eNidhi: A professional amateur

Business through missed calls

2009-07-07T05:32:00.002+05:30

Some of us give more missed calls than paid calls. Its often used as a cost free way of passing a specific signal (like I’ll give a miss call once I reach home). It’s not just individuals- even business houses have started adopting the idea of miss calls. This post shares few observations and thoughts in this regard.

Saw the below display in namma Bengaluru's DVG road few weeks ago. While we're used to services of JustDial (or Getit helpline or the likes) and the likes who give you business information on telephone, wherein we spend money on phone call, this board suggested that we just give a miss call for any information (assumably they'll call back). I'm out of touch with Bangalore to some extent-not sure how popular and effective this particular service is. Tried calling (I mean miss-calling) the number, but it was engaged. Wanted to know if they directly give away the requested info or force people to listen to some ad first. They need to provide more lines if they really wish to receive more miss calls and serve people. (Their website is also not working)

Long back, I remember reading about a tea vendor in Chennai, who takes orders through miss calls. If you need tea at your office, you need to register with him first, and then give a miss call whenever tea is needed. The vendor would see your miss call and send his boy to deliver tea. Very effecient system.

Smart people (Or people who prefer not to spend on phone calls) use missed call feature in different way to communicate different messages. Simplest one is to give the signal (like I've reached safely or start now or the result is positive etc, something mutually agreed upon between the two parties). Advanced usages can vary depending on creativity of people and how kanjoos they are to make a phone call. Some possible combinations:
*Different meanings based on number of missed calls: 1 miss call means "book only 1 ticket", 2 miss calls means "book 2 tickets" etc
*Different meaning based on time of missed call
*Different meaning based on combination of miss calls-landline+mobie or mobile1+mobile 2

Person to Person calls: Long back, there was a concept called Person to Person call. If you wish to make a call to Mr.X in US, operator would make the call, check with the receiver if Mr. X is available and is ready to take a call from you and connect you to him only if the receiver is available. The idea was probably not to make people spend money on international calls when the recepient may or may not be avaiable. Call will be charged only if you talk-else no charge. This system can be very well termed as landline version of missed calls- not sure if clever people misused this service those days.

Toll Free numbers: Sensing that customers/prospects do not wish to spend money on phone calls, lots of companies have set up toll free numbers. Anything that comes free, many are good at misusing. Several times people call these toll free numbers without any serious business-their intention will be to have time pass or to flirt with call centre girls receiving the call. Despite this inconvenience and financial burden most of the companies continue to provide toll free numbers for the benefit of few genuine callers.

I think it can be expensive trying to give miss call to Virgin Mobile users. As they earn for incoming calls, chances are high that they'll receive any call at this first opportunity and try to talk as long as possible.

Another use of misscall feature is to listen to caller tunes of the other party. Have an understanding with him/her when not to receive the call and listen to nice songs for free

Earlier only mobile phone users used to get miss calls. Now with caller IDs very common in landlines, anyone can give miss call to anyone...

I'm sure mobile companies are very much aware that customers are misusing missed call-Hope they won't start charging for it one day.

Clear understanding between the two parites is very critical for effective use of miss calls. Else a miscommunication can happen and the cost of the same will certainly be much more than cost of calls saved. How to give missed calls when a person has switched off or is out of range? Several service providers give miss call alerts for such instances. At times it can be tricky to differentiate a failed call attempt and an intentional missed call.

One thing I seriously wish about missed calls is that all reality shows should use missed call facility for voting, instead of overpriced SMSs. (assign one number to each candidate and count which number receives highest number of missed calls) But I know that's gonna never happen.

Please use this opportunity to share your thoughts on miss calls. Have you tried any innovative ways of using the miss call feature?

Update: 2007 December I'd seen a taxi in Bangalore, with a writing- MISS CALL TAXI xxxx xxxx (Number to call) Not sure if they also meant-"give us a miss call if you want a taxi"

Related posts: Ladies who used to call me daily * SMS and Win??? *

Defense against Ants

2009-07-01T14:30:00.009+05:30

Though I like animals in general and pet animals in particular, Ants are an exception. They are hailed for their hard work-of collecting and storing food in anticipation of difficult times. But I don't like ants, because instead of “collecting” their food from a nearby supermarket, they STEAL it from my kitchen. They attack my food materials and render it useless, by infecting entire packet while all they can eat-their entire army put together is probably 1% of what the packet contains.

Most of you must have had bad experience of dealing with ants-it may not be a menace with modern homes but ants are a common problem in village homes and even city homes which are a bit old-this post is a quick collection of some preventive measures and Ant removal techniques, when they attack your food items (Mind you-labeling sugar jar as ‘salt’ isn’t one of them). Suggestions and ideas in this regard are welcome.

If you thought ants attack only those food items which are sweet, then you’re mistaken. They feast on wide range of food products- Raw Noodles, rice grains and so on.

DDT based Lakshman Rekha was a popular product (which I do not use) to keep ants away, but I guess ants have developed immunity against it.

Innovative Preventive measures against invasion of ants and other related thoughts:

Just in time procurement: Whatever Japanese industrialists invented, can be implemented right inside our homes. Just in time is a manufacturing methodology which suggests purchasing raw materials just when needed, thereby eliminating need to maintain high inventory. Though buying your food item in small quantities just when required denies an advantage of wholesale prices and makes you do frequent visits to store, it ensures that ants do not get a chance to claim ownership on your goods.
Keeping infested items under hot sun is the easiest way to get rid of ants. Due to heat they escape to a shady area within minutes. If the infested food items are expensive or very large in quantity to discard, it may make sense to shoo the ants away, clean properly where feasible and use it. But the thought that these ants might have camped there for days, adding their body waste and other impurities, makes it difficult to convince ourselves that we can re use it.
Change location: Ants take several hours to locate a food item and another few hours to march their army towards the same. Couple of times a day, move the food item from one place to another. By relocating their target, you’ll buy several hours of time.
Ants make their way through plastic bags and even supposed to be air tight containers-so extra tight containers are essential. All steel containers are the best-plastic containers are highly vulnerable as we may not close it tightly or the gap between lid and the container might be enough for an ant to squeeze in.
Haven’t seen ants attacking food items kept inside refrigerator-so that can be one safe place to keep it, but again, space inside the refrigerator will be limited.
Giving them a bait or trying to compromise with them will not work-if you keep a small qty reserved for ants, they consume the one on offer and attack the main consignment as well-so double loss. So no revenue sharing or seat sharing agreement with ants- its either them or you.
Water is an effective barrier-they can’t swim and cross. But difficult to make use of this idea.
Just like we have mobile signal jammers-which prevent mobile devices from receiving signal, wish some scientists invest an ant jammer-which ensures that ants fail to detect a possible food item by smell or other parameters. (Don’t think they search visually) We already have devices which attract mosquitoes and electrocute them.
I’m not aware of any counter animal that can be used against ants (For example, if rats and rodents pose a menace we can have a pet cat which will reduce this problem). So ants need to dealt manually.
What are the best ways to make an ant get lost? Any idea?
Are institutes like CFTRI (Central Food Technology and Research Institute) doing something about this issue? Can be an interesting assignment if they wish to take up the challenge.
I've only seen them carrying solid food. Won't they need some liquid food too? How do they transport and store water and other liquids?
Since ants store food for future, I am sure they would have enough stock to survive the recession phase. If somebody can study their storage habit (for how many days they're storing in advance) we may get some idea when ants anticipate recession to end? Also if I had an opportunity I would recommend ants to change their strategy-instead of stealing and storing, they should focus on being self sustainable, by learning how to grow/produce their own food.
Its only in movies we’ve seen alien creatures taking over our plannet. But if we’re not careful enough, ants will slowly take over our kitchen-so we need to unite and defend ourselves.. hehe.

These were some of my random thoughts on ants. Feel free to comment and add your thoughts regarding this.

Also read: AWPT Pet care centre * Cute squirrels of Agra Fort * Making Tomato rasam in easy steps * My dog marcus *

Alamparai fort and backwaters off ECR

2009-06-24T17:05:00.006+05:30

Alamparai fort is one of the lesser known places of tourist interest on the east coast road (ECR) that connects Chennai and Puducheri (Pondy). Not much has been done by tourism department to promote this place and in a sense that is good. Too much of commercialization spoils beauty of the place.
Alamparai fort is a severely ruined fort with only few fragments of the wall intact. Along with a beautiful backwater and adjoining sea, this scenic and serene place is ideal for spending few refreshing hours.

Where is it? How to go to Alamparai fort?
It’s off ECR (East Coast Road), some 40 kms from Mahabalipuram while driving towards Pondichery. No major signboards available on the roadside. After driving for about 40 kms, drive slowly. You’ll spot a village/town- called Kadapakkatrum, wherein you’ll see a small signboard- white letters on a blue/green background, which indicates that you’ve to take left turn to go to Alambarai fort. Take that road-drive for 2kms, road splits into two- take the right one, you’ll reach the fort in about a km. Share autos are available from this town to this fort.

History:
Refer the photograph for a brief history. It was built in 17th century by the Mughals and has subsequently changed hands several times, British were the last known owners/rulers here. The fort was damaged due to several wars and also due to recent tsunami that his the east coast.

What to do?
Backwaters is very scenic- I find it better than Pondy backwaters-Good and safe for a swim. Local fisherman offer to take you for a ride on the boat-charges will be in the range of Rs. 200-500 for 30 mins-depends on number of people, how good you can bargain and other factors. It’s illegal, No life jackets offered and not much help around if something goes wrong. So use your discretion before opting for the boat ride.

Other than boat ride and swim, fort area is nice for exploration, photography or for just relaxation. Not much of shady areas available to protect one from sun in the noon, but evenings will be nice. Very isolated area, so move out before its dark.

Except one small makeshift shop that sells few items not much refreshments were available. Carry your own food, but please do not litter the place.

Be sure to add this place to your itinerary if you’re planning a Mahabs or Pondy trip.

Ooty trip Day3: Nilgiris Heritage Train

2009-06-16T19:26:00.002+05:30

Day 3 of our Ooty trip. Read about Day 1 and Day 2 if you haven't.

Highlights: Journey in Heritage train, Conversation with police, Botanical Garden, Dodda betta, Shooting Madu.

Day 3 began with leisure. Everyone catching up with pending sleep and getting ready leisurely. We had 2-2 cups of Masala tea and did some shopping at Mayur teas- home made chocolates, tea powders, Oils and creams etc. All five of us put together made a purchase exceeding Rs 3000.

Few minutes past 8 AM we left, thanking the owners for their hospitality. First objective was to try the heritage train which shuttles between Mettupalyam and Udagamandalam, via Coonoor. The end to end journey one way takes more than 4 hours and we had two challenges: One-the car. If we had a driver along. We could have asked him to drive the car to destination while we travel in train. But having opted for self drive, we couldn’t do car and train journey together. Either I had forgo the experience of travelling in heritage train or come back after train journey to collect the car. Second challenge was time- 4 hours in train, another few hours to get the car would mean we'll have to skip lots of other places.

Hence we didn’t have time to enjoy end to end journey from Mettupalyam to Ootakamund, so opted for a part journey, from Coonoor to Ooty. Train was to start at 10.45 from Coonoor- so we split into 2 teams-one would go to Ooty, park the car and come back, while other team would get tickets, pack breakfast and keep the other team informed on timing and other happenings.

Myself and Devi drove to Ooty-found some place and parked the car. There wasn’t much traffic and 17 kms could be covered in 30 mins flat. It was 9.10 when we parked the car. Had 90 mins to get back to Coonoor railway station. I wasn’t sure how much time a bus would take, so checked a cabbie how much he would take to drop us at Coonoor. I had thought Rs 200-300 would be reasonable, but cabbie started at Rs 600 and came down till 450, which I knew was too much. We left it and walked little further where we got into an express bus heading towards Coimbattur. I’m glad we decided not to opt for cab, because for 8+8 16 bucks (2 tickets) we could reach back Coonoor by 10 am. (in case return journey took time, plan B was to board the heritage train at a later station, say Wellington)

Train was late by 15 mins. It had a diesel engine and not steam one, as I had expected it to be. First class tickets were overpriced at Rs 75 while normal tickets were just Rs 3. Nothing so special about first class, except that it is at the front of the train and seats are spacious (since only 4 people occupy a row instead of 6 in normal coach). Coonoor-Ooty stretch had very few number of tunnels and bridges, while Mettupalyam-Coonoor sector would have got much more of them.

Journey was good. Nice scenery outside and an energetic crowd inside-yelling, shouting, clicking snaps. The trip lasted for an hour and ended at Ooty station by noon. Raveesh bought some books and photos here and we came out. Now I had to go and get the car-I’d not noted the name of the area where I’d parked it-all I knew was that it is somewhere close to Coonoor road. Took an auto and managed to locate the car. While driving back to railway station to pick up others, police directed us through a slightly longer and jam packed route. As I was inching ahead, suddenly saw the Scorpio which I’d rented last year for Wayanad trip. [read more]

Next stop was at Botanical Garden-which was overcrowded on a Sundar afternoon. Finding parking space was tough-took 15 mins of time. One of the most expensive places to park at a fee of Rs 45 for a car. A vast garden, which I’d seen decades ago in a family trip, was revisited. Shortage of time and rains made us exit this place soon and we were soon heading towards Dodda Betta, stopping for a light drive in refreshment on the way. Dodda betta area was flooded with vehicles and we’d to park few kms away and walk. View was nice and weather was pleasant. We helped ourselves with fresh carrots, raw mangoes, baked ground nuts and more. A telescope view point showed us a distant village in Coonoor.

