Infinite thoughts

Recently, the instances of not accepting credit cards in stores/shops has increased. Most of them have given the reason that the machine is not working. I wonder if this is because of the cost cutting measures that every shop-owner is implementing. I am told that these people need to shell out some 2 to 2.5% of every transaction to the bank issuing that swipe machine. In that case, my conclusion seems logical. I look at the credit card as a means to keep track of all my expenses. Given the consumer culture in India, not every establishment accepts the credit card; but I try and find out if credit card is accepted. For me, it's more of tracking mechanism rather than 45 days of interest free loan. Considering the recent trend of swiping machines getting vanished from shops, I think I'll need to start carrying cash again...

Yet another year is passed by. Yet another year has been awarded to me. It happens constantly year after year. But every year was way different than the earlier gift. And I am sure even this is going to be another amazing year in my life. Last year same timeframe, Meghana and I were anxiously waiting for our then-yet-to-be-born-kid. The Gynecologist had kept us on high alert and secretly, Meghana was hoping that the kid and I would share the birthday. But it didn't happen. After a long wait of another 15 days, she gave birth to our cute little son - Mrunmay. Next 3 weeks were completely devoted to Megh and Mrunmay before I resumed my duties. Then it all started ... spending extravaganza. March to June turned out to be most expensive months so far and I was kind of getting worried where it all is going. Firstly, my beloved Palio had to be admitted the hospital for nervous breakdown. And since such diseases are usually not covered by insurance, I had to shell out a huge buck to get h...

Finally, the good news came in .. The much awaited NSG waiver has been announced and that gives us a good reason to rejoice. TOI has a special coverage for the same. What is more important is that Manmohan Singh has established himself as a very good and strong PM. Oppositon and Left have exactly opposite view (what else they could see when they are in "opposition" :) ) Few days back these people had taggen the PM has the weakest PM ever, but now that doesn't matter any more. The hurdle for Neuclear trade is cleared. Now, even if we face some opposition in/by the US senate, we are still eligible to obtain the Neuclear supply for other countries like Russia and France. So the options are now open. How to play the cards is entirely upto our government!! Some are afraid that what if tomorrow US stops the supplies? The answer could be - we need to reduce the dependency on the US anyways. We'd need to create newer friends and newer ties which would keep the supply continu...

Related post: Way to Passport - Part I If you are hoping that since the passport office is asking you to take an appointment, you will not have to face any queue, then you would be totally wrong. The appointment is only a way to force people to come on the specified date and deter others from stamping the passport office. One will still have to go through a big queue (approximately 70-75 persons) But the good part is that if you are in the queue before 1:30 PM, by all chances, your application will be accepted on that day. Some tips for the day of appointment Be there around 40-45 minutes in advance. Things to carry with you - a book for reading, or an iPod to listen to music or something else to keep you busy through the queue (unless you are interested in bird watching :) and birds are no more rare species at the passport office!! ) A water bottle 3 sets of document (self attested). The office asks only for 2 sets, but it's good to have one more. Original set of papers All of you...

As my passport was expired, couple of months back, I started searching for the means to get it renewed. To make this process smooth, government has put up a website - http://www.passport.nic.in or http://www.passport.gov.in which has all the details required for getting a fresh passport or renew/re-issue the same. While the site is very useful, it still has some gray areas which resulted in some inconvenience (read: multiple trips to the passport office) for me. And hence thought to share the tips with the world out here. The recent procedure requires the applicant to fill up the application online, take a printout and submit the application along with supporting documentation in the passport office on the day of appointment. Before filling up the online application: First and foremost: Read the checklist carefully. There are few ifs and buts which one needs to understand correctly. Address proof has to be in the applicant's name. That means, applicant's name should clearly b...

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.

A powerful thought - make your customer to stay with you by choice and not out of compulsion!! One of my fellow colleagues spelt it out so well, it covers the basic principle of maintaining/increasing your customer base. The other day I needed to buy some sweets from the franchisee of a well known sweet mart. When I placed my order, I saw that the sweets, the pedhas, were all broken. I brought this to the notice of the salesperson, who outrightly rejected to change the broken pieces. To my surprise, same was the reaction from the shop owner. I decided to leave the shop without taking anything and proceeded to another franchisee few kilometers down the road. Thankfully, the salesperson was good and gave me good pedhas and some othe stuff. Looking at this whole episode now, I realized that I was visiting the first shop out of the need of a shop closer by and not as my choice. That fellow definitely has lost one customer now. If he'd have provided me with good sweets, I would have vis...

