladies and gentlemen, in this hot and inclement weather, it is advisable to carry a bottle of water with you at all times' when its warm enough to touch 15 degrees. You get the drift. Recently, however, I saw some guidance which rendered all this as valid. What I saw rocked my foundations and made me doubt the very faith in my survival as a human being.

It was a normal day, routine to the point of being boring. I was going about my business like I always do. While going about my business, I wanted to do some business, so I paid a visit to the gents. Job done, all smooth so far. I popped around to the wash-basin to wash my hands and admire my dashing good looks and I saw this:

I do not remember anyone telling me HOW to wash my hands since 4th grade and I felt terribly insulted even at that tender age that my father thought I should be taught how to do such a basic thing. Dad, being dad, would simply ignore me and drone on about the importance of cleaning between the nails and scrubbing behind my palms.

As always, a few things immediately came tumbling into my head.

• I was in this large company, which prides itself in the quality of people it hires. There is apparently a rigorous recruitment process involving multiple rounds of vetting and filtering. People walking in through the doors of this company are considered, by any stretch of imagination to be half-wits at the very least. This being the case, does the company really think it's employees don't know how to wash their hands?
• I immediately looked around the stalls looking for similar instructions on how to use the rest of the toilet. Obviously, if the company thinks people don't know how to wash up after, they surely don't think employees are capable of using extremely complicated gadgets like toilet paper and flushes
• Since the spread of disease is a real threat, will the people who fail to wash their hands be reported and investigated? You know, just to ensure that they were just being silly and the failure to wash hands properly is not a malicious threat to the peace and harmony? In other words are they going to be investigated to rule out a dastardly Al Qaeda plan to inflict pain and suffering?
• The diagram itself looked pretty confusing to me. Assuming I am at the lower end of the spectrum in the target audience, how is this going to be implemented? If I need to be told how to wash my hands, I should probably have issues with understanding anything more complicated than the alphabet.

Needless to say, I was so taken aback and insulted at being patronized so blatantly that I washed my hand without referring to the diagram. Just as I finished, I looked up to smirk at the picture when I saw the part about 'estimated time taken to complete the procedure - 40-60 seconds'. I'd done it in around 30 seconds. I felt naughty. Perhaps there is a camera hidden behind the mirror that records the time taken by each person and anyone taking less than 60 seconds is reported. I suppose I would have to get used to watching my back for the rest of my life now...

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...

I give you my word, I have just been Bauered

I have recently spent roughly 17 hours of my life living in a land where one is free to do anything, you want to come back from the dead? Check. Want to acquire WMDs to destroy the world as we know it? Check. Want to destroy a country? Check. Want to make your daughter Secretary of State? Check.

You see, I spent the last weekend catching up on Season 7 of 24. Another marathon session with Jack Bauer confirms the following:

'tis said Jack Bauer refused a syringe at a blood bank. Instead, he asked for a gun and a bucket. And that 9/11 only happened because Jack Bauer was on vacation. He'll never go on vacation again. All I can say is, Jack Bauer can:

1. kill at will (do you think he is the dubble-woh-sevan of America?)
2. taken out of a Senate hearing with consummate ease
3. whomever he thinks is necessary
4. the President of the US of A assurances at will, and the President will ignore everyone else and go with Jack's decision, just because he "gave his word"
5. every order given by commanding officers
6. be given access to classified information at the drop of a hat even though he doesn't have clearances
7. doesn't have to eat
8. get his friends classified jobs, just because he wants to work only with them, and most importantly,
9. justify all of the above!

The list is endless and so is the fun. Do not, for one instant, be fooled into thinking the Prez of the US of A is a puppet in Jack's hands whenever America faces a crisis. The Prez can also do the following:

1. appoint her own daughter as the Secretary of State without having to consult anyone and opposition parties are not even mentioned
2. every time there is a set back to National Security, she can look at the bearer of the news and say, "How can this happen? I don't care how its done, I want the person who did this be found immediately!" - I counted her saying this atleast twice every episode
3. stand by her guns and ignore all advisers, security analysts and common-sense, just because Jack said so (refer point d under things Jack can do above)
4. the first gentleman can be conned by any dimwit and end up being kidnapped. No points for guessing the IQ of the first gentleman

While all this is fun, the blokes intending to wreak havoc on USAland are no better:

1. they will let Jack infiltrate their gang in a matter of minutes and entrust him with the most critical part of the assignment, which Jack will screw up anyway
2. they get double crossed easily
3. they know the names and addresses of relatives of all government agents (how's that for doing their homework)
4. they all end up dead
5. they all end up dead, but a select few can be revived from death to make a comeback that leaves many more dead!
6. they have names like Dubaku (I cracked up when I heard the guy's name, how can a dubaku be scary?)

I'm not sure how many have seen the latest season of 24, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so all I can say is nobody is safe, it's safer to stay indoors and lock all doors and windows :).