We left Dodda betta, reached Ooty and started driving towards Mysore, not forgetting to fuel up (saves 2 rs per litre). There were no khakhi+white clad traffic police in Ooty-regular all khaki clad police were regulating traffic and were very helpful in guiding us in the right direction. However one police man on the outskirts of the city was an exception.

We’d reached the junction where we had two options- go straight to take the regular highway to Mysore via Gudalur or take right and travel through Kalhatti ghat (through which we’d come). We wanted to try the Gudalur route and just to be sure we thought of cross checking with the police again. What happened next deserves a mention.

One of us (to the police): Sir this road goes to Mysore?
Police: Pull over
We: Why sir?
Police: Driver, come here.
I get out and go there, one more person accompanies me.
Police: Where do you want to go?
We: Mysore
Police: Tell me in which gear you’ll drive.
Me: There’re 5+1 gears in the car-I’ll drive in the most appropriate gear.
Police: No. Tell me which gear you’ll drive
Me: how can I specify any single gear? It depends on the driving condition
Police: Listen, don’t argue-you should drive in first or second gear only.
Me: ok sir. We can go?
Police: Give something.
We: what? Why?
Police: (hesitantly) registration
We: What registration? How much?
Police: Give something-say 50 Rs

At this point we went back to the car to tell others that this police officer is demanding Rs 50 bribe and were contemplating what next to do. By this time this officer got busy with other cars and lost interest in answering our questions (like what registration fee he is referring to). We got into the car and drove off.

We’d thought that was end of our trip, but we came across few more interesting places- Shooting madu-an open hill with a very nice view and green cover-where lots of movies were reportedly shot. Horse ride here costs Rs 100 for a quick ride till the peak and back. Jeeps are also available to take you for a round. I made an attempt to take photo of carrots stacked nicely for sale and the lady manning that stack of carrot literally attempted to snatch my camera- I didn’t understand what she said, but basically she was upset that I was taking photo of her carrots without paying her anything. I managed to walk away as she continued her dialogues-little did she know that I’ve enough zoom to capture her carrots from a distance. We stopped for few minutes at another view point and a reservoir. Pykara Boat house was also on the way, but it was exactly 6PM, closing time that is, when we spotted the signboard showing how to go to the boat house.
Road was good and by dinner time we’d reached Gundlupet. Hotels would have closed by the time we make it to Mysore, so we went to an Udupi hotel for dinner. Reached Mysore few hours later and spent 20 minutes circling the outer ring road, struggling to find an exit to Bangalore. If we’d entered the city we could have made it faster (we could have even seen Mysore palace illuminated).

Reached Bangalore few hours past midnight, ending a memorable trip. Fiesta didn't give any trouble during the trip and gave an economy of about 16+ kmpl (diesel)

Places missed/Could have been covered: Droog Fort, Pykara Boat House, Visit to tea factory, Pasteur Institute.

Update: Relatives to whom I gave the Oil and tea powder purchased at Mayur tea have given a feedback that the products were very good.

Also read other travelogues: Wayanad * Yercaud * Binsar * Talakona *

Play time-Theatre plays by Evam, Rebelz n more

2009-06-10T04:38:00.013+05:30

Some updates first:

Ex classmate BM Giriraj (he is also associate director of a movie-Moggina Manasu) has released a Kannada novel recently, called Kathege Savilla (no death to stories)- grab a copy if you can.

A Hyderabad based magazine, PRISM, has quoted my opinion, with credit, in one of its articles about Begging menace. You may wish to read the article here (My inputs are hidden deep somewhere-either read it fully or do Ctrl+F for my name). In case you wish to buy the print version, Magazine is available for Rs 10 at Walden stores in Begumpet and Banjara Hills

Play Time

Hot sun and other factors have cut down my travel plans in past few months and instead made me divert attention towards theatre, music and other fine arts. In the span of last 6 months I’ve attended about 10 plays/performances. I’m not an expert in this field and do not have time and content to write detailed review, so just giving a mention of various performances I attended and a brief review.

1. Battle of the Sexes, by Rebelz at Alliance Française (21st December 2008)
Two small plays performed back to back on the theme-difference of opinion between men and women. Play was good to watch, though nothing new in the story/content. More about Rebelz Entertainment

2, 3. Inspirations 09 and Summer-n-Groove Dance show by Swingers
Have written in detail about Swingers in a separate post- Read it here.

4. Hamlet the Original Spoof by evam, Vinayaga hall, Nungambakkam
Came to know about this show by a friend just 30 mins prior to start time. Dashed to the venue just in time. The play is performed by only 3 characters, performed well by Karthik Kumar, Karthik Srinivasan and Sunil Vishnu (excluding some audience invited on stage) I’ve not yet seen or read the original hamlet, so the spoof almost went overhead. But the play was slightly different and innovative from others- other than the regular performance, it was re enacted in slow motion mode, fast forward mode, reverse mode etc to entertain the audience. Some audience were invited on stage to do some small actions, the introduction was also different-running all around auditorium, killing time, pulling each other’s leg etc, which may look silly for serious observers. [More]

5, 6. Patala Bhairavi and Mayaa Bazaar (Telugu)-by Surabhi Group, coordinated by Evam, Music Academy, Mylapore
Hyderabad based Surabhi theatre group (aka Sri Venkateshwara NatyaMandali) is reportedly one large united family of some 60+ members whose prime activity is performing theatre. They are known for on stage animations and effects, which we got to see firsthand in these two plays. Surabhi group was founded in 1889 (yes, more than 120 years) and is running since 3 generations. Everyone in the family-small kids to elderly people will have some role/responsibility to undertake during each show.

Play was in telugu, so audience were provided with a synopsis in English, which helped us get a brief overview of the story. The 100 Rs ticket was full paisa vasool, while higher denomination tickets didn’t have much of a value addition. Complementary beauty products from Citibank promo, discount coupons and free perk, parrot reading etc added to fun-which we missed on day 1 but exploited on day 2.

Some of the on stage animations/graphics used in these plays deserves a mention. Difficult to describe or narrate in words and should be enjoyed live. Romantic scenes involving moon and dreaming, scenes in which the rakshasa chops off his own hand and several such tricks were executed very well. Sitting at balcony we could view some accessories used for these tricks-which we wouldn’t have seen has we been on ground floor.

Both Patala Bhairavi (The Goddess of Underground) and Maya bazaar (Illusionary Market??) are available as movies, for those interested. First one, Patala Bhairavi, is about a common man winning heart of princess, while having to face lots of hurdles, including an evil man who attempts to con this man and sacrifice him to Patala Bhairavi for some personal gains. However our hero gets the hint just in time, manages to escape, win hands of princess and so on. Mayaa Bazaar is a relatively weaker story.

Surabhi group frequently performs in Hyderabad and other cities like Bangalore (keep an eye on Ranga Shankara schedule). Watch their next performance if you can.

7. Music Concert at IIT-M Open Air Theatre, on the occasion of Easter

Forgot the name of the singer-Was a nice performance.

8. PC Sorkar Magic Show
Except a few tricks others were conventional and boring. Not really worth, mainly because we would have seen the same stuff several times over-in TV, in other shows etc. Kids might enjoy it though.

9. Two 2 Tango, by Rebelz, Alliance Française
Both Rebelz plays I’d seen were two in one- two short plays performed back to back. In Two 2 Tango, first play, Playwriting for Dummies, was about how a script writer tries to control the play by varying dialogues or significance of each characters. Second play, Alice in Blunderland, was about a person who had created a false image in the eyes of his boss about a strong relationship he has with his loved one, while in reality he had none. Now that his boss is visiting his place for dinner, he has to get a girl to act as his fiancée. The play depicts the trouble he faces in the process. Overall rating: Ok to Good.

10. Summer of Love-Western Music concert by Unwind Centre, Museum Theatre, Egmore
Organized primarily to showcase talents of newly enrolled students of unwind centre, the concert included several songs in mass singing. Since they were not professionals, but amateurs who just learnt some singing, Rs 200 ticket fare was a bit high. But like swingers I guess here also parents of kids singing were the ones who composed most of the audience, having to buy tickets at whatever rate quoted by the organizers. Some songs were good, but melody was somewhat missing as 25-30 people on stage couldn’t sing in perfect synchronization. For a few songs they displayed lyrics on screen, which helped making sense of what they were singing, while many other songs didn’t have the same. Audience was also made to sing a few lines

Coming up in near Future

Run for your Wife- By ASAP- Museum Theatre, Egmore, Chennai
To be performed this Saturday and Sunday, 13th and 14th June 2009, 7PM- Watch it if you can. I’ll update this post with a brief review of this play next week. Run for your wife is A very popular play in England. ASAP productions are performing it in Chennai, with assistance from Bhoomi.

Run for your wife: Post play update: The play was good, though started little late. I felt some dialogues and actions could have been toned down a little. There were no refreshments on sale during the break. Museum theatre is not the best place to perform a play-due to its semi circular design, only those sitting at the centre can get proper view. Also number of seats are much less compared to a regular theatre.

Chicago- A musical by stagefright theatre group
Scheduled to be performed in August, the team is rehearsing hard. Based on an English movie- Chicago-story of a few ladies who murder men for various reasons and land up in jail. To be performed by Stagefright productions

An Idiot for Dinner by Evams

Performance of this play is going on at Rangashankara, JP Nagar Bengaluru this weekend. Next weekend (20th and 21st June) it will be happening in Chennai, 3:30 and 7:30pm at Sivagami Pettachi Auditorium in Mylapore. [More]

Ticket prices to these shows are 2-3 times (and more) that of a movie ticket. But watching live performance is a different experience compared to viewing pre recorded video. Also some of these theatre groups are into charity and social welfare. Most of them are very successful in getting enough sponsors.

Also wanted to attend performances of Ram and Indira Kadambi, Jayanti Sundar and others-didn't materialize.

eNidhi India Merger plans unveiled

2009-06-03T20:13:00.001+05:30

eNidhi India Board of Directors met secretly at an undisclosed location (probably in an abandoned LTTE Bunker) recently and discussed the option of acquiring two lesser known blogs under eNidhi India banner- the Ad critics blog and Shrinidhi’s photo blog and merging them into the main blog: eNidhi: A professional amateur.

Rationale behind this thought and some key considerations are listed below, though a final decision will be taken during annual general body meeting of eNidhi India, after taking all stakeholders into confidence.

The Proposal:
Merge the ad critics and the photo blog (both received lukewarm response and negligible page views) with the main blog and discontinue posting new entries in the acquired blogs. Make all new posts related to photography or ad reviews in the parent blog itself in order to consolidate reader base.

Rationale behind this move (consolidated from a Hi-Fi pptx that Chief Operations Officer of eNidhi India presented to its board of directors)

The photo blog and Ad critics blog aren’t getting expected response from readers and efforts invested in them is yielding negative returns
Quantity of new contents at these blogs were very minimal compared to parent blog and with such a low rate of new posts, comments and reader-base, it is not operationally viable to run these blogs
The interest from fellow contributors at the ad critics blog appears to be non-existent, which is suspected to be primarily because of poor readership
These blogs are causing dilution of visitors who land at profile page
Dilution of page rank and visitor count can be avoid by directing all visitors to one blog
During this time of recession eNidhi India needs to consolidate its reader base and contents effectively under one blog itself, instead of running several ‘not so successful’ blogs.
Existing contents on these blogs will not be disturbed, as republishing them on the main blog can irritate readers who’ve already read them.

Note: eNidhi India Chief Blogging Officer has clarified that all his blogs were real assets and this is not an attempt to replace fictitious assets with real ones.

Stakeholder opinion and investor reaction is being keenly awaited for this move.

Swingers Dance School Inspirations Show

2009-05-29T06:48:00.004+05:30

In recent past, I attended two dance shows organized by Swingers. Swingers is a company operational in Chennai and Bengaluru that provides long term professional, short term courses and summer (crash) courses on western dance forms (hip-hop, bachata, salsa and the likes-I can hardly differentiate between them) and conduct stage shows wherein their students perform to display their recently learnt dance skills.

This post shares information and some of my observations about (western) dance schools like Swingers and their shows. Disclaimer: I’m not qualified enough to pass comments on dance performance-these are my simple observations/opinions. I do not have any rights to criticize them-children had fun, parents are proud and Swingers got yet another successful show to their kitty-but since I bought tickets to the show I am taking some liberty of publishing my thoughts.
The business model is excellent- a 15 day crash course for wannabe dancers, priced at approx Rs 1.5-2k per person, during which they get to learn a set of dance steps which forms a 4-6 minutes dance item. At the end of training season there’ll be a 3 hour stage show will have about 15-20 dance items (of various types, from different batches, each involving 15-20 students). So anywhere about 200-300 people get to perform per show. Tickets for the show priced at Rs 250-300 and upwards, no complementary tickets given to the members who are performing. When a child is performing, its proud parents will buy the tickets at any price, so at least 2 tickets per performer and 600 tickets will be sold easily. That directly makes 1.5-2 lakh rupees per show by sale of tickets alone. Income from sponsors extra. Expenses are studio/theatre rentals and lightings (costumes by performers, at their expense).

