Bemused…

SreeSanth fined. Indians happy.

Yesterday for the first time in my India-Australia-cricket-spectator-life, I felt justified sitting thru the night, spending my time in front of TV. India’s comeback after Hayden and Symonds threatened to pull the match away from us was spectacular. It was a very different Indian team out there - a lively unit not afraid of experimenting ,and yeah, the usual constipated faces typical of Indian teams in such circumstances were (thankfully) missing. Sreesanth’s antics, Bhajji’s bhangra, Yuvi’s war cry at the end of the match - all these provided additional much needed amusement.

Much has been discussed about players’ behaviour on field - sledging should be stopped, no excessive appealing etc etc. And Sreesanth was a case in point yesterday (too!). See this interesting blog on the topic. But as a viewer, I thoroughly enjoy the exchanges between players (to the extent that if I were to decide the T20 rule for tie-breakers, I would opt for a physical tussle between the teams instead of bowl outs.) Anyways, I believe this is what makes the game so exciting. If someone would come out with a video of all such instances on the field, I would be the first one to buy it. Anyone listening?

cricket, sreesanth, sledging, twentytwenty

Technorati Tags: Hayden, Symonds, Sreesanth, Bhajji, T20

Posted in HUmor, cricket | 1 Comment »

For want of a better subject

Spent some time this weekend thinking of a good photo idea for entering in a photography contest on road safety. One shot I thought would be interesting was that of a bullock cart with a speed limit road sign near it. So, off I went, searching for a bullock cart on Mangalore roads. An hour and many bumpy village roads later, I came back disappointed. Mangalore had indeed grown as a city. No bullock carts anywhere. As I hit the highway, I got into a traffic jam. I looked out of the window, and my eyes fell on this elephant - this elephant on a 2 lane highway with all vehicles behind it moving at, well, elephant’s pace. Hmm.. No bullock cart? No problem. Lets use the elephant, I thought to myself. So, i tracked it for some distance, trying to get a good pic with an appropriate traffic sign. Wasn’t very successful though. I ended up with some shots not fit for entering in the contest and didn’t know what else to do with those. Here are a couple. Maintaining a blog comes in handy sometimes.

mangalore, life, photography

Posted in HUmor, Life, Mangalore, Photography, Travel | 1 Comment »

Sharp shooter on the plane.

Guess who I saw on my flight to Mangalore yesterday? None other than super cop Daya Nayak. So thats celebrity #3 I’ve met in my life (Guess I am not celebrity-lucky, huh.), the others being Neena Gupta and ONV Kurup.

celebrity, life

Posted in Life, Travel | 1 Comment »

Ganesha - Designer’s Delight!

Lord Ganesha is indeed a designer’s delight - Though Lord Vishnu has the most avatars in mythology, Lord Ganesha seems to top ‘em all in modern day avatars. You’ll see Him in all forms and shapes - on cars, T Shirts, wedding cards, paintings and what not. Here’s a few I found interesting on the net. The last picture is the worst form I have seen (dig at my buddy Ganesh :))

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all.

Ganesha, life

Posted in HUmor, Life | No Comments »

Apple comes out with new iPods. Dang!

Dang! Apple has come out with its latest range of iPods today. Good news for everyone, but not so good for me!
Till 3 months back I didn’t own an iPod. In fact, the very concept of paying so much for an iPod especially when so many cheaper options were available didn’t make sense to me. (Not that I owned any of the cheaper alternatives anyways). You see - I am not a big music buff and listen to music occasionally. And hence, I was pretty happy with my Sony CD man.
That is, until that day we had an office trip to Mysore. I thought listening to music on the bus would be a good idea, and took out my CD man. Thanks to our state of the art roads, the CD kept skipping. If you have ridden on a bus to mysore (or for that matter any roads here down south) during rains, you may appreciate better what I am saying. But what made matters worse was the queer looks from my other (iPod owner) friends – as if I am someone from the past with a  clunky CD man. That’s when my pride took a beating. Decided on the spot that I should go with the times. The very next week, got an Ipod nano 4g. I should say this thing grows on you. You just start to like the feeling of your hand on this silky smooth biscuit sized gadget. Well, that was 3 months back. And today, Apple announces the new ipod nano with video, and a bigger screen – all at the same price! Now I need to upgrade to one of these, lest I get those queer looks again. I dont want to be an outcast. Can I exchange my nano for one of ‘em touch screen iPods?

ipod, apple,humor

Posted in HUmor, Technology, ipod | 3 Comments »

