connected world

Last 7 days down with dengue fever...again mein aur meri tanhai ....kind of a feeling .....creeping in
need to connect ...via laptop,desktop... any kind of gazzete to the outside world .

Rating system in real estate

rating system in real estate is a good idea.But this should have come a lot earlier as there is hardly any real ....estate remaining in the heart of the city.
Also CRISIL should extend this concept to existing constructions......and come up with a comprehensive system that could be used effectively to value new deals,resale and even rental deals.

Mumbai Migrants &Malaria

I think Mr Photographer turned politician should get some recognition for this classic enlightenment :) he has brought with his new discovery
Hope he was not bitten by some North Indian and tested positive for malaria. Oh God, save mosquitoes from Mr Photographer

Pity our politicians and the parties they represent

I sincerely hope that this man would take some actions after consultations with the healthcare officials ...to prevent outspread instead of giving such statements ..............

Terminal T3 -reality check

Yesterday our Hon Prime Minister inaugurated T3 terminal which is worlds 5th largest. After seeing the opening ceremony and the speech given by Civil Aviation minister Mr Praful Patel just became curious to know some facts

Here are some startling numbers :

*estimated cost $2.8-billion
*68 check-in counters
*48 immigration desks
*50 emigration desks
*78 aerobridges
*97 private travelators
*Cat III runway landing systems
*estimated 35 million passengers annually
*designed to handle 600 passengers an hour

and the list would surely continue ............
dying to get the actual experience and also eagerly waiting for the Navi Mumbai aiport.

Kudos to all those who have contributed to this grand success !!!

Nations Anthem 2 minutes

Went to watch Kites at one of the multiplexes in Kothrud,as a regular practise people stood up for the National Anthem and the entire crowd was one as if we were a united spririt.

Great feeling of oneness ......a perfect resemblance of unity in diversity.Also the anthem video was very well done.All Marathi stage and film actors in their crisp white kurtas and chunidars singing in unison ,looking at each other and believe me every actors face was filled with pride and containement (the fact that they have been asked to participate for such a novel and patriotic cause definately elevates their respect and suddenly they become much more humble and just participate with a generous soul..)

Such acts of patriotism must be done in every pick and pocket of the country where actually the aam janata goes ......again whoever started it he or she is a genius mind....!!!

Sprinkler and Fan Cooling System-Cafe Good Luck

After seeing India losing to Australia in a T20 clash we decided to have some good time somewhere else !!!...and there is one place in the heart of the city -Cafe Good luck.Located on FC road an irani joint famous for it's irani tea and brun maska ..,biryani's ,bread puddings...
Since 1935 is what their hoarding proudly proclaims]

and 75 years in the business is no mean.From octogenarians to the now college going crowd, everyone fondly remembers at some time having had a cup of Irani tea with brun maska in it's hallowed confines.

One thing that intrigued us that day was the low pressure sprinklers which were used to cool off the place.We were well in the middle of our dinner and suddenly the entire place was filled with these tiny little droplets falling over from the sprinklers that were attached to the cooling fans on the wall.

These were 360 degrees low pressure sprinkler nozzels that produced large droplets that produce a shower effect was the answer we got when enquired..
Believe me or not it had a natural and a better effect than our regular AC's -superb idea and that too in 2010-we were simply amazed and never in our dreams had imagined something of this sorts- just out of place ....

Now i understand how a no -alcohol ,Non AC joint can still survive in 2010 -sheer class and innovation !!!

First rains ....Nostalgic

Yesterday Pune witnessed its first rains ..late evening around 8:00.
Suddenly those good old childhood memories came in a flash.Wanted to experience those divine moments in the traditional way ...but unfortunately was stuck up in the usual Pune traffic
most importantly ..I took a few deep breaths as if I am attending some yoga session :) somewhere to smell wet mud ...man it's got such a healing,soothing effect ..kash there would have been some device which could capture this