I’m given to understand that John Britto’s dance school, SDIPA (Shaiamak Davar’s institute of performing arts), Bal Bhavan, Unwind Centre and several others also have similar approaches. Nothing wrong or worth complaining about it-just a mention.

Other comments
1. Compared to the first performance I attended (on March 15th 2009 and Music Academy Chennai), the second one (May 23 2009, Music Academy, Chennai) was cheaper and better. For the dances meant for small kids, this time they made a elder dancer dance with them, so that kids can refer to him/her and follow the steps. Last time kids were left to their own.

2. In addition to the technicalities, music , coordination and MCing , managing 300+ performers backstage, most of them kids, for 3 hours, is a challenge. Swingers has managed to accomplish the task gracefully.

3. Both the shows I attended staged Lion King and it appears to be their trademark. With several “animals” and poised rhythmic movements, the hullaballoo generated is contagious..

4. Several dances were however a repetition. May be the performers were different- couldn’t help but notice that the dance steps, music and costume of certain items were a copy-paste of Inspirations ’09 ( the 1st show I attended)

5. They thanked the sponsors, management, partners everyone, but didn’t thank the audience who paid a price and bought tickets

6. I was initially hoping there will be some Bharatanatyam or other Indian classical performances-there weren’t any. Only western ones. (Bharatanatyam takes several years to master-why bother when Swingers can teach you hip hop in 15 days and make you dance on stage? I asked a veteran bharatanatyam dancer Indira Kadambi if Bharatanatyam is losing sheen among pupils or if there’s a decline in demand. She assured me that there’s still a good number of students joining Bharatanatyam classes) Also Bharatanatyam is predominantly a solo dance-they won’t be able to put 300 people on stage with solo items

7. I’m given to understand that they didn’t force the participants to buy dance dresses from a specific shop-most performers had the option of buying one for themselves/manage with existing dresses they may have. Though this meant minor non-uniformity in the costume, it should have saved some cash outflow for the performers.

8. Generally, it’s a practice to announce the names of the performers-but this was skipped during the show, understandably due to huge headcount in each item. I later noticed that they’ve displayed a board outside, listing names of performers in each item.

9. As far as I know, ticket sale opened just 48 hours before the show-shows that they are fully confident of selling all tickets (parents and friends who wish to see the performance of their ward/friend will anyway have to buy the tickets)

10. The first show I attended, had an item called one minute to fame, wherein several members were given one minute stage time, to do anything they want and impress the guests-some danced, few played instruments, it was a good concept indeed which was missing in second show.

11. Lots of energy was seen on stage with everyone trying to put in their best. Because most of them weren’t professionals and had only 15 days of training, at times some deviation from perfection was evident, but that doesn’t really matter. Couple of solo performances by well qualified dancers would have spiced up the show a bit.

Even if you do not intend to take up dancing full time, Courses from Swingers or other such institutions are a great opportunity to overcome your inhibitions and learn some steps/body movements, make new friends in the process and have good time in general. They seem to have different courses for different age groups, ranging from small kids to adults. Different batches at various places keep happening throughout the year. Wanna try?

Day 2: Coonoor-Kotagiri: Sim's park, Dolphin nose, Kodanad viewpoint, Catherine Falls

2009-05-27T06:53:00.005+05:30

“Hello Sir Wake up. I need to sweep this place. Is that your car? Can you remove it?” I woke up listening above words, from a sweeper, at Coonoor main bus stand, on 2nd of May 2009 5.45-6 AM. Couple of hours back I’d slept there, after a failed attempt to find an ideal camping place/hotel during day 1 of our Ooty trip. You need to read part one here to get full picture.

Highlights of Day 2: Campsite found, Dolphin Nose, Lamb's Rock and Kodanad Viewpoints, Catherine Falls and Sim's park, Saying No to Rs 500 buffet dinner at Wallwood garden, driving in lush green Coonoor roads.

Thus began Day 2 of our trip, with the shadow of Day 1 still haunting us. We needed a place to freshen up-few hotels in the city which had proper restroom facilities would open only by 7. We had about an hour to spare, so thought we’ll visit one or two tourist places and return. We set out to explore Dolphin nose. One kind localite guided us for most of the distance. Somewhere suddenly I saw a board-“Parking Toilets” and I slammed the brakes. Two people got out and checked the place-it was a shop (run by Mayur Teas) selling tea, tea powder, oil, homemade chocolates and other products Ooty is famous for. They had a toilet which visitors could use and lots of open space, generously offered for parking/camping, free. We freshened up here and had great tea. We checked with them if we can camp tonight in the premises of their shop and they generously agreed. Thus we decided to come back and camp there that night, without searching any further. One problem solved. (Clarification: Parking & Toilets are two separate term-not a combined service like Drive in Restaurants :) )

We next went to Dolphin nose-located at the edge of a hill, connected by very narrow road. Nothing there resembled the name, but view was great nevertheless. A magazine page with Amit Agarwal’s photo was lying on the ground and caught our attention. Catherine falls is visible from here (we went there later in the day- refer photos at the end of post). Photo session at the tea garden, stop at a small water stream and checking out Lambs Rock viewpoint were next few activities before returning back to city. Sim’s park was the next destination, where we had breakfast. The Poori we had there came with a Sabji of north Indian style. The garden was ok ok-a tiny pond with boating, several big trees (with honeybee nests) and lots of shade. This garden was supposed to have a japanese style-didn't notice anything to that effect. The Pasteur Institute was right in front of Sim's park, which we could have visited, but didn't.

It was noon by the time we came out and started looking for a restaurant. Saw the board of Hotel Vivek and we went there. We were the first customer for the afternoon. This hotel has very nice restroom-a bathroom included. Lunch was good, comprised of biriyani and pullao.

Next we set out towards Kotagiri. Got to see a possession en-route in which a person had pierced a rod through is cheeks. First destination was Catherine falls, hidden somewhere inside a private tea garden. First proper bathing for us since we left Bengaluru-refreshing. Dolphin’s nose was visible from Catherine falls. The places of tourist interest are spread all over the district, 10-40 kms from each others, most of them connected by narrow roads in the middle of tea gardens-good that we had our transportation. A few autos and jeeps do seem to ply between places ferrying people. No buses for most of the places (road isn't wide enough)

Energized by the falls, drove towards Kodanad viewpoint. Roads were good all around. Signs were adequate to help us with direction, but at times we had to stop at ask. In Kotagiri, I believe villagers are used to people asking for directions-At junctions if we aren’t sure which way to take, we just had to slow down and people would automatically guide us to the right direction, without our asking. Feels good. Viewpoint was good and we’d reached just in time for sunset.

In Yercaud, all viewpoints-Pagoda point, Lady's seat, Gents' seat etc were looking similar. But in Coonoor each viewpoint had different view and were interesting.
Went back to Coonoor, no other plans for the day, except for dinner and rest. Almost all key destinations were covered. But we had to reach our campsite in time, so that the shopowner won’t lock the gates and sleep off. Searching for a restaurant for dinner, suspecting another traffic jam in Coonoor city, took an impulsive decision to checkout Wallwood Garden, a posh hotel which we’d just passed by few mins back while driving towards Coonoor. We took you turn, went inside the Wallwood Garden campus and parked the car. We went to the restaurant and surprised to see a person playing a Piano there, entertaining the guests. With little hesitation we asked how much the dinner would cost. “Rs 500+tax sir” promptly came the reply. (Comparative buffet dinner rates, Deccan Plaza, Chennai: Rs 350+tax, Club Mahindra Yercaud: Rs 200+tax) Way beyond our budget and we had to escape from there. To the surprise and dismay of the hotel representative, we promptly told him that the rate is beyond our budget and left. If only they’d put a small display saying “Dinner-Rs 500+tax” we wouldn’t have taken the trouble of going inside, parking the car and come back after asking the price. We went back to Hotel Vivek which we’d tried in the noon, had dinner and went to camping site to call it a day. Tent was small for 5 people, without pegs to stretch it properly-too late to worry about all that, we slept off. Sound sleep finally awaiting us.

View from Dolphin Nose viewpoint. What you see inside the circle is catherine falls

View of Dolphin Nose from Catherine Falls

End of Day 2. Read part 3

3 days Bengaluru Ooty Trip Part 1

2009-05-23T09:02:00.006+05:30

3 years of blogging: This blog has completed 3 years of existence yesterday. First post was published on 22 May 2006 and 370 posts have gone live so far. Thanks to each one of you for the support and encouragement.

Earlier this month, me and 4 others went on a 3 day trip to Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri. Day 1 was lost in travel, Day 2 was ok ok and Day 3 was full paisa vasool. This trip made me realize the need for better planning. This post is about Day 1. Day 2 and 3 will be covered in a subsequent post.

Highlights of Day 1: Steep uphill drive at kallatti Ghats, Traffic Jam at Coonoor-Mettupalyam Road, night spent in car/bus stand

This 3 day trip to Ooty and nearby areas was conceptualized long back. But in between a 11 day Himalayan trek option (SAR PASS Trek organized by YHAI, Abhijit Bhat, who went for this trek has uploaded his photos here) came my way, which I happily grabbed, ditching the Ooty plan. But my registration for the trek couldn’t get confirmed in time from YHAI and I decided to drop out (next year, may be). This made me free again for the 3 day long weekend and Ooty plan was revived and executed.

For three reasons, we opted to take tents and sleeping bags for rent and camp somewhere instead of staying in hotels (Reasons were: getting accommodation was tough due to peak tourist season clubbed with 3 day weekend, wanted to keep costs as low as possible, wanted to give fellow travelers an experience of camping)

We rented a tent+5 sleeping bags from Mars Adventures Bangalore. [Same co who’d organized Ramanagaram rock climbing] Rental was Rs 1800 for 3 days for these items. They had not kept the pegs for tents and zip of a sleeping bag was not working-which we didn’t check as we were in a hurry. Be careful on these aspect if you’re renting from them.

I rented a Ford Fiesta from Car Club for this trip (last time I’d booked >Ford Fiesta from Hertz for >Wayanad trip I got a free upgrade to Scorpio-no such wonders happened this time). This 1.4 Duratorque EXI had about 50000kms on the odo. I had to arrive from Chennai and collect delivery of the car.Driver hadn’t got the vehicle documents along and hence had to drive to Car Club Garage. Anyway we’d to wait till 6.30AM for collecting the tent.

Picked up friends who were joining me in the trip. Then we headed to Kanteerava indoor stadium near Corporation to collect tents. Soon we were on our way to Ooty. Original idea was to stop at Kamat Lokaruchi for breakfast, but we spotted a hotel Kadu Mane and decided to check it out. It was too crowded, so we decided to take parcel and proceed. We ate it on the way sometime later.

To reach Ooty there exists a shorter route via Kanakapura, Chamarajanagar-Mettupalyam. But as we learnt that road to be in bad condition, we opted for the tried and tested Bengaluru-Mysuru-Ooty route. We could see an unusually high number of cars and tourist vehicles-understandably headed towards Mysore-lots of people heading out to make the most of 3 day weekend, visiting Mysore, Ooty, Coorg, Wayanad etc.

First major stop was near Nanjanagudu, at an abandoned railway + road bridge over Kabini river with few abandoned compartments. 2 bogies of Heritage chariot were also stood there. Fellow traveler Raveesh took the trouble of noting down details of this bride from a Railway Department board nearby-I’m just sourcing the same from his blog - "It was built by Dalvoy Devraj in 1735 with brick, sand and stone adopting ancient Gothic style. It was strong and wide enough to carry road traffic as well as metre guage trains, which started running in 1889. This ancient bridge today stands as an engineering marvel, which bears testimony to the skills of those who built it. This bridge now over 270 years old and could very well be the oldest railway bridge in the world because the first railways was built only after 1825 and there were no other known cases of ancient road bridges having been used to carry railway traffic".

Next stop was somewhere inside Bandipura reserve forest. We only spotted some deers-no other wild animals. Soon we entered TamilNadu state and took a turn to go to Hotel TamilNadu. What we saw there was that all tables were occupied, but no table had any dish on it. Apparently they’d not started serving lunch yet and it would take lots of time. The place had lots of gulmohar trees and a water stream flowing nearby. We took some rest there and moved on, without lunch. Few other hotels/resorts we could locate en route also had no food, as it was late or too many customers came that day- bananas and other packed foods kept us energized till the evening.

At Theppakkadu junction we had two options-take the shortcut via Kalhatti ghat or take the regular route via Gudalur. We took the former. Narrow road, 36 hairpin turns and a steep uphill drive, made it a challenging. I thought Fiesta is a sporty car, but the one I rented 1.4 Duratorque EXi) hardly had any pull in second gear while climbing Kalhatti ghat.(Car was fully loaded with 5 people, the engine wasn’t obviously tuned for sporty climbs and incline was reasonably steep-all these could be the reasons) Driving most of the distance in first gear, burning the clutch, wasn’t a pleasure, but I enjoyed it. As far as I noticed, Only Innovas zipped uphill with ease, while many other cars, Indicas, Indigos, Marutis and even a Sumo had tough time. In fact one Indigo driver asked us if we had an extra driver who can drive his car till top. I also couldn’t prevent the engine from stalling several times-tells me I still need to improve a lot in driving. We could see lots of cars parked with their bonnet open, to help the engine cool down. When we stopped for a cup of masala tea, I also opened the bonnet and allowed the fiesta to breathe easy for a while. Ideally one should have taken Gudalur route to reach Ooty and Kalhatti ghat route to return from there, but that way, those who enjoy driving will miss the fun.