Air Deccan and Auction

I personally like the way Air Deccan has changed our aviation sector - making air travel affordable to the common man. But the way they hold auctions on air - that redefines the very definition of an auction. A friend (Iqbal) and I had the fortune of experiencing this first hand couple of months back. We were flying the Bangalore - Mangalore sector. 4 PM flight. Both of us tired and exhausted, looking forward to getting home. On board, we rummage thru the in flight reading material, and then stumble on this auction slip that has a list of items that would be auctioned on the flight. Great. Something to look forward to on flight. I see a Rahul Dravid autographed bag, and think it would be a good idea to lay my hands on one of those. And Iqbal sees this necklace that he could get (He had been travelling a lot, and he thought he could make up for the lost family time by gifting this neckace to his wife). Both of us fill up the auction slip quoting the floor price. Then we see all other guys on flight filling in their sheets. By now, we’d made up our minds to get the stuff we wanted - We did not want to lose the auction ‘cos someone else quoted a higher price. So after couple of corrections (jacking up our quotes to probably higher that what the stuff was worth), we hand over our sheets to the flight attendant. We wait with baited breath for the results. I’d never won a lottery or an auction in my life, but something told me that I would be a winner that day. Sure enough, the attendant comes to me and hands over the Rahul Dravid autographed bag. I feel on top of the world - it was my lucky day! The feeling soon turns to surprise (and then later horror) when I see the attendant handing over another Rahul Dravid autographed bag to the guy seated next to me! And another to the guy in front, and to the guy in the back. At the end of it, almost everyone on the flight had a bag. Needless to say, Iqbal also got his (very precious) necklace. Turns out, they gave out the items to everyone who bid. And at the prices they quoted. So probably, the guy in front got the same bag for half the price I quoted. Did Air Deccan trick us? You tell me.

And why am I writing this 2 months after the incident? Today, the strap of the bag came loose. And Rahul Darvid’s signature has been slowly disappearing. And I am mad at Air Deccan. Thats why.

humor, life, air deccan, travel, rahul dravid

Posted in HUmor, Life, Travel | No Comments »

Higher Pay, Lower Satisfaction?

My friend Brijesh referred me to this report on Dataquest 2007 Salary Survey report (related to IT). It had an interesting line that goes like this: “high salary didn’t always mean high satisfaction, but the sheer extent of disconnect is amazing. There was less than 8% correlation between salary and satisfaction with salary!” . The report goes on to say that while some of the companies were rated higher on the salary pay out, they fared lower on the ‘employee satisfaction with salary’ parameter. (Eg: TCS was ranked higher than HCL Infosystems in terms of salary, but HCL Infosystems came higher on employee satisfaction with salary). Now, how can that be possible, considering these companies are in the same industry providing similar services? What are the influencing factors for such a scenario? Was trying to figure this out, and could think of the following:

- The quality of people in the organization and their mindset (their education background, level of ambition, expectations on work etc). The higher this is, greater are their expectations

- Image of the company (A company’s market image creates certain salary expectations. And a -ve gap in what the employee expects the company to provide versus actuals could lead to dissatisfaction) 

- The extent of disparity in salaries of employees with similar profile and experience (in the same org)

- Complexity of Salary structure: how much is tied to performance, how easy it is to decipher the payout components,  and what is the final take home.

Maybe I am totally off-track on this one, but this is what my (walnut sized) brain could come up with.

IT, TCS, Salary, HCL

Posted in IT, Management | 1 Comment »

8 things I hate about traffic.

Organized chaos - is what my friend calls the Indian road traffic. Riding on Indian roads is indeed emerging as one of the world’s most dangerous stunts (after riding on Indian rail, and living in Indian high rise apartments). Listing here the top 8 interesting (read: irritating) experiences I’ve been having on Indian roads:

1. There is no ‘right of way’ funda. Everyone wants to go first. You would be looked upon as a ‘loser’ if you give way to others on humanitarian grounds.

2. Traffic Jams at unmanned junctions. Created in the first place because of point 1 above. And we think blaring horns will somehow, magically undo the jam. So each one tries to outwit the others by increasing their sound levels.

3. Pedestrians trying to cross the road while looking at the opposite (wrong) direction of traffic flow.

4. Pedestrian starts to cross the road, sees a vehicle coming. stops. vehicle sees pedestrian, steers to the side. Pedestrian gets confused. Moves back. Vehicle guy tries to predict the pedestrian’s next move, moves to the other side. pedestrian moves forward. vehicle guy moves to the other side. This continues till either the vehicle screeches to a halt or the pedestrian gets knocked down.

5. Have seen this mostly with 2 wheeler drivers: Group of friends riding side by side, talking. They take up the entire road, and are in their own world, unaware of the sea of traffic behind them

6. Innovative use of blinkers: Hazard lights are used if drivers need to indicate that they are going straight (and not turning) at an intersection. The other new one that has emerged in the recent times is to use blinkers to signal to the drivers behind that they could pass (overtake). This can be very confusing.

7. Buses (especially the private carriers) bullying you on city roads so you let them pass. I should admit I take sadistic pleasure in not letting them through when they try these stunts. The worst part is that they would do all these to get in front of you, and then stop at the very next instant to pick up passengers. And they would of course be blocking three quarters of the road.

8. Autorickshaw is like the camel in the camel and arab story. They get a little space, enough to get their front tyre thru, and they would squeeze in the rest of their body somehow. Traffic rules dont apply to most of them. They can stop anywhere and turn any time.

humor, life, traffic, india

Posted in HUmor, Life | No Comments »