Good instances of marketing

Good marketing or advertsing as a form of marketing is not about spending huge amounts of money to market your product
Some instances
1.Hotel Mayur on JM road Pune.While me and my parents were in the middle of a hearty lunch suddenly a man came from nowhere and presented before us a dish containing basundi,angur malai,aamras -this was so tempting that i picked up basundi but that too after a lot of thinking.
Believe me this was a masterpiece those exquisite colours -striking orange aamras,bold yellow angur malai with pista as a topping and a dull offwhitebasundi but with a crushed almonds as topping could not be just let off without a taking atleast one if not all three (which i was planning to but then stopped.......).
Hats off to the hotel management to come up with such a simple,brilliant and result oriented idea.
As soon as I saw this at the back of my mind I had decided to make a mention of it inthe form of a post.
Next time i am sincerely hoping that at some one would come up with this idea only this time
aamras,basundi would be replaced by kingfishers,carlsbergs ..budweiser's and this list can go on on and on baby......!!!!!
2.Vodafone ....those tiny little naked men or may i say dressed in white enacting a well thought idea and at the end a red backdrop ......with the service offering from vodafone this is actually that clicks !!!!! ( the one liner that tells the potential customer what he or she is going to get from vodafone)...again excellent innovation and that too very simplistic .

Indian Judiciary system

In the Times of India dated 7th Mar 2010 there was an interesting article possibly from justice VVS Rao of Andhra high court which revealed the true state of our judiciary system.
Here are some staggering admissions

• it would take 320 years to complete back log of cases
• every judge in the country will have an average load of 2147 cases
• presently we have 14,576 judges as against a sanctioned strength of 17,641
• 10.5 judges per million population as against recommended figure of 50 judges per million
• In 2030 Indias population would be 1.5 to 1.7 billion and there would be 1.25 lakh judges dealing with 300 million cases.

who cares !!!! does anybody

"Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"!

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cell phones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cell phone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.
Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?
The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"
Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.

Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore

Karaoke please !!!!

Previous weekend was an enjoyable experience specially when amateur singers like me get a first hand experience of Karaoke !!!
My sister ,Jiju and two andheri dons harshal and chinmay had come over the previous weekend to Pune and along with them they had brought this karaoke kit (jiju has this nack of exploring different things).It was a very fulfilling and enjoyable experience -interactive entertainment at its best.
On Sunday morning jiju opened this K .... kit and the electronics engg in him did some quick settings ...i helped him by closing the windows ,curtains and making the room sound proof.
2000 + songs -Hindi,Marathi,English and Punjabi were quickly scanned and jiju selected an old hindi track of Rafi------4321 and it all started -he sang like a pucca singer and scored 82 .
Next it was my turn again 2000+ songs were searched page by page and i selected Meri sanso mein basa hai from Aur pyar ho gaya......4321 cut 4321 cut .....meri sanso mein ...basa hain ..i was reading these lines then suddenly i started singing and again i went into the reading mode...people were laughing out their stomachs...but then i gradually got the rythum and finished on 72....not bad !!!
Now was the turn of my father ....67 yrs still young at heart and ready to perform he started and immidiately my sister went into the other room as she could not control any more ...i followed her and we both literally fell on the floor ...and then we came outside and he was still stuggling ...Jiju,my mother and kids were i think listening to a story called 'pal pal dil ke paas'...
He stopped abruptly realizing it was not his cup of tea- to our relief.
Then myslf and jiju continued with our amateur voices for almost 2hrs ----then we had a lunch break to continue till late in the afternoon...
Overall it was very thrilling experience ---vocal chords stretched.....voice controlled,breathing controlled ....a reasonable acoustic treat.
The entire kit only consisted of a microphone ...along with a pre-programmed software allowing us to select and play any song (minus the lead vocal).lyrics were displayed on the public address system with a moving symbol or changing colours as a backdrop.

Looking to forward to buy one and explore the bathroom singer in me....after those hectic office hours.

6th Feb 2010

Feb 12 ,2010 understood the significance of Mahashivratri..

Since I was at home this entire week (paying the price of reckless driving on last Saturday) wanted to take time to know and understand many things other than those stock prices ,finance ,politics etc.

Also I have decided that every day should be a new learning day (and the lesson learnt or knowledge gained should be written in a diary or somewhere )-writing actually connects my mind and brain -both are in sync then only i can understand better nowadays. (this might be effect of no exercise,only drinks and ofcourse the very imp lifestyle..).

Just these 8 days have made me realise

1.Life is precious

2.There is so much to explore ,read and engage with.

3.Bloody I am wasting my time doing this 9:00 to 6:00 IT professional job (this i am feeling for quite some time now but cant help on this as of now .......I will have to acquire some additional skill set if i want to make a switch and also need to explore other options which will be real.

In short ...many things to do ....and no time (usual cribbing)......but something has to be done to fix this one.