It also started raining. We stopped at several places for views and photos and reached Ooty by evening. Our original idea was to go to Coonoor, locate an ideal place to camp, then drive around a bit, come back and camp. It was 5PM and some time was left we thought we’ll cover one place in Ooty and went to the main lake. It was too crowded, we were told it will take min 1 hour for our turn (for boating) to come and it closes by 6.30PM. Not so keen to wait, we moved on, heading towards Coonoor losing about 45 minutes in the process. Though just 17 kms from Ooty, heavy traffic ensured that it was dark before we could reach Coonoor. As per our plan we were to locate a camping place somewhere around Coonoor but it became impossible in the dark, given that we were visiting the place for the first time. To find one there has to be some light and we needed to go somewhere away from the city but we weren’t sure where to go. Some better planning or a local help or a GPS device could have helped, but we had none. We had dinner in some decent hotel on the main road, opposite Coonoor Railway station. We checked at hotels and lodges, only to learn that all rooms are full (as suspected).

So now the options were limited: Spend the night in the car, or venture out in the dark to find a camping place. Suddenly the picture I’d seen in Bangalore City and Chennai Central railway stations came to my mind-Railway stations operate 24x7 and passengers often the night in railway station campus, either waiting for their train or for not being able to afford a hotel. On our agenda was to take the Mettupalyam-Udagamandalam heritage train. So I thought we can drive to Mettupalyam, spend the night in railway station campus, take the train next morning (7.45AM) and come back. This decision proved to be a mistake-as we headed towards Mettupalyam, we got stuck in massive traffic jam. Apparently this Coonoor-Mettupalyam highway has several bottlenecks-narrow bridges or turns and whenever a big vehicle tries to negotiate it, it creates a traffic jam, halting traffic several kms on both sides. On several occasions we switched off the engine and waited for 20-30 minutes before getting to move few more meters. Thus the 28 kms journey took several hours and we reached Mettupalyam by midnight. With some local help we located the railway station, only to find its gates locked. I thought Mettuplayam is a bigger city/station than Conoor, but maybe I was wrong. All hotels in Mettupalyam were also full. In one resort the person in charge offered us a small unfurnished hall for Rs 3000. He later brought down the price for Rs 2000, but we weren’t keen on spending so much for just a few hours of rest.

We spent few hours in the car, but it was too hot (Unlike Ooty/Conoor, Mettupalyam is not a hill station) with a topping of mosquito bites. Wasn’t a good idea to run AC on battery and risk a dry battery and keeping the engine running would attract undue attention - safety factors in an unknown town had to be factored. Everyone preferred to spend night in the car than camp at some unknown/unsafe place. Other than boarding the train we didn’t have any other plans for Mettupalyam on our agenda. An impromptu decision was made to drive back to Coonoor-which was a hill station far cooler and we had to visit several places around Coonoor. Somewhere around 2.30-3AM in the morning I drove back to Coonoor. This time roads were deserted and it took just about 45 minutes.

After reaching Coonoor, took some rest, drove around a bit and while passing through Coonoor bus stand, saw lots of people sleeping there. So parked the car in a bay meant for buses. Others preferred to sleep in the car itself, but I wanted to spread my legs, so came out, took out the sleeping bag and slept at the cleanest place I could find around, in the Great Coonoor Bus Terminal.

Poor planning leading to discomfort, bad luck and too much of travel marked day 1 of the trip. But it was one great experience and lessons learnt are many. I felt bad for making all of them sleep in the car and spend the night without proper rest/comfort/amenities but the guys were accommodative and supportive enough not to complain.

Read Part 2 and part 3

Note: Names of some of the places have been sourced from Raveesh's blog. While I was busy driving he's done a nice job noting down several details.

Other travelogues: Talakona * Yercaud * Wayanad * Binsar *

Caution about Mazaa and slice mango drinks

2009-05-21T06:06:00.002+05:30

This is an health related information, learnt from a reliable source, but not verified by this author. Readers are requested to use their discretion.

Some of us think fruit based drinks such as Mazaa and Slice are better alternatives that aerated drinks like Sprite/Coke/Pepsi. Learnt from a friend that these drinks, specially during summer months could be even more harmful.

Now, this is what I learnt recently about these drinks-
Drinks like Maazaa and Slice are manufactured using natural and synthetic fruit pulp (mango in this case). In order to sterilize the microbes in them, the drink needs to be treated with a process called Pasteurization for about 90 minutes, before bottling. During summer, demand will be very high and the bottling plant will have difficult to meet production targets. Due to this high demand and a mandate of producing more and more bottles of drinks, the 90 minutes pasteurization process is often compromised-either the duration is reduced or its skipped altogether.

What this means is lots of bacteria, which should have been sterilized through pasteurization are bottled live and they reproduce rapidly inside. A consumer drinking from this bottle runs a high risk of catching some infection/diseases these bacteria might be pathogens to. I do not know the exact threat/disease caused by these micro organisms. So far no serious case has been reported in this regard and our body might have enough immunity to deal with these microbes, still this post is a word of caution. Better be safe than sorry.

Also please note that above information is not verified-of course no company will officially accept a lapse in process compliance. Unless a designated government agency conducts a surprise ride to verify it, or a person working there confirms it off the record, we can’t be sure. Please use your discretion.

This doesn’t mean aerated drinks like Coke and Pepsi are any better. Serious recommendation is to revert to any of the natural drinks listed here

Making Tomato Rasam in 12 easy steps

2009-05-19T07:35:00.006+05:30

This post tells you about a simple way of preparing Tomato Rasam (in 12 easy steps)

Items required:

Tomatoes (Apple tomatoes-the big red round ones, not the smaller local variety), say ½ kg
Onion: 2 units
MTR Rasam powder
Dhania (aromatic green leaves which are added in all dishes)
Salt
Coconut powder(optional)
Chilli powder and Haldi (optional)
Tamarind and Green Chilli (optional)
One small/medium sized vessel to cook and a gas stove.

Safety precautions:
Keep Ambulance and paramedic staff on standby before consuming the product generated through this experiment. A sample may even be sent to CFTRI or other labs for declaring it fit for consumption.

Try on yourself first, before feeding roommates/visitors/others

Making Tomato Rasam in 12 Easy Steps:
1. Clean tomato and onion (about 5-6 tomatoes, 2 onions)
2. chop the vegetables & pour them into vessel
3. Add water
4. Add a bit of tamarind and green chili (optional)
5. Switch on the stove
6. Add salt- 4-5 tea spoons
7. Add Rasam powder: No specific quantity- I just pour directly from the packet, to my heart’s content. (let us say 6-8 tea spoons)
8. Add little bit chilli powder, little haldi and Coconut powder (optional)
stir to mix properly
9. Wait till it boils (if you plan to leave the kitchen while it boils, be sure to set an alarm and come back within about 5 mins, else the vessel will dry up)
10. Reduce intensity of flame, let it continue to boil for few more mins
11. Switch off the stove.
12. Add dhaniya leaves, chopped (optional, but highly recommended)

Done.
Taste it. If found eatable, mix it with rice and consume. Else discard and go to hotel. (Rice needs to be prepared separately-Read Jammy’s post on how to prepare rice

Note 1: This is a my way of cooking-All those mentioned optional are strictly optional-Rasam can be made without them too. Regular home makers would cook it in a different way-by adding grams, coconut etc.

Note 2: By replacing Rasam powder with Sambar powder and Tomato with any other vegetable, the recipe can be used to prepare XYZ Sambar as well (where XYZ is name of the vegetable whose sambar you wish to make)- Highly flexible you see...

Note 3: This recipe is custom prepared for bachelors who will have very limited number of vessels, ingredients and accessories in kitchen. Primary objective will be to cook something eatable as fast as possible, without having to spend several hours in the kitchen meddling with dozens of ingredients, vessels and accessories. Time, cost and effort spent in procuring the ingredients to preparing the meals to washing the dishes will also be a major consideration, vis-à-vis visiting a hotel nearby.

Statutory Disclaimer: Anyone who dares to experiment this recipe is understood to have excused this blogger for any possible accidents/damages/issues before, during or after the preparation of food item.

Also read: My cooking expedition (May 2006 post) * Natural drinks for this summer * Domino's Stuffed Crunch Pizza *

Jeffrey Archer on Paths of Glory and his next book

2009-05-12T08:39:00.010+05:30

I don’t do celebrity fan fare but when I learnt that master story teller Jeffrey Archer was coming to town, thought I’ll drop by for a while if possible. He was in Chennai last time also, but I got the information rather late. So yesterday 7PM I was at Landmark Nungambakkam and spent some minutes listening to Jeffrey Archer.

He arrived 10 minutes behind schedule and without wasting much time in any formalities launched his new books and began talking. Paths of Glory is his new English novel (hardback Rs 850, paperback Rs 230) which he launched in Chennai yesterday, besides unveiling Malayalam and Tamil translations of his work ("Not a penny more, not a penny less" in Malayalam and “Twist in the Tale” in Tamil) Twist in the tale is being translated to Kannada as well and will be inaugurated at Bengaluru in a couple of days.

Jeff was very upbeat about his blog-he said lots of his readers are from India and he is spending considerable time daily reading and responding to comments/mails he gets. He said he needs to be very careful presenting facts as his readers are smart to identify goof ups. He went on to give a brief overview of his latest work, Paths of Glory, which has said half facts and half fiction.

Extract of Paths of Glory:
This book (15th from Jeff) is about a gentleman, George Mallory who wanted to climb mount Everest. But for various reasons he failed in his first two attempts. This hobby of his was taking away lots of his quality time and money, so his wife is not happy. He sets out to make one last attempt, telling his wife that I’m going to climb Mount Everest this time and I’ll place your photo on top of it and return. Once I come back I will spend all my time with you and won’t venture out again.

He sets out to climb Mount Everest, but was found dead on the way. No one knows if he died while climbing down or he failed to make it to the top and gave up on the way. They check his wallet and his wife’s photo was missing in it-which should mean he went up till the peak and place it there. The whole novel is about unraveling weather he did really make it to the peak or gave up enroute- said Jeff. (The significance is, if it could be proved that he indeed climbed Mount Everest, he would have been the first person to do so, ahead of Tensing and Edmund Hillery)

Watch below video if interested to hear it from his own words (poor quality video made from mobile camera)

About his next project:

He said his next work will be a collection of short stories. He went on and offered to tell one story from that collection of short stories, I’m narrating that story below in highly abridged form:

There’s a gentleman who loves to backpack and travel all around, unplanned. He once arrives in a small town by bus and its about midnight by the time he reaches there. There were few more passengers along with him in the bus and after getting down he sets out looking for a hotel to stay.

Finally he finds a hotel, manned (womanned??) by a beautiful lady at the reception. She tells that all rooms are fully occupied and she has no room vacant to offer him. On being asked about other possible hotels/accommodations in town she says “No-there’s no other hotel in town. Your only chance is a lady who accommodates people-but her place is 5 miles from here, she’s no phone and is partially deaf-if you wish you can go there and take chance, but I don’t recommend ”

After much deliberations and discussions the receptionist offers our traveler an accommodation in her room. They go upstairs, spend the night together “and all things happened” if I’ve to quote the story teller himself.

Morning she asks the traveler: "Please take the fire exit to get out and come in from the main entrance again to collect your baggage left at the reception, so that no one notices that you were in my room". This guy does the same and as he re enters the hotel he finds a middle aged woman at the reception. "I came to collect my bags"-he explains.

Lady: Where did you stay?
Traveller: At the beach, as all rooms in the hotel were full (he lies)
Lady; Who said it is full- several rooms were vacant last night
Traveller: Err, but the girl at the reception said all rooms were full
Lady: Who was at the reception?
Traveller: That girl named ____
Lady: Oh she? She said all rooms were full while most of them were indeed empty? Then she offered you space at her room?
Traveller: ?!?!
Lady: hmm… this is not the first time she’s done that… (End of story)

It was nice hearing to Jeffrey. He praised RK Narayan a lot and said he'd read Malgudi days once again after returning to England. He spoke well, inducing humor at right spot and entertained the audience. Seems he promised to stay back as long as required so as to autograph each and every book purchased. Wish I could stay back but I had to leave. I left the venue once he finished his talk and started taking questions. Making my way out of overcrowded landmark store was a challenge-like Chakravyooha…

Poor event management by landmark:
I felt it was a very bad idea to organize the function inside the landmarks store, making some space by pushing book shelves aside. Just about 20-30 people could sit comfortably on the chairs provided and about 10 times that number stood wherever they could find space. Since landmarks store is in basement of the building with only one entry+exit, had there been an emergency safe evacuation is near impossible with an inevitable stampede. I understand organizers wanted to promote the store, but for the size of crowd expected, the meet could have been kept in a larger space, say an auditorium or a hall. Hope they’ll mind these factors next time.

Citibank and Hertz (carzonrent-self drive anyone?) were co sponsors for his India tour.

Disclaimer: There could be minor deviations in what Jeffrey Archer told, what I heard, what I could recall and publish here. Refer to videos for precise talk. Also regrets for the poor quality photo/video. Novel and stories are IP of author-excerpts published here as Jeffrey himself has made them public.

