Dhoni : Dhoo Daala.

Splendid...Just watched the match between India and Sri Lanka and still could not get over the feeling it produced. While watching the match and Dhoni's performance, I simply felt pity for that guy as he ran out of target else he could have broken more records on that fortunate day. he could have surpassed 194 of Saeed Anwar, given few more balls, he could have broken the highest indian record of 186 of Sachin, the Maestro. Hmpphh...Anyway, this is just the start of the journey, and there are miles to go before he sleeps, and on and on.

Will he continue to repeat the miracle, only time will tell but one thing is for sure, he had rekindled many extinguished hopes of many cricket fans, who had stopped watching cricket for umpteen number of reasons primarily being the poor performance of our Team India.

But I really wanted this type of performance against the unbeaten Australia. What type of reaction it would generate in Kangaaroos when every bowler is mercilessly slaughtered in every direction. I just want to see their reaction, who are already famous for sledging.

Ok that's it for now, Let's hope these type of miracles are repeated again and again.....

October - Travel Month.

I am not sure wether I checked my astro dictation before the start of the month but I am sure that it should have a lots and lots of travel. Ok here goes my month breakup.

Week I: It was in US. I travelled all along from US to India at the end of the week. How much, some 9707 miles on papers. That comes to a little more than 10000 in Kms.

Week II: I was in Bangalore and at the end of the week, I went to my hometown, Lucknow. So I travelled from Bangalore to Delhi and then Delhi to Lucknow. Add Another 2000 + 500 Kms approx.

Week III: Had a plum time in home and at the end of week I had to travel to Jammu, a long awaited yatra. Add another 1000 Kms.

Week IV: Had a enyojable, yet tiring journey in jammu and was back to lucknow. Add another 1000 .

Phew....That was awesome, isn't it!!! The total comes out to, 15000 Kms, approx.

And add to this, that I have to travel to bangalore next week again....

Journey never ends...

Kingfisher - The King Class.

I had traveled nearly from every airlines on domestic sector namely - Jet Airways, Air Sahara, Deccan, Spice Jet Indian Airlines and Kingfisher. This is to share my experience with the Kingfisher airlines when I went to home.

I booked my tickets from Kingfisher for Bangalore to Delhi and then a connecting flight to Lucknow with an appericable time gap of 2 hours. On the day of journey when I went to office for a printout of the ticket, I was shocked to see the time of the same flight to get changed from 1:10 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. My connection flight from Delhi was itself at 5:15 p.m. The whole itenary seemed to be in doldrums. Anyway, on my way to airport, I just tried to frame my arguments against the Kingfisher chaps. I had already experienced similar situation with Indian Airlines[At that time the strike by pilots was the reason] and I knew that they would go by-the-book approach and ay type of screaming/yelling is not going to help. Finally I reached Airport and I straight away went to Kingfisher counter. On hearing the case, he asked us to meet the supervisor Malini [don't remember the name exactly].

Preparing for a verbal assault I marched towards her and she asked very politely about the situation and took the tickets for Delhi to lucknow and said that she would be back in a minute. I was rather surprised by this treatment. Anyway, she came back and told me that there is no flight which can take you to Delhi so that you can take this Flight. Then she inquired that I have to go to Lucknow or there is some plan in Delhi as well. When she knew it was the former case then she checked the availability of last Delhi --> Lko flight which was Air Sahara 8:30 p.m. First she checked for the availability and gave us the open tickets for the same added with an apology.

With this new ticket there was very less time gap between the arrival of Kingfisher flight at Delhi and departure of Sahara flight from Delhi. It was just 20 minutes and to make situation worse, Arrival and departure are different terminals and it takes time to pick your luggage and go from Arrival to Departure. I again made a request that I don't want to check-in any baggage and all my luggage should be adjusted to Hand baggage section. That requested was also granted and I consequently I reached home[Lko] at 9:30p.m.

The whole point of the story was that I was really impressed by the service and the customer handling process. I had a very bad experience with Jet Airways on the service issue and more than that on customer handling way. Simply putting, I was not expecting this type of service from any airlines. In future, definately, my first choice of airline would be Kingfisher and then any other.

Criminal Waste

This is really pathetic, specially if it happens to be in developing countries and more if the same had been done by its educated class. Issue is none other than the habit of wasting/leaving the food after one's meal. I had seen this habit in one of my cousin, an educated, highly educated infact but irrespective of that, she had a habit of leaving the food in large amount after nearly every meal, whatsoever. Even I waste food sometimes but its not a habit. What is painful is the regular wastage of food in the name of 'my nature'/'my habit' and alike.

I still remember that I also had this vulgar habit of wasting food and that too regularly when I was posted in Mumbai. There was my friend Satbir Singh [Seven Years Senior to me] and he ridiculed me for wasting the food regularly. The term 'criminal waste' I had burrowed from him. I thank him for bringing a change in this habit. Now there are occasional times when I waste food. There are times when you know food is of very low quality, one more bite and you would yourself in hospital next day, sometimes you miscalculate and get overstuffed very early, granted. But if excuses spill every now and then, perhaps things need to be straightened up. Also, please don't make an excuse for the nature like 'This is my nature'. Sorry Mam!! You doesn't belong in India where you very well know that more than half of the population starves for one full day meal. [Don't go on stats..but more important is the theme].

I hope, if this blog could partially change the fooding patterns of at least one person....

Reading an Interesting Theory.

Just now I read Broken Window Theory in a book. Really impressive I guess. Will write more once I am finished. However, I finished two posts which were pending from the long time. Next I will write my long posts of Charlotte Experience/ Flight Cancellation at Amsterdam/ Kingfisher Class.... This is just to remind myself so that its not lost in time....

Ciao...

HELPLINE: Hello, Bhaat can I do Saar?

Have anyone really tried those helpline numbers, wether its the bank[in particular ICICI], or your mobile[in particluar Hutch or Airtel], your DSL connection [I tried Dishnet DSL and Hathway] or any fixed landline phone [I had this Tata indicom].

I had some very bad personal experience in dealing with all these help-lines. in some of the cases like ICICI and Tata Indicom, its more of the ST [Self Torture] lines or SPT [Self Patience Test] lines. Similar voices had been enhