Infinite thoughts

Over past few years, eating out has become very common. With the rising number of restaurants all around, Meghana and I keep on trying different places from time to time. And we are seeing some common problem across the restaurants. Lack of good service is the most recurring problem. Recently we visited Melange by Four Seasons  and had a not so good experience. The person looking after our table, was completely lax and lacking basic hospitality skills. When there's a buffet, customer asks for soup and starters, it is a common sense to serve soup first followed by starters. But no. We were served the starters first and then soup. The starters had higher quantities of salt and other spices as compared to the soup, which made the soup taste absolutely bland. As usual Meghana called up the manager. The manager and the waiter were perplexed - both of them had no clue why we were upset. After much deliberation amongst themselves, finally manager approached. We explained the proble...

Couple of weeks back, one of my colleagues told me about the recent event happening in Pune on every Sunday - Happy Street . At first it looked odd to me - people flocking the venue at 7 AM for no specific agenda, that too on a Sunday morning!! But then he showed me some of the photographs he had taken there and a video clip where two youngsters were showing off their football skills. I decided to take Meghana and Mrunmay to Happy Street and witness the event myself. For initial 3-4 weeks the event was held at Aundh and from last weekend (21-Feb) it is being held at Kalyaninagar, opposite AdLabs. The concept is very simple. An area gets demarcated as "Happy Street" and gets closed for all automobiles. Only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed in that zone. Then the organizers setup some events and are then joined by some other enthusiasts to setup activities meant to engage people. When we reached there on Sunday morning, people had started dropping by. Some had borrow...

Whenever  Meghana , Mrunmay and I step out somewhere, it usually is a challenge for Mrunmay to keep himself occupied. As much as we want him to converse with us, experience the surroundings, learn to appreciate good things around, he usually runs out of patience pretty soon, unless one of us starts telling him some story. Many-a-times that is not possible.  Out of sheer need to teach him pass time, I invented related words game , which Mrunmay pretty much loved. We end up playing it in long journeys or even on the dining table. This game can't be played at a noisy place or when Meghana or I want to have conversation either with each other or some other people around. This had necessitated me to keep Mrunmay engaged with various things. Things like asking him to count specific objects around - e.g. Count all the empty chairs in the hall. Once he has done that, I'd add some qualification to that - Count all the red empty chairs. And then may be count wall mounted fans etc....

A week back, on last children's day, Mrunmay got a fantastic gift - Game of Monopoly aka Business (व्यापार).  Mrunmay got introduced to this game through our family friend around 3-4 weeks back and in the first instance itself he fell in love with this game. He didn't want to stop that game but had to due to other plans. But since then it was a constant thing on his mind. So Meghana and I decided to gift him on the children's day and spent entire evening playing the same game.  And that point onward, on every opportunity Mrunmay is trying everything to play this game. Given today was Saturday, and off for me, I offered him an afternoon entirely for Monopoly and he graciously accepted ;) In last 3-4 games, Mrunmay learnt quickly how he can earn more by quickly building houses and hotels. So now his all energies are constantly focused on creating assets. Usually, Meghana and I have hit with bad luck and have ended up in spending more time in "Chance", ...

Being in the services industry for over a decade and then into consumer focused business for last few years, I have learnt how difficult it is to satisfy the customers on many occasions. Services Industry Software services, as it emerged as a major growth sector, the competition also grew exponentially. The software companies started mushrooming everywhere and each one trying to get a piece of same pie - i.e. US market. It also changed over a period of time and people started focusing on EU and Asian markets as well. But the bottom line remained the same - competition. The Outsourcing companies initially had tough time in outsourcing for several reasons (unproven capabilities, lack of confidence as well as lesser number of options to outsource). As the services companies grew and as it became evident that outsourcing is the way to move forward, all these companies also started hunting for better deals - essentially it started with fishing for lower prices instead of demanding qua...

The trip was coming to end, but the scenery was getting better and better. After unsuccessful venture into Periyar Reserve, we started for Alleppey , also known as Alapuzha, which is famous for backwaters .  We left these green carpets behind ...  and entered into the land of backwaters... Our driver took us to a place where we could hire a boat - similar to houseboat (shikara) - for couple of hours and take a ride through the backwaters. We were about to get duped here, but thanks to Meghana's persistence, we successfully escaped.  What happened was like this. There seems to be a single contractor who dishes out the boats to the tourists. We enquired about timing and what all things would be covered etc but didn't realize that there would be different types of boats available that too at the same rent! When we were asked to ride a boat, it looked okay. Two chairs and two reclining chairs. As we settled and the boat started, we got to see anot...

Road to Thekkady from Munnar was amazing. Apparently lot of movie shootings have happened in this area e.g. Chennai Express, Life Of Pi. The view was very scenic and we (read - Meghana) were tempted to stop every now and then.  Thanks to our driver, he took us to a tea garden area, where we could get in and do some photo shooting. Shedding all the inhibitions to express the love in the tea gardens, we managed to capture some of the poses too. Not wanting to be left behind, Mrunmay also mimicked us showing the love signs that he knew and then posing like a movie star!! While we were lost in each other, nature's beauty was still calling us and Meghana managed to capture this snap, way better than Windows XP wallpaper for ages ! In the initial parts we could see the green carpet on both sides of the roads, which slowly changed as we went away from Munnar. The Tea gardens were replaced with tall trees interspersed with various ...

It was almost 12 noon by the time we came out of the SVNP. We took the Munnar road. The road was pretty scenic and we enjoyed this long drive and reached Munnar by 7 PM or so. All the sight seeing was planned for the next day. The hotel where we were put up - Abad Copper Castle - is built right on a cliff with a direct view of the valley. But unfortunately it was all dry and barren. Tea gardens were nowhere in the sight!! There was campfire arranged in the hotel and we decided to joined. Dance was the obvious thing that happens at a camp fire with some dance numbers being played. Meghana, Mrunmay and I indulged in some "ganapati" dance and some common steps. Mrunmay was finding it very amusing to see both of us dancing!! Munnar outing started with a visit to Tea Museum where a small machinery is setup to showcase how Tea mixture and dust is prepared from the Tea leaves. The museum also held some other archaic / antique items such as typewriters, radios etc, which ...