Missing feature in social networking sites

2009-05-11T08:19:00.000+05:30

-Old post- republished-

If you’re active on social networking sites like Orkut, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the likes you will be familiar with mails of following type:

ABC is now following you on twitter!
XYZ has approved your friend request
123@gmail.com has confirmed his/her subscription to your blog
So and so wishes to connect you through LinkedIn

Whenever someone shows interest in you by some means (friendship request, subscription to blogs, following on twitter, fans and ACs and so on) corresponding social networking sites promptly inform you about the same via mail. But almost all sites do not care to inform you of a lost contact. That is, if someone stops following you on twitter or terminates friendship with you on orkut or chooses to end his subscription to your blog, you usually do not get an alert. (Feedblitz is an exception)

Why so? Why are the sites hiding negative aspects? It’s very crucial for me to know if some people have chosen to discontinue their subscription to my blog or stop following me on twitter or have decided to remove me from their list of friends. Exit interviews are very important and it is very critical to understand why I lost a customer (or a friend or a fan or a reader, as the case may be) It is very difficult to keep a track of it manually. Social networking sites and utilities should have a provision to conduct kind of simple exit interview (like asking the reason why you’ve opted to discontinue) and promptly pass the feedback to the user. If I get an update for what reason a particular person took that decision I can introspect and analyze where I can improve. If the move was due to my fault I can extend an apology and make efforts to ensure that such things won’t repeat. If networking sites don’t facilitate this side of the coin their service remains incomplete.

Do you agree?

YPR-MAQ Mangalore Express

2009-05-08T05:58:00.004+05:30

Platform No.9, Bangalore City Railway Station, 2100 hours approx on Saturday 18th April 2009: "ಇನ್ನೂ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಹೊತ್ತು ಒಳಗಡೆ ಕುಳಿತುಕೊ೦ಡು ಆಮೇಲೆ ಆರಾಮಾಗಿ ಇಳಿಯಬಹುದಲ್ವಾ?" (Kannada for: “Why don’t you sit inside for some more time and then get down?”) said a middle aged gentleman as I hurriedly got down (read jumped off) from YPR-MAQ Mangalore express as it was gaining momentum.

“Oh Jesus, please forgive this gentleman. He wouldn’t have made that statement if he had access to full details why I had to board the train” I said to myself and instead of retaliating opted to say “Thank you sir” to his surprise.

Flashback: Had booked train tickets for my Mom and Sis to go to Mangaluru from Bengaluru. Mom hasn’t travelled much in train, because we had to travel a lot to catch nearest railhead - buses were most convenient for us as they pickup/drop us on the highway near our home. In order to give her an experience of overnight train journey booked tickets for them in 3 Tier AC coaches. With 300 Rs tatkal charges the fare was twice the AC bus fare.

We reached Bangalore city railway station well in advance, showed her various information systems in railway stations, under-bridge, over-bridge, touch screen kiosks that shows real time train location, ticket status, coach position etc (it’s there on platform 5) and then we reached platform 9 where Mangalore express was supposed to arrive. (it starts from Yeshwantpur)

Train arrived little late and our compartment halted about a hundred meters away from where it was supposed to (as per markings displayed). Our seats were No 23 and 24. We checked passenger chart for the correctness of seats and names, and then got into the compartment, searching for our seat. There were 2 sets of seat numbers- one with printed number plates, and another written with markers (Some changes in seating layout due to introduction of additional berth on the side- details in this post-most of the trains do not have confusion free seat numbering yet.)

I asked my mom and sis to sit at the seats marked 23,24 with metal stickers, while another group of passengers who entered insisted that we should follow the numbering done with marker and our seats would come elsewhere. Meanwhile two ladies entered the compartment announcing “sit in 23, 24” (as if shouting the seat numbers makes them theirs). I was taken aback for a while-I’d reasonable faith in Indian Railway’s IT system that they don’t allot same seat to two parties. I asked this lady for her ticket-she said she’ll show it, but comfortably sat in the seat (marked 23,24 with marker) instead. Several minutes had passed and it was time for the train to start. Since it was an AC coach I couldn’t talk to my mom and sister from outside the coach-I had to be inside to ensure everything is in order. She was travelling for the first time and is facing confusion over seat number-How can I leave them without verifying everything is fine? will they be able to manage if something is seriously wrong? I repeatedly asked the lady for her ticket-after several minutes she checked her tickets and admitted that 23,24 are not their seats.

Now that there’s no clash of seat numbers, confusion over which seat numbering system to follow (marker ones or metal stickers) still prevailed. Train started moving… I had to leave. I told my mom and sister to hold on to their seats and wait till the ticketing inspector comes-check with him for correct seating and relocate if necessary. They said fine and I headed towards the door, preparing myself to disembark from the moving train.

Then this gentleman at the door passes a comment: “Why don’t you stay inside for some more time”! (of course I would have loved to travel all the way to Mangalore and go home, but I had to return the Innova and reach Chennai next day-who will explain all these to this gentleman who enjoys passing comments without knowing why I had to be inside the coach for so long?

May the God almighty forgive this gentleman for his comments, that lady for her false claim of our seats and Indian railways for confusing seat numbers.

Above: An April 2008 file photo of Mangalore Express negotiating a turn in scenic western ghats

Epilogue: Learnt later over phone that one is supposed to follow the numberings made with marker. Mom and sis relocated to the correct seats (which that lady had occupied before realizing that her seats are different) and had comfortable journey. Train reached Mangalore by 10.30, about 2 hours behind schedule and Mom and Sis took a bus from Mangalore and reached home by 2PM (by bus they would have probably reached by 8-9AM). It was a good journey for them, though ate off half of Sunday.

Met an old pal

2009-05-07T07:27:00.002+05:30

Note: The essence of this post is that I accidentally saw a vehicle which I'd rented several months back. If this doesn't interest you, please check my April archive or March archive for more interesting posts.

September 2008, I’d booked a Ford Fiesta from carzonrent (Hertz India licensee) Bangalore for our Wayanad trip. 3-4 days prior to scheduled trip, Hertz told me that they’re upgrading me for free to a brand new Scorpio vls, as Ford Fiesta which I’d booked is unlikely to be available for the said dates. (probably due to extended rental)
We eventually enjoyed our Wayanad trip in that brand new Scorpio Vls (Scorpio Vls review * Wayanad travelogue) It was a maiden voyage for that 4 days old SUV. After that, it appears that there’s been huge demand for this vehicle and whenever I check with Hertz about Scorpio, I would get a response that it is not available.

Recently we (me and 4 others) were touring Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri area, in a Ford Fiesta rented from Car Club. Last Sunday afternoon, while driving in a jam-packed Ooty city, near bus stand, I suddenly noticed a vehicle with yellow on black number plate. Naturally it grabbed my attention and next moment I realized that it is a Scorpio. Second look at the number plate assured me that it is the same vehicle belonging to Hertz which I’d rented last September. Quickly asked my friend to take a snap.
This might look silly to most of you, but this is how I met my old pal (so what if it is not a human being?). he was looking as good as a new one-without any dents or scratches. A carzonrent sticker is the only addition.

ET power of Ideas @ Bengaluru

2009-05-05T19:40:00.000+05:30

Few months back got an invite from Economic Times to visit their event, “power of ideas” as a guest blogger. I was in Chennai and the event happened in Bangalore, hence couldn’t make it. Few weeks back got the invite again and as I had a Bangalore visit planned and could squeeze some time to attend this, I had an opportunity to check out the event on 17th April at NIMHANS convention centre, Bangalore.

Honestly admitting, I didn’t have much idea about the event. ET power of ideas is an initiative started by ET and Angel Investing to bring out the entrepreneurs of the future. Anyone who thinks he/she has got a viable business idea and looking for investors could submit the same for consideration by a panel of experts. I understand that about 12000 business ideas were received from all over India (of which 4000+ were from Bengaluru). Of this 12k ideas, 1000 ideas were shortlisted by the panel of experts and these 1000 applicants would have a chance to present their case in person to the experts and investors, wherein they’ll be scrutinized for viability of the idea, passion of entrepreneurs, strength of the team, revenue model and other parameters.

For a moment I thought this is similar to Proto.in But the difference as I understand is, while Proto.in is for already established startups, ET power of ideas takes it from the very conceptual stage. The event I attended in Bangalore was part of second stage wherein most of the shortlisted applicants (of the 1000) participated.

Before attending the event, I was of the opinion that I will get to see some budding entrepreneurs present their case before the panel. But it wasn’t so. The session only included a talk by Subhash Menon, Founder Chairman, MD & CEO Subex Azure, a panel discussion, another brief talk by Janesh of Robatah Robotics and Q&A Session.

Wasted some of time at the registration counter- as the event was scheduled to start at 4.30PM, I reached the venue by 4.15. The ladies manning the registration desk told me registration is not open yet. I walked around and came back after 10 minutes, only to see a mile long queue in front of registration counter. I stood in the line, my turn came after about 30-40 minutes. I was earlier told I need to present a copy of the mail I got from ET inviting me to the event- but I was let in after noting down my name and mobile number. Didn’t get the logic behind making everyone wait for an hour just to note down name and number-that could have been done online/they already had name and number of most of the participants. No welcome kit/information leaflet either. I was on my own to explore once I went in.

Mr Subhash Menon talked on how difficult it was to convince prospective investors about the telecom fraud detection software product Subex was trying to build. There was a stereotyped notion that products are best developed in Silicon Valley/US and not in India by Indian companies, who are expected to focus on services. Subex had a very strong vision and belief in what they wanted to do and eventually managed to raise money by going public. “Today all Indian telecom companies, except BSNL are our customers” Mr. Menon proudly recalled. “We’ve heard that story a thousand times”- a former Subex employee responded when I told him I heard their boss speak at ET power of ideas. But if his talk can inspire at least one person each time, then I feel it is worth repeating it many more times.

(as I realized later, some of the photos taken in low light condition, from my seat far away from the dais, are distorted- Arun Bhat has explained in detail about camera shake-why this happens and how to avoid it. Be sure to read it)

Some key points I noted down during the panel discussion that followed Mr. Menon’s talk (Panel discussion was moderated by Pankaj Sharma of ET and some of the dignitaries were Mr. Sharad Sharma, CEO at Yahoo! India R&D, Mr. Harsh Ramesh Angeri, Head Strategy & Initiatives- HoneyWell, Mr. Puneet Vatsayan, Co-Founder Mobera Systems and others)

Cash Management: knowing when to spend and where is critical: When you’ve to build a product, invest in engineers. When you’ve to grow, invest on sales team. Avoid spending on office and other luxuries at the early stages (Kiruba Shankar has developed a concept called co-working, wherein lots of entrepreneurs share a common office space- for Rs 2500 per month I think one can rent a seat-far cheaper than setting up one’s own office)
Besides the business idea, it’s the team whose strength that investors look for. A not so great idea with a strong team might win, but a great idea with not so convincing team is unlikely to get a buy-in. Also its near impossible to claim that one will manage everything on his/her own without needing any other team member. Also if you can’t convince at least one more person to join you in your venture, chances are low that you will be able to convince an investor or customer
Claiming that “we don’t have any competition” usually hints that one hasn’t done enough market research. Substitute products/services, probability of customers changing their preferences/spending habit and many other factors need to be considered.
Recession is a right time to start a new venture in a sense. During good times everyone tides with the wave-but during recession only the strongest ones who can swim against the wave will survive and those who can survive a recession period can grow exponentially when good times return.
Do not feel you should be the smartest in the team-pair up with someone who is smarter. If you’re strong at development, partner with someone good at marketing. Let the skills complement.
Just the way you need a right investor, investors also will be looking for an ideal start up. So as long as you can project a win-win situation, getting investors attracted shouldn’t be difficult
Don’t be shy to dilute your stake (by offering equities)

I had to leave the venue at 7.15PM while Q&A session was in progress. Overall it was a good experience attending it.

Also read:
ET Power of Ideas Official site* ET power of ideas blog * Sandhya Ravishankar of ET NOW conducts workshop on broadcast journalism * Startup saturday at IIMB Bangalore * Redbus.in review * Entrepreneur Blues (a blog listing several startup stories)

Mouthshut.com shuts me off

2009-04-28T13:34:00.015+05:30

Attention all visitors and members of community review website Mouthshut.com: This is to notify that I, Shrinidhi Hande (Mouthshut user name enidhi) am hereby disassociating myself from Mouthshut.com and do not own/approve/support any reviews or other contents/activities at the site under my identity. I requested them to delete my entries but they disabled my account instead-I can’t login and have no control over contents displayed/activities performed there under my name-hence this warning.

Initial days
I was a long term member of a leading Consumer Review website Mouthshut.com till my account was disabled last November (most probably because I asked them to delete my reviews-exact reason not communicated.) This post shares my experience with Mouthshut.com, review of recent developments at this site and few thoughts about ownership of your content when you contribute at third party websites.