After a long wait of 9 months, the little angel has arrived in our life. Mrunmay, that's how he would be known, made to this world on the evening of 24th of January, 2007. As you might have guessed, that is the main reason for this long gap on this blog. His arrival was marked by one of the coldest days in this winter season and hence the angel decided to keep quiet for a long time. Now that the mother Nature is turning a bit warmer, our prince has started showing the signs of activities and keeping us awake till late nights and throughout the days. Albeit, it's fun to have a baby in your life, taking all of your attention, forcing you to change all your priorities, forcing you to reconsider your schedules/tasks everything. Everything in the day is centered around this new person and all that is paid off when you see a cute smile on Mrunmay's face. Although this reward is quite rare as of now, it's worth a watch :) This blog may still see some not-so-unusual breaks, but...

Yesterday, we're watching a Marathi film - "Manini", a recent one. Not so new concept, but a well thought script, good dialogs. The lead character, the female named Shalini, has been shown from a town of Ratnagiri, a straight, simple girl who gets married to a guy staying in Dubai. He, as expected, is full of bad habits and is also involved in some other female. The story is about how Shalini gets rid of this guy and becomes independent. Shalini has been shown to be very forthcoming, truthful and honest, a person who can't lie or hide anything. I always wonder, is it really that easy to speak truth? I find it difficult many times, for the sole reason of not hurting the other person, person whom you love. Sometime back, I had read these lines from "KaThopanishad" at hotel Sheryas , wasn't remembering the exact lines, but google helped me as usual :) Both good (shreyas) and pleasant (preyas) approach the man, The wise on examining chooses the Good. Wonderi...

Finally got my new Nokia E61i last week and vodafone mobile connect yesterday. I am posting this from mobile. luckily at the same time, I came across another software - fring from Santosh's blog. This app allows you to chat/call your skype/MSN/google contacts. One can also make VOIP calls. I'm yet to explore the later part, but looking forward to it. fring - www.fring.com Santosh's blog - blog.sukshma.net

Had heard about this network for quite some time, finally today got registered with them. I am yet to explore the full strength of this networking site, but, nonetheless I am looking forward to a better experience. While talking about the social networking sites in Indian context, you can't miss Orkut . But unfortunately, it has failed to keep my interest over a period of time. I still login to Orkut check my friends' profiles, do some profile hopping but that's it. It's not keeping me hooked on to that service any more. Hoping to get some good things from this linked in service. Here is my profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mandarbehere Related links: Hatred

Doesn't seem so. Have a look at the latest report in Outlook India - Was It All Track-II ? (Registration required, else pick up Sept 20, 2007 issue of Outlook). Last year I had quoted a story from Outlook India, on Lalu, how has he turned around the future of railways, in an article - Revisiting past belief . I was very curious to know the details of how was this achieved. All of the media was zapped by the numbers thrown by Lalu's ministry. But as this report reveals, most of it is just a play with numbers than actual profit. In addition, he has succeeded in extracting more money from "Aam Aadami" in various ways. Unfortunately, no one from media seemed to have followed up on this huge success and revealed the truth, except for Outlook. This latest report details out how all these figures were tossed up to show a huge profit. Some examples: Declaring trains superfast without any reduction in the time taken Mangling with the "TatkaL scheme"...

Yet another feather in Dhoni's cap. His young wagon has won the Twenty20 world cup in a spectacular fashion. What a start for Dhoni to begin his captaincy career!! No one else would have had such a chance so far. Just like I wrote in my earlier post, this match also showed lousy body language at crucial times. When Misbah was riding the wave and pitting our bowlers to the stand, you should have watched them. Getting tensed is one thing, but displaying it so openly is not good. To some extent Dhoni was keeping his cool. He was talking to his bowlers after every bad ball and helping them to cope up with the pressure. The worst body language was coming from Jogi. His confidence had gone for a complete toss and everyone could see it from his face and his ever-fallen shoulders. But finally, it was Misbah who gave up under pressure and awarded a victory to Indians. Few good things happened in the end as well. The "cool" captain thoughtfully instructed to team to take a round a...

Yes, I am talking about yesterday's Twenty20 match between India and Australia . Given the recent history of Indian performance in one-day world cup, Indians were definitely not in the favorites for this Twenty20 world cup series. But the young wagon of India has done everything to reach the finals under the ever-improving leadership of M.S.Dhoni , the Captain of Indian Team. With the full support from the young and energetic team, MS is carving a good record on this new horizon of Cricket. Yesterday's match was not just a game of bat and ball, but it was of mind as well. The game was definitely rich in terms of Twenty20 cricket, huge sixes and sudden wickets, but it was also full at the mental level. Kangaroos are known for their professionalism and their "jigar" to pull the match even in last few balls. At the same time, Indian are known for loosing the battle even when it appears like a easy win. But yesterday was different. After not-so-good start by the openers...

Finally some positive action is coming from state home minister - Mr. R.R. Patil. Handshake with Sanjay Dutt proves costly for constables Policemen bear the brunt for Sanjay Dutt handshake Can we expect something more of this sort?