While watching it, another thought came to mind. The show takes place in America, where the counter terrorist agents have access to roughly the following methods of surveillance (give or take a few):

1. satellite which provide coverage of any place in a few seconds with HD clarity as if taken from a helicopter around 500 meters above the ground
2. surveillance cameras (even if they are private surveillance cameras, they are mysteriously linked to Uncle Sam's offices)
3. traffic cameras
4. infrared cameras from satellites to track heat signatures

This got me thinking. If the show were to be shot in the UK, all the satellite technology in the world would be redundant. All the agents would need is access to surveillance cameras. There are millions of cameras in this place. There was a report I read recently that every Londoner, on average, gets photographed by 300 cameras. Add to this, the proposal to have road cameras that can track every journey made by every vehicle in the UK using a network of number plate recognition cameras, blokes like Dubaku don't stand a chance!

Despite all that, there is something about that show that is gripping. You know Jack is going to kick ass in a way said ass has never been kicked before, but you still hang around to see it happen. It takes exhaustion to overcome you before you decide to switch off the TV and hit the sack, only to get up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning and hitting the couch with a vengeance to make up for time lost resting tired eyes.

The suspense is built up in the beginning of each show, right upto the half way mark, stalls midway and builds up towards the end and boy!, does it finish with a bang or what, leaving you gasping for air and can't wait to watch the next episode.

From having watched all seven seasons (5 of which were watched over a 4 day period), I can say the best way to watch it is continuously. If you watch it on TV, the commercial breaks will kill the tension, so will waiting for a week to get the next episode.

Having said that, I think the producers should start thinking beyond WMDs and nukes to spook people, mass alien infiltration anybody?

P.S.:

Did you know that Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

Multi-national mayhem

I live in Britain where, though not on the same scale as the US of A, you do need to put a legal disclaimer on everything you do. For example, I believe it is best practice to put up a disclaimer on coffee mugs you give to visitors saying "If you are drinking coffee, spill it and burn yourself, you are stupid and careless and you cannot hold me responsible for it, on the contrary, I might sue you for staining my furniture".

Being in such a lovely place, I don't think I can be blamed for stating that what is said in this post is completely my own silly, dumb and sometimes crazy opinion. If you are offended or somehow manage to read between lines and interpret this differently, that's just too bad and you can't hold me responsible.

You must be wondering why I'm being so elaborate on making sure I don't get hauled into court, well that's because this post contains the dreaded "T" word - terrorists.

I remember when I was growing up, there used to be several brands of soft drinks, Thumbs-up, Gold Spot, 7-up, Pepsi, Coca-cola, Kaali Mark etc. At that point in time, I wasn't exactly what you might say, aware of corporate structures and branding, but if you care to dig up a bit, I'm sure 6 out of 10 brands will be owned by different companies. Then something really bad happened. The likes of Thumbs-up, 7-up etc got taken over by either Coke or Pepsico and Gold Spot, Kaali Mark and other small players simply disappeared.

The same thing happened in the late 90's and the early part of this century in telecom and automobile industries. Globally, any given mobile service provider with a coverage area greater than a few thousand square miles can be traced back to either Vodafone, Hutchison, Orange or T-mobile. Similarly, any car maker who sells more than a 25,000 cars a month can be traced back to either Toyota, Honda, GM, Fiat (save for the likes of Tata and Mahindra in India). I'm not going to go into the economics/stupidity behind all this. Its just an observation. I believe economists term this as "Consolidation of the Market" when growth is limited in multiple numbers, different companies join forces to continue to grow.

Sometime in 2001 an event called 9/11 happened in the US of A and a little known organisation called Al Qaeda, hitherto known only for small time activities shot into the spot light. Suddenly everyone wanted to get a piece of them - literally. This is perfectly normal and what has been happening since then is history.

Between then and now, something happened, which I'm sure many would have noticed. AQ started getting tons and tons of coverage and any terrorist event happening anywhere in the world immediately had an AQ angle. Bomb blast in Bangalore, India? AQ backing suspected. Kidnapping and hostage situation in Afghanistan? AQ suspected (OK that's extreme considering Afghanistan is home to AQ). Gun fire by a crazy psychopath in Germany? AQ hand suspected. Something happening in Australia? AQ angle being investigated. Pencil stolen from a child in the US? Police are also investigating if AQ is involved. Suddenly, any illegal activity in the world was being attributed to the AQ. I'm sure that in every case where police investigate an AQ angle, they are perfectly justified for doing so - I don't mean to undermine the heroic work they are doing.

It is almost as if by one cowardly, stupid act, AQ managed to trigger a massive wave of consolidation in the terrorism industry. Every crazed, psychotic and extremist organisation had a link to the AQ brand. I would assume the following conversation takes place at every terrorist board meeting:

Crazed Psychotic Leader: I don't like the way the government is treating the people, let's become terrorists.
Crazed Psychotic Followers: OK, but how do we let people around the world know we exist? Should we advertise in local newspapers?
CPL: Don't be stupid, local newspapers won't get awareness about us further than the state border. Besides, we will have to spend money to advertise. All we have to do is one dastardly act and the press automatically links us to AQ and we get instant worldwide coverage, free of charge!
CPF: Ooh, Saar you are too brilliant, no wonder you are CPL.

Unlike Steve Jobs and co. who are fiercely possessive about brand names and don't hesitate for one moment before they haul offenders to court for trademark infringement, I'm sure AQ enjoy the free publicity. It's almost like they hit the bulls-eye with 9/11 and now they can retire in the knowledge that any terrorist act anywhere in the world will automatically get an AQ stamp of recognition, keeping the organisation alive.

I wonder if they get royalty from the likes of aforementioned CPL?