Mouthshut.com, in its initial days was a pure play Product review website where members reviewed various products and Services, based on their personal experience. Members could select a product and write review of the same while other members would rate and comment these reviews. One can’t write detailed review without actually experiencing the product or service, so most of the reviews were firsthand experience accounts and were of very high quality. The member base was less and a new review used to stay on home page for several hours. I signed up at this site and became a MS member on Aug 3 2002 and over next 6 years have contributed about 80+ reviews, most of them rated “very useful” by other members. MY MS member profile (Its live at the time of posting-not sure how MS will act on it if they notice this blog post)
Though I launched a blog, I continued to write at Mouthshut, because of some unique advantages I had there then- I had more readership in MS than my blog. Within minutes of posting a new review I used to get instant feedback in the form of some comments and rating, while same entry would take couple of days on my blog to evoke a response. Ready readership, a decent trusted circle (a closed group of MS users(MSians) who trust each other) forming a community of good writers made my stay at MS attractive. But slowly various negative/side effects started creeping in.

Couple of years back I won a “Review of the day” contest and was entitled to get a return air ticket from Mouthshut’s then travel partner flight Raja. Several months and multiple email follow ups later, my air tickets never came. I published a review to this effect on MS and both Mouthshut CEO Faisal and FlightRaja CEO commented that they’ll look into it. But nothing materialistic ever happened and I never got my air tickets. It is not about an air ticket, it was more about a promise made and not kept. [More about this incident in here and here]

Mouthshut started adding Google ad units all over the site and minting money. While MS made real money from adsense, its members, who contributed all the content on which these ads were put, were being granted some virtual points (which were practically useless -members can use these points to send virtual gifts i.e. just images of gifts to other members)

Evolution of Mouthshut.com
To earn more money by serving more ads they needed to have more pages and more pages can’t be had by reviews alone (one can review one product only once and he/she can’t review a product without properly experiencing it- so the content generated by reviews were not much) and MS management needed a mechanism to make its members spend more time on the site and create more pages. Thus the idea of “Diary posts” were introduced, under which members could write anything under the sun. While most of the members made judicious use of this Diary posts, few started spamming, by uploading email forwards and other junk in a quest to earn more MS points and become star writer soon (Star Writer is Mouthshut’s way of recognizing members who have written lots of (supposed to be of good quality) content, have good fanfare and express unquestionable faith in MS- No real life gain by becoming star writer, except for a star displayed next to your username)

Mouthshut content team hardly made any attempt to eliminate spam or ban users publishing copy pasted stuff. Because of this, quality posts suffered a setback- it was difficult to identify genuine and quality entries amongst the heap of junk-this was a matter of concern for genuine writers and serious readers. As if diary posts were not enough, MS added several other features- SMS reviews (Spend 3-5 Rs per SMS and get it published in MS), Classifieds (known as MS Local), Photo Albums etc. Features such as bulletins, sending gifts to other members etc were introduced to encourage more activity among members. The core idea was to make people generate more content and spend more time at the site, but to me and several others it looked like Mouthshut is deviating from its USP of a serious product review site and trying to become a jack of all and master of none. The current Mouthshut.com looks like a kichdi of Mouthshut (product reviews) + Sulekha (regional classifieds)+flickr(photos)+blogger(diary posts)+ twitter (quick notes, via SMS in this case)+ Orkut (social networking). The focus on quality content got diluted and MS became more of a time-pass adda. Why don't they stay focused on their core competency as there're dedicated sites for other purposes- say orkut, flickr etc, with which MS will never be able to compete?

Mouthshut member base also increased and majority of new users are not serious about product reviews. Many of them just want to have fun uploading copied photos, email forwards or trying to make friends with others, specially female profiles. With phenomenal growth in volume of data created, a new entry, however good it might be, wouldn’t stay on homepage for more than few minutes. This means reduced readership and lesser number of comments. Ever for a visitor it is tough to locate some good content worth his time. Though lots of readers come through search engines they never bother to comment, because to comment one needs to spend time registering at MS. The idea of trusted circle also started to become a joke, as new members started adding everyone else, irrespective of one's credibility, into their trusted circle, hoping that some of them will reciprocate.

Loss of Interest in Mouthshut
Due to above developments I started losing interest in Mouthshut. Also my blog was gaining some visibility by then and had a decent readership. So I started focusing more on my blog. Some of my MS entries started contesting directly with my blog posts for higher position in Google search results, due to which I had to downgrade/dilute my MS posts. Mouthshut wanted high quality, exclusive content for free and with their reduced focus on quality and dwindling readership my interest was heading downwards. MS was not comfortable with me leaving my blog URL in the review (Review editor had some limitations in terms of word count, graphics, photos etc and I used to say, "for more details visit here" and give my blog post URL). MS member head Jasmin sent me mails not to leave my blog URL and I promptly mailed back reminding them of the return ticket they still owe me. Since I couldn’t delete my reviews I asked Mouthshut to delete some of my reviews and they promptly disabled my access to my account. My account and my reviews are still retained at MS as they have lots of residual value (attracting search engine traffic). MS neither responds to my mails, nor deletes my content.

Impact of ban
I don’t have anything to lose. Since I have a reasonably successful blog I don't need to rely on 3rd party websites to publish my contents. If my account was active I would have logged in once a while and contribute something. Else it’s ok. ಕತ್ತೆ ಬಾಲ.But since contents under my identity still exists at the site, without any flag that my account has been disabled, I need to inform everyone that I have no control over my account and won’t be responsible if MS uses their admin rights to modify my contents as per their needs, or someone else misuses it in any other way.

I’ve also noticed several good writers gradually exit mouthshut, most probably because of similar reasons. But Mouthshut management may not feel the effect immediately- they’ve a huge user base, loads of content(some of them are very good) and traffic which ensures continued cash inflow through ad revenues. It’s the quality of content and quality of users which they need to focus, along with a fair and transparent operational policies, if they wish to sustain a long term vision.

MS had introduced a corporate blog section, which is almost a flop. Not many companies have cared to open a corporate account and few who’ve cared are not serious about acting on complaints (we only see a generic reply like ‘we’re looking into the matter’).

Allegations against Mouthshut.com
Further, there’re several allegations emerging against Mouthshut.com, which prima facie appear to be true but readers’ discretion solicited. (Some can be verified by close observation of MS, few can't be investigated without cooperation from Mouthshut management and rest need to be concluded based on testimonies of former members) Some of them are listed below:
1 Not curbing fake users
There’re lots of fake Ids in MS which are created for some specific purpose such as promoting a particular brand or demeaning a competitor or such malicious intentions. Created either by MS itself or respective corporate, these IDs are easily identifiable by observing their activities. But MS took no interest in eliminating such users.
2 Not discouraging members posting plagiarized contents, email forwards, third party photographs and other such stuff
3 Not giving any warning or fair chance to members to present their case before terminating their account
4 Moderating reviews and inter-member communications to delete anything remotely unfavorable towards Mouthshut
5 Partnering with certain companies for financial gains and delete negative reviews written against the company
6 Maintaining undue secrecy in their policies and adopting several unfair practices
7 Giving undue preference to certain members who dance to the tunes of MS.

For the interested, below are some links which detail various allegations against Mouthshut:
1. http://mouthshut-com-fraud-cheat.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-bad-experiences-with-mouthshut.html

This blog, among other allegations, claims that Mouthshut CEO Mr. Faisal I Farooqui who studied at the prestigious St. Stanislaus school in Bandra, Mumbai, cheated his institute by registering the domain meant for school in his personal name and refusing to transfer the same to school administration. This is something one should be able to verify without much efforts.

2. http://www.petitiononline.com/banms201/petition.html
(It is a 5 year old petition and has managed to secure just about 150 signatures so far)

3. http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/internet-sites/mouthshut-com/333593/
Seems Mouthshut launched an international version promising to pay users for their reviews and then cheating them by not paying

Another interesting reading:
http://www.Mouthshut.com/diary/eecjqttq/My-attempts-to-reach-Google-India
Mouthshut CEO explains his attempt to reach Google India. Google doesn’t deal directly with general public and is not bound to keep its staff accessible to public. But while bloggers like Amit Agarwal are able to get Google sponsor his events with just one tweet, CEO of a popular site (and probably a premium adsense publisher) doesn’t have a single contact in Google- How pathetic. 9 months since that post its not clear if he is still able to contact anyone in Google or what deal he cracked with major corporates including Yahoo!

Conclusion
There’re several websites on the net which survive purely because we, the users chose to contribute contents to them, for free. Most of them expect us to spend our time and effort writing for, engaging other users and promoting their site, in exchange for no tangible returns. Few sites like Sulekha give full ownership of contents to users while others declare that they own whatever stuff added to their site (Even facebook tried this recently and resulted in awareness of privacy concerns). While it’s good to have well defined guidelines and policies in place to enforce discipline, expecting absolute loyalty and cultism is not fair. Though well established sites give better readership than a newly launched blog, serious writers should work on building their own identity via blogs or otherwise and must evaluate content ownership issues and privacy policies before dealing with websites like Mouthshut.com

Big bazaar ad & Rice Price Rise

2009-04-25T08:06:00.004+05:30

This post is inspired by a Kannada post run by “Shree”

See the ad below, issued by Big Bazaar. Their claim is this: “We’re buying 26000 tons of rice every year. Since we buy in such a bulk quantity we are able to buy them at amazingly low prices, which we eventually pass on to you”. Might sound logical and one may feel thankful to Big Bazaar for being so kind. But then, there’s another side to it- Since these supermarkets have started buying goods in 1000s of tons and store them in their racks and warehouses, they have created a huge demand for all necessary items and the prices have shot up. With everyone selling their stuff to supermarkets in bulk, small retailers are unable to procure them at low prices. Do you feel prices would have been lower if these supermarkets didn’t exist in the first place?
Normal rice (unsubsidized) was costing less than 20 Rs per kg one year ago. Now it costs twice that amount. I have a feeling that supermarkets never bargain enough (or in case they bargain enough, they are not passing all of it to consumers-sell at market price and pocket the gains) with their suppliers. Just think: If only all major retail companies take a stand: “We’ll not pay more than 20 Rs a kilo for rice” there will be no takers for such a huge quantity of rice and suppliers will be forced to reduce the price of rice to 20 Rs a kg. Instead, these supermarkets buy it at whatever price quoted by supplier and then sell it by adding their margins. Since suppliers got an idea that retail giants will buy from them even at high prices, there’s no hesitation to hike the price, which eventually is getting transferred to consumers like you and me. Since Big Bazaars and the likes are ready to pay higher price, small retailers can’t fight but shell out more.

For a moment let us assume there’re no supermarkets- there’ll be no bulk purchaser for that 26000 ton rice and sellers would have to divert them to small retailers and in all probability for a much lesser price. Agree?

If it was some other item, consumers would have forced a price correction-for example when tomato price shoots up to Rs 40 a kilo, people reduce preparing tomato based dishes and shift to some other cheaper vegetable. But rice is a basic item everyone is heavily dependent on (wheat based products are a substitute, but not so famous in South India). So with supermarkets and their suppliers manipulating the price, consumers are forced to pay more. At least if the high price reaches the farmer who grew paddy we can take some console, but often it’s the middlemen who pocket all the profit.

What's your take?

Also read: Cautions to be exercised at super markets * It happened in India by Kishore Biyani-Book review * Branded vs Local goods * Facts you'd like to know about Big Bazaar *

10 Innovations I wish come true

2009-04-23T11:35:00.003+05:30

Technology has changed our lives a lot. Today we are able to do lot of things which 50 years ago people never believed possible. But I feel there’re still lots of features/innovations/inventions possible which hopefully someone someday turns into a reality.

I’m listing few of the inventions I would like to see materialize- may sound absurd or stupid at this point of time, but serious thinkers can start working on it. You never know-100 years later all this could be for real.

1. 1.1. Digitize Food

Wont it be cool for your mom to be able to cook food for you and sent it as an email attachment? We’re able to send voice and video over net-wish someone invents ways to convert real objects into 0 and 1 such that your mom can indeed upload the delicious food and you can download and eat it next moment, sitting thousands of miles away.

2. Search real objects

I need to chop vegetables but unable to locate the knife. Is it at the bottom of the sink or is it hidden somewhere in vegetable basket or is it lost elsewhere? How nice if I can use Google search to find it out.

3. Bluetooth enabled brains

How nice it will be if we can exchange knowledge between two brains? You know a lot about calculus while your friend doesn’t? Just transfer it via Bluetooth to him. Nice na?

4. Be able to Backup brains

In line with previous wish, how about being able to backup whatever you have studied so far? One can reload contents relevant to a particular subject before going for exam on that subject or many other uses can be derived.

5. Be able to compress real objects

The road is not wide enough? How about being able to compress your vehicle a bit so that you can zip ahead? Airline has a 45kg luggage limit? Why can’t we use a winzip like utility which can reduce weight a bit?

6. Be able to deposit time and withdraw it later

As we can deposit money and earn an interest on it, why not a feature to deposit time when we have lots of it and withdraw it when we need (say the day before exams?)

7. Academic capsules

C urrent approach of having to spend 20 precious years for education is a total waste of time. If we spend so much time reading something that's already been studied upon, when will we have time for innovations? Just the way software programs come in a CD, why not have some capsules with all knowledge pertaining to a specific subject is stored and by consuming that tablet one can gain all knowledge of that subject. A tablet for English language, a tablet for wannable software engineers, a syrup for management skills….

8. Online voting in General elections

This is technically possible even now, but the question is will the politicians of our country ever let it happen. Why can’t I comfortably cast my vote online from the comfort of my home? Why should I go all the way to my hometown (where I’m listed to vote), stand in line for whole day and cast my vote in a 50 years old fashion? Well, online security is not foolproof at this point, but that can be fixed and is reasonably better option than risking life in some pole related violence.

