Infinite thoughts

Don't think so. At least in the context of Indian market. As per the established belief, market becomes a better place for consumers if there is fair competition. However, contrary to this, Indian market is establishing a fact that we don't care about the consumer, we all are competing against each other for the sloppiest service award. You might very well be aware about my opinion about the retail outlets like Reliance Fresh, More, Spencer's. They have one thing in common - not having stock when the consumer needs it most (weekends, holidays, month-ends etc) . On top of that all of them have started putting air-conditioning off or to the minimal level. In my opinion, most of these places have been built assuming that there will be artificial ventilation provided in terms of A/C. So when you turn off the A/C, people inside the store have no choice but to get drenched in sweat. When asked, the rep would embarrassingly tell you that A/C is not working. Recently, Pune has bee...

While shifting to the new place near chandani chowk, we didn't know that we would need to struggle even for easy things. Since both of us work in a software industry, availability of the internet connection at home was a MUST. Nope, none of us is a workaholic, but it gives us the flexibility of working from home at times. Considering the fact that we were the first movers to our society, I was sure that no one would be providing broadband services to my locality. So I opted for Reliance data card , which is supposed to give you high speed internet connection, although not a broadband. The promise about the speed looked attractive, even if it was on a costlier side. The promised figures were in the range of 60-70+ Kbps. However, on an average, we get not more than 25-30 Kbps. If you are really lucky, then only one could see the speed exceeding 60Kbps for few minutes. Otherwise it was always a spike going to maximum speed of 150Kbps and for rest of the duration hovering around 20-30...

Since we had moved to our new flat, we were struggling to get LPG connection. The society where I am staying is supposed to have a piped gas facility, to be supplied by the builder. It's been more than 2 years now, but the scheme is not yet complete and residents are still struggling to see the end of the tunnel. In an attempt to get rid of this problem, we decided to apply for new LPG connection. The search of a right distributor landed us with Jitesh Gas Agency in Waraje, who agreed to provide the connection and home delivery to my residence. The application was done in January 2008. After wait for few weeks, we got hit by the ban on new LPG connection because of the shortage of supplies. After it got resumed, finally, we got an appointment for Apr 17th with the distributor to get the new connection. On that day, we reached there with the required documentation and within few minutes the processing started. When it was time to pay the amount, we were told that we need to purchase...

Came across a post on results of Android developer challenge on TechCrunch site. They had announced a challenge for the developers to submit the application ideas for the android platform. While announcing the top 50 ideas/applications, the authors have also documented the process they used for the evaluation. I must say this is one of the most elaborate evaluation process I have ever seen documented. The author goes to the details of how extreme/exception cases were handled and what care they had to take to minimize the impact of exclusions/exceptions. To me the biggest task in any evaluation, when it is by multiple persons, is how to normalize the scores. It is likely that a particular judge likes the application because he/she has some personal interest in that application, while some other judge simply dislikes it for some other reasons. Even if it is expected that judges do a fair job during scoring, one can't forget the human element. And the process explicitly tries to tak...

Few days back, I got to know that PMC is issuing the voter's ID card on the spot. It came as a very pleasant surprise to see that PMC is using the latest technologies to make the life simpler for both, citizens as well PMC officials. Taking advantage of summer vacations of the schools, PMC had put up booths in the schools. As a preparatory step, they distributed to the leaflets having the their personal information to the individuals. And then everyone was requested to approach the specified booth. The setup and process was very simple. Few laptops, webcams, lamination machines and printers. ○ Register yourself to complete the records ○ Approach the person with a webcam ○ Allow him to take the photo ○ Wait for 15 mins ○ Go out with your laminated voter card with photo printed on it!! This surely was a smoothest ever interaction with PMC/government department. There was another instance where Meghana registered a complaint with PMC website about the garbage collection. To ou...

After yet another long break of two months. As you might have guessed it rightly, my kid - Mrunmay, kept me busy through out my non-work hours. And there was very little time to do anything else but to cater to the needs of the Prince. It is really a great thing to hold the new born in your hands, to see him smiling, to see him making sounds, to interpret those sounds - which you know doesn't really mean much literally, but still put you in seventh heaven... Whatever tiredness you might have got through the day, it just disappears the moment you see the face of your baby or the smile on his face. It's really a great experience. Now that the baby is a bit older, I am hoping to get some free time to start with the blogging again. Lot of things have happened in last few months and most likely I would be writing about those things in coming days. Let's see how much I can do.