9. Heat generating cubes

There’re chemicals which cause exothermic reactions, thereby releasing heat, when they are mixed with certain other chemicals. What I am looking for, is a compound, which is consumable/harmless and can generate heat when added to water.

Currently while on camping, to heat water, we need to setup fire, use a vessel and struggle a bit to get hot water (say, to make noodles). If we can have something like heat generating cubes, which if added to water instantly get dissolved and make water hot, it will be great. (There’re some chemicals which react with water to generate heat-but they are not edible and we just can’t consume that water post reaction.

10. Climate Control Solutions

Despite so many technological advances, we continue to be humble and helpless in front of mother nature (some of us may feel that’s how it should be). We are unable to protect a cricket match from rains or ensure fogs don’t disrupt our air traffic. We often fail to predict disasters like earthquakes- let alone control it. If our weather forecasting becomes little more advanced and if we manage to give at least 12-24 hour warning lots of life and property can be saved. Despite so much advances in technology we are not in a position to alert our farmers “tomorrow there‘ll be a sudden unexpected heavy rain-go protect your crops” Poor farmers lose lots of their harvest to flood, rain, draught and so on. I feel lot of inventions are due in this space.

I don’t know if this wish list will ever materialize. But if it does, I can take credit for being such a visionary. Can’t I?

Tippu drop की कहानी, Muniyappa की जुबानी

2009-04-21T17:33:00.003+05:30

Despite staying in namma Bengaluru for 4 years I didn’t have a chance to visit Nandi hills so far. Finally visited this place with relatives last weekend. Since loads of stuff about Nandi hills already online, let me skip detailed descriptions and give you some details about Tippu Drop, one of the attractions in Nandi hills.

Tippu drop is an assassination spot in Nandi hills. It’s said that Tippu Sultan used to kill criminals by throwing them down from this spot. A steep vertical fall ensures that no one will survive the fall or crash landing. When we reached this spot an old gentleman greeted us and started an unsolicited talk giving details of Tippu drop. This visibly aged man, named Muniyappa, was like an unofficial tourist guide there, probably making a living from any small amount tourists cared to give him for his explanation of the place.

This post lists few of his narrations- not sure to what extent they are true.

“Sir M Vishvesharayya built this road to Nandi hills- I was a small kid going to first standard then” Muniappa began and pointed to Tippu drop and explained how death is certain if someone jumps from here (At other places one may survive with major injuries due to trees and other obstacles). For the kids in the group he took extra efforts to explain how Tippu Sultan used this place to get rid of criminals (there was no courts or judicial system those days-whatever King says is an order) by throwing them down from this point.

“Lots of people come here to commit suicide-I’ve seen many people jumping right in front of me, but I couldn’t do anything. Just by seeing the face of a person I can tell if he/she is thinking of suicide” Muniappa revealed the alternate usage of Tippu Drop. “See this writings- It reads Ravi and Veda-they were young lovers from Shivamogga (a district in Karnataka)-they wrote down their suicide note in a notebook and jumped off from here, before I could realize what they were upto. After their death Govt has set up some fencing” Mr. Muniappa went on.

Rest of Nandi hills was good too. A monkey snatching my sister’s bag (which contained mobile) is a point worth mentioning. Either because of sustained efforts by everyone to scare it or because it realized there’s nothing eatable in it, the monkey eventually threw the stuff down from tree-the robust Nokia mobile survived crash landing. (Remembering a childhood story I suggested that all of us should throw our bags and mobiles away, seeing which monkey would do the same, but no one were ready to listen to me)

Made an attempt to identify Skandagiri from Nandi hills, but failed. Also while I was parking Innova’s driver side power windows started giving trouble. (Got stuck and wasn’t rolling up- Apparently the motor had developed some problem) Various people around gave different suggestions- one gentleman suggested that I should open the bonnet, look for one particular chip and reset it. Luckily after trying various techniques to make it work, little bit of shaking (moving the vehicle front and back) brought it back to life and I could finally roll it up. (Self drive rental from Car Club)

While driving down made an attempt to switch off the engine and drive. Realized that it is just impossible to maneuver Innova without power steering (power steering gets turned off along with ignition)

We also visited Muddenahalli, birthplace of Sir.M Vishveshwarayya, some 15 kms from Nandi hills (5-7 kms from Chickballapur). His house is converted into museum with lots of interesting artifacts belonging to the legendary engineer, visionary and architect. Photography is not allowed inside, which is a disappointment.

Related: Skandagiri Hills * Wayanad travelogue * Bengaluru BMTC bus service * Yelagiri TN* Talakona falls, Tirupati AP * Ramanagara Rock climbing * Bidanur Fort, Nagara * startup saturday @ IIMB *

Deals worth Rs 23 lakh facilitated by this blog

2009-04-15T07:36:00.012+05:30

April 20th Update: Looks like many of my readers didn’t quite get the sense of how we facilitated business worth 23 lakhs-About six people whom I met last weekend in Bangalore asked me to explain on it. Here’s a brief: Timeshare membership is a kind of investment/purchase where people buy holiday memberships, which entitles them for a predefined type/duration (Say a 2 bedroom cottage, for one week per year during non-peak season) of vacation every year for a specified duration of years (say 25 years) from timeshare companies. Members pay in advance hoping that it will protect them from future price increases. Sometimes due to various reasons those who’ve paid few lakhs to buy a timeshare membership wish to sell it off (just the way you may wish to sell your car) but there weren’t any ideal platforms where one could put their timeshare membership for sale. This is where we stepped in to provide a simple platform for such people and rest of the post is about how some people successfully used this blog to close a deal.-Hope this makes things a bit more clear.

------Original Post-------------

Just scratching my own back again-bear with me.

Happy to announce that this blog has facilitated a business amounting to more than 23 lakhs during past one year (Yes, 42000 US$)

Because there were no dedicated portals(or sections in classified sites) to buy/sell used timeshare membership and because this blog was drawing lots of traffic related to Club Mahindra we (I and Bhupesh, a CM member) thought of providing a platform for users to buy/sell timeshare memberships (Club Mahindra, Zest, Sterlings, Country Club etc). A blogpost that was created for Buying and selling used timeshare memberships last April has proved to be a phenomenal success and this post is to share the same with you.

The post was created on 10th April 2008 with an embedded Google spreadsheet wherein users could add their timeshare details for buying or selling. First entry was received on 18th April 2008 and since then, there’ve been about 244 entries till date (excluding some entries which appeared to be redundant or spam that were deleted). That’s about 2 entries every 3 days.

Of the 244 entries, about 12 users were able to successfully sell their membership (or buy, as the case may be), which translates into a success rate of 5%.

The total approximate value of these 12 deals which were successfully closed, through their entry in the said post amounts to about 23 lakhs.

Recently dropped a mail to all users who’d submitted their membership details-Was happy to note that all those who responded appreciated the efforts, though many were yet to find a buyer for their sale. Few said they used the post to understand the cost of membership and then bought new membership directly from Club Mahindra, instead of buying a used one.

Note:
1. We don’t verify the info entered by users. This post is based on the assumption that the details entered by users are accurate. Readers may use their discretion.
2. We won’t know unless a user tells us that he/she has closed the deal and we can strike off the entry. The estimated sales value is derived based on those who updated us via mail or comment that they could indeed sell/buy their timeshare membership. There could be more closed deals which we may not be aware of.
3. Total value is derived by summing the amount at which members had put up their membership for sale. This amount might be slightly inaccurate in case of negotiations
4. This remains a totally free service. No money was charged to anyone for this. (if we’d charged Rs 50 per entry or say 1% commission we would have earned 2 to 20 thousand rupees… Anyway that was not my objective in creating this post)

5. We only facilitated the deal by bringing buyers and sellers together. We're not involved in any financial transactions, legal formalities or in any other way whatsoever.

Some of the few feedbacks received from users

Hi Shri,
I would be honest in my opinion. This site has been really useful for me and my family. I had been able to buy four memberships for me and my cousins. The comments also has helped us understand the workings of club mahindra in depth. I am genuinely thankful to you and your team for creating a very practical, excellent, wonderful, realistic site. It has indeed helped us save a good amount and also has helped the person who wanted to sell their membership. Would be grateful to you forever.
Hope you come out with more such sites in different areas and would be ready to help you in whichever way I can. Prashant Shah - Chennai

I find most of the entries in buyers' list fake. When I call those who have expressed interest to buy membership, no one picks up the phone. My deals are still pending.- Mohamed Hanif Syyed

In my case I received around 12 leads and will be finalising the deal in a couple of days possitively.I thank every one involved in this great job.-L S Shekhar

Well i did not buy from the web site but it did help me about the price and all i took it direct from club mahindra- Manish Kothari

I did get many inquires and calls regarding my post to sell my CM membership but unfortunately none of them materialized as everyone thought that this was some kind of distress sale which it wasn't and tried to get membership at ridiculous low prices. I would also like to add here that CM advts giving free LCD TV's etc are quite successful as everyone harped on the same while bargaining forgeting that actually its him buying the LCD TV from his own money.
Anyway I must thank you for the useful blog you have created and giving us a platform to buy/sell our CM memberships.- Rajesh Bahuguna

Bhupesh Gupta, a CM member has been very instrumental in helping me in this, so I take this opportunity to thank him as well.

Just for your quick reference embedding the spreadsheet below. Closed deals are moved to the end of the table.

If you wish to make an entry, to buy/sell a used timeshare membership, click here

Other observations:
1. Seems there're few individuals/agencies dealing with used timeshare memberships- We have got several entries by such parties, stating "We deal with all types of timeshare memberships, come to us".

2. Though the post was meant for all timeshare companies, most of the entries are pertaining to Club Mahindra, which is understandably because my blog rates high on Club Mahindra related queries and someone searching for "sell Sterlings membership" is unlikely to land at my blog.

3. Sell entries outnumber buy entries, but good to see lots of business still happening.

4. Good to see so many people buying timeshare memberships-old and new ones.

Happy Holidays everyone.

More: Club Mahindra official site * Official Blog * Yahoo group *

Resort review: CM Kodagu Valley * Binsar Valley *

Zest breaks membership review * CM timeshare membership review * Bajaj Pulsar sold through this blog *

April 21st Update: With one more user confirming sale, total value is 27 lakhs+ now

Best practices in Credit card usage

2009-04-11T07:50:00.004+05:30

Credit cards were primarily meant to make people spend money even when they don’t have any. It was like taking loan and I believed borrowing is bad. So till two years into my first job I didn’t have any credit cards and used to avoid all credit card agents outside my office. But little later I realized few possible advantages of credit cards and couple of compulsions (not being able to rent self drive cars or make certain online transactions with debit cards) and applied for one. The Bank Rep was surprised that I still didn’t have any cards. Since then (past two years) I’ve been content with a total of 2 credit cards and using them judiciously without ever paying a single rupee in interest. In this post I’m listing few of my observations related to credit cards and best practices. My points are focused on how to make cautious use of credit cards and save money and NOT about how to spend over your limit and evade paying interest for a longer time. Hope you’ll find them useful.

1. Remember the great laws of shopping
Don’t spend because you’ve a card. Don’t get tempted by offers. Stay within your limits. Kishore Biyani has promptly admitted in his book, “It Happened in India” that his single point agenda is to dig deeper and deeper into consumers’ wallet. Always remember:
-With a great offer you may save something when you buy (say 70%), but if you don’t buy, you’ll save it all (100%) (personally, I don’t want shopkeepers to suffer a huge loss selling me items at such a discount, so I don’t buy unnecessarily)
-Shops may be running never before, never again offers, but trust me, shops won’t close down after the sale. Same item can be purchased at similar rates in future also as the shop continues to operate and discounts will be under some other pretext. (just check out how many days in a year are “Cheapest Day” s for Big Bazaar)
Related reading: Cautions to be excersised while shopping at supermarkets

2. Understand the billing cycle
Banks offer 45-50 days free period before due date and if used carefully, this can be used to earn one or two months of SB interest on your money. A billing cycle around 20th of last month to 19th of this month with next month 10th as due date can be used to save 2 months SB interest while other cycles say 6th of last month to 5th of this month with this month 25th as due date can be used to save max one month’s SB interest. Savings Bank interests are calculated based on the minimum balance found in your account between 10th and 31st of each month. So if you can avoid withdrawing money during last week of a month and maintain a higher balance till 1st of next month, do that. The amount of interest earned could be small, still money is money (for 10000 Rs, per month SB interest could be about 30 Rs). Avoid big ticket purchases on last few days of billing cycle.

3. Understand how various charges apply
All that glitters is not gold and the same is true with credit cards. Understand that banks will have innovative ways to charge you. Some examples:
-You’ve defaulted on payment and you expect bank to charge interest starting from 51st day (after 50 free days), but banks can charge it from the date of transaction
-You’ve paid 80% of the dues and expect the bank to charge interest only for the remaining 20%-but banks can charge for entire amount
-Of the 10k bill you received, say you’ve a dispute for 2k (say duplicate billing etc). You pay 8k expecting the bank to adjust it against the undisputed amount, but bank can adjust it the way it wants, probably showing as if you defaulted on a legitimate purchase.
-The balance transfer rate of 0.3% looks exciting? Beware, it could be on a per day basis than per month.
-The salesman told its lifetime free, but Bank’s definition of ‘lifetime’ could be “initial 3 years only”
-The ‘interest free’ EMI comes with a processing fee which if calculated can amount to a reasonable value (A Rs 250 processing fee for Rs 5000 purchase is as good as paying 5%)

If you’re alert and retaliate immediately some of the above charges can be reversed, else you’ll pay more than what you need to. Bottom-line: don’t assume anything. Cross check with bank via internal messages and save a print screen of these messages (banks websites may delete old messages). Similarly, soon after you get your card, communicate with bank (via their website) and get mail acknowledgement from bank that whatever promises the DSA (Direct Selling Agent) made are valid.

These days banks are facing difficult times due to various factors (no takers for new loans, those who borrowed are defaulting, poor recovery rates and increasing Operational expenses). One easy way to earn some revenue is to charge a small fee for various services which were hitherto free. So keep a watch to understand what is free and what is not. If you haven’t opened account at a nationalized bank yet, do it now. These public sector banks have improved a lot in terms of service and technology and are cheaper to deal with.

4. Avoid ECS
While opting for ECS has its convenience, I strongly recommend not to go for ECS and pay manually. With ECS we tend to get lazy and negligent towards our statements and may miss to notice excess charges/faulty billing. Also we’ll lose few hundred rupees unnecessarily if on the date of ECS debit there isn’t enough balance in the account (both bank and Credit card co charge penalty). Though it’s a bit inconvenient, pay manually after verifying the statement each month.

5. Be cautious on deals promoted by/in tie-up with credit card Cos
You’ll receive offers from insurance company the bank has tied up with or some deals from an online shop selling consumer durables- My suggestion is avoid buying from them. If you need insurance buy it from a trusted neighborhood insurance agent and not from the call centre, whose interest is limited to closing the deal and charging the amount to your credit card. (you may have to run from pillar to post later in case of any issues). Similarly the deals on consumer durables or other such offers also need due diligence. MRP and savings are overstated and a shop next street might give you similar or better deal. Even if it is 5% expensive it’s better to buy in person from a real shop.

Similarly evaluate real worth of co-branded cards/tie-ups. For example, say you get some extra benefit if you refuel at a particular fuel station, say HPCL. But if you’ve to drive 3kms extra to reach an HPCL outlet, one needs to check if the points are worth the extra fuel spent in reaching the outlet. A hotel room is available at throw away price at a far away destination-but are you sure you wish to spend 10times room rent on travel and other expenses?

6. Do online transactions during early morning hours
Avoid performing online purchases through credit cards during peak hours. Internet connectivity will be low and website also will be slow due to high user activity. There could be issues of connection breaking in the middle of a transaction and user meeting a situation wherein money is charged, but confirmation is not obtained on screen or having to perform entire transaction again. Do online transactions during non-peak hours, from a secure and speedy connection to avoid unnecessary troubles. Transaction integrity is still not reliable enough.

7. Miscellaneous
-Do not withdraw cash using Credit card from ATMs and do not opt for unsolicited offers like pre-approved loans.
-If you have multiple cards, keep one card aside and do not use it for few months- Bank will come back to you to check why you’re not using it and may offer some sweeteners like little extra reward points or some cash back to tempt you start using again. (warning-some banks will disable cards which are inactive for long time)
-At restaurants, don't let your card go out of your site. Better go in person and make payment.
-Have required info (card details/call centre info) handy so that you can you can block the card within minutes, if you realize that its been lost.
-Instead of waiting till the arrival of statement, proactively check your account couple of times a month, so that irregularities, if any can be noticed
-if paying by cheque, drop the cheque minimum of 3-4 days prior to due date and ensure that money is debited before due date.
-Avoid giving cc details to call centre guys to facilitate a purchase. Just not safe.
-Some companies insist on photocopy of credit card (like some airlines)- Be sure to darken sensitive info like CVV

Also read: How Banks can make credit cards safer

My Dog Marcus

2009-04-06T05:39:00.000+05:30

I was reading Shivu's post (in Kannada) about how street dogs took revenge on his newspaper distribution team. Thinking of how clever animals can be, first thing that came to my mind was "My Dog Marcus"

My Dog Marcus was one of my favorite animal stories from my school time English textbook. There were hundreds of other interesting stories in our CBSE English textbooks, but this is one story I still recall once a while and enjoy. (we had it in our 8^th Std I guess- about 12 years ago- good old days). Suddenly this story came to my mind and felt like reading it again. I googled it but no result. (this proves Google still has lots of archiving to do). I couldn’t recall the author- contacted my classmates and drew a blank. Called our english teacher and she replied that the said textbook isn't in use anymore and english text book has been changed twice since we left and she'll try to get author's name. If any of you can identify who wrote this story please comment.

My dog Marcus is an interesting story. Since it is not available on internet, I’m rewriting an abridged version below, for your quick reference.

It’s a story of a family and their pet dog, Marcus. Marcus was a very good dog, but had one peculiar character-it hated being taken for a walk. Its owners had to wake it up and literally drag it along to give it some exercise.

One fine day, Marcus gets a novel idea to save itself from the trouble of going for a walk. It started acting deaf. It wouldn’t respond when called and behave with innocence as if it heard nothing. Initially the owners seriously believed that their pet dog has gone deaf and stopped bothering it much. They stopped troubling it for a walk and used to take its food to wherever it was. This went on for a while.

One day, while Marcus was away in a different room and the family was having lunch, a piece of meat falls down on the ground, making some noise. Next moment Marcus leapt from its room, ran towards the meat and started chewing it. The owners were shocked- how did Marcus hear the meat piece fall? They realized that Marcus wasn’t deaf at all and was cunningly acting as one.

Deciding to teach Marcus a lesson, the owner (husband and wife) avoided making any noise when Marcus was around. They would just make lip movements and act as if they were speaking-they would run TV on mute-and every other precaution to make sure that Marcus doesn’t hear any sound.

The absolute silence went on for several days and Marcus started feeling worried. “Did I really go deaf? Why can’t I hear my owners talk?” it wondered and grew tense.

One fine day the owners decided to break the deadlock and announced “Marcus, let’s go for a walk” On hearing the words Marcus’s joy knew no bounds and it leapt with all its energy. Thereafter Marcus never complained about going for a walk. -with due credits to the author, whose name couldn't be recalled yet.

This abridged version is no replacement for the detailed original one. But hope you managed to get the essence of it. What’s your favorite story from your language textbooks?

Value & credibility of Online contests

2009-04-02T08:18:00.000+05:30

Just imagine how does it feel to have a general election in following format

Polling is open from the date of nomination till date of declaration of results
Fetching voters to polling booth is responsibility of the candidate
Each candidate will be given his own polling booth where he can use special ballot sheets showing only his name (no obligation to show other candidates)

Luckily we don’t have such a ballot system. It’s obviously unfair to have rules like above, because when someone votes he/she needs to do justice for the vote by properly evaluating all nominated candidates and select a best one. Now let us consider the common characteristics found in most of the online contests and awards:

Online contests and awards-who really gains ?

Several contests and award programs keep happening online- for best blogs under different categories, for online recognition of some offline activities, to decide best photos/videos/other content. We get to know about these contests mainly due communications from people who’ve submitted their entry for the award and want our support by means of a vote.

I wonder what is the real worth of most of these online contests, is it worth participating in them or who gains something finally-the winners of prizes or the organizers of the contest?

Ideally, any contest or award program or talent recognition initiative should have following characteristics:

The contest should be well known and respected in the community
Ideally the organizers should identify prospective nominations themselves, without anyone having to say “See, here’s my entry, consider it for your award program”
If it is an open registration where anyone can enroll, then there has to be a rigid selection criteria to eliminate not so good entries and retain only best of the bunch for the final judgment
Judgment should be given by a panel of juries who are experts in the selected field. If user based voting is done all entries should get equal opportunity in front of a voter.
There has to be some physical/real reward (cash awards, momentum etc)

But, on the contrary most of the online contests/award programs will have following characteristics:

Most of them are hitherto unheard of. You come to know about them only when someone mails you asking your vote for their nomination
There won’t be much of selection criteria-almost every submitted entry gets nominated and is opened for voting (soon after its nomination)
Judgment is done based on number of votes received by online users and not by jury’s expert selection
The onus of driving traffic to contest site and make people vote for their entry lies with the participants, who take all the trouble of promoting the contest and asking all their contacts to vote for them- Ultimately it is not the best entry that wins-it’s the participant capable of driving maximum number of users towards the contest site and make them vote for his/her entry who wins.
Trouble taken by organizers of the contest is minimal. After some initial publicity participants take care of the rest. Host site gets lots of backlinks, huge publicity and other benefits as everyone tries to promote their nomination.
Rewards in these contest usually worth nothing. A little publicity on the event website and may be one special badge/banner which winner can put in his blog (thereby giving free publicity to the contest forever)

In specific, below are the reasons why I do not like most of these contests
Quantity wins, not quality
Why should I take every possible trouble to drive traffic towards event website and make people vote for me? If my entry is worth the prize it should win because of its quality-not because of quantity of users I managed mobilize. (also note that these contest sites never give a widget using which your readers can vote for you directly from your blog-they need you to promote their site with links and make people visit their site)

At least when all participants have equal opportunity (say promotion is done by organizers and those who vote do not have special interests in any one contestants) it could make some sense, else it is purely quantity winning over quality.

Should voters register at contest site?
Most of these sites need prospective voters to register at the site before voting. Why can’t I use open ID or email as an identity or some other measures to quickly vote and exit? Why should I spend several minutes, giving personal details to register there? It is obviously an attempt to increase their userbase.

Vote for me? Or vote for the best entry?
After someone gets his/her entry nominated, next task for the contestant will be to mail all his/her contacts saying “Here’s my entry, please vote for me”. You may be my friend but If I have to do justice for my vote, I need to evaluate all entries in that category and vote for the best one, which may or may not be yours. Ideally one should say “I’m participating in this contest, please check the entries and vote for the best one”. That never happens.

At the end of program, this is what each stakeholder does/gets
Non-winning participants end up giving free publicity and link juice to contest site, draw wrath of all his contacts for bugging them to vote for him/her, might get little traffic from the event site and eventually forgets about it and moves on

Winning candidate
Feel happy that all those trouble finally paid off, gets to collect his/her prize, provided it is worth something, Celebrate the victory, add a banner to his her blog giving even more publicity to the contest.

The contest organizer
Loads of back links, traffic, publicity and revenue (from ads and sponsors), Good user base of those who came to vote

Do you agree?

Summary of Posts- Jan Feb March 09

2009-03-31T07:50:00.001+05:30

Quick listing with a brief description of various posts published during the month of Jan to March 2009

Travel & living

Skandagiri
My second visit to Skandagiri. This time it involved overnight camping, hot noodle soup, sunrise and descend via different trail.

Yercaud (near Salem, TN) travelogue
Not so great place but still made a satisfactory trip.

Ramanagara Rock Climbing
Published in Ergo, a post detailing history of Pattabhirama temple of Ramanagara and other details

Deep forest trekking
An experience of getting arrested by police, for venturing into reserve forest without proper authorization- CTC members who were part of this will not forget it. Details and some precautions in the post.

Self Drive car rentals
How much different cars will cost on a per day basis? Which one is cheaper? Self drive or chauffer drive?

Maravanthe Beach
Arabian sea on one side and River Souparnika on the other… this place has a unique landscape

Keladi Bidanur Fort
A partially damaged fort belonging to Keladi dynasty

Rally for the blind
A unique car rally wherein blind navigators guide the drivers towards destination using tulip charts

Safe Braking Distance
A forgotten factor. Be sure to maintain it- both in front as well as in the back.

4x4 Himalayan Jeep Safari- Too expensive

Had it been a little more affordable I would have given it a consideration

A tale of missed photos

Some scenarios wherein I missed to take a pic, only to regret later.

Product/Service Reviews

Mahindra Xylo
Spacious, techno savvy and good value for money. But low on safety and a hard to toggle transmission.

Fiat Linea
Good looks, spacious and well priced.

Compare Xylo with new Toyota Innova 2009
Both have their own pros and cons. Check out for details

Sony DSC H50 Digicam
Ultra Zoom that takes you so close to the moon so that you don’t need a telescope. This and more features and limitations of this camera, listed in detail.

Others:

Some life saving skills, learnt from movies

Make note of some of the observations listed in this post, to be able to handle an emergency effectively.

Natural Drinks for this summer
Drink natural instead of artificial drinks. Watermelon, Buttermilk, Tender coconut, Fruit Juices, Toddy Palm… so many options to chose from

Sandhya Ravishankar’s workshop on Broadcast Journalism
Understand how a newsroom operates and what it takes to put together the news bulletin you see on your TV. Sandhya also shared her experiences and some tips for aspiring journalists. [Article 19, MIC Manipal, Another session on Future of print media]

Designer doors in South Canara homes
Craftswork on doors

About the new blog template
A little more about the all new template of this blog.

AWPT Pet care centre
Published in Ergo, Caring for animals..

Banigondu Elle ellide- Kannada film song

Lyrics and translation

Kids drinking- A never ending debate

Chiranjeevi and his Prajarajyam

We encountered his motorcade in Venkatagiri- the whole town was geared up to welcome him

Where not to display vehicle number plates

Is it fair not to display the number plates at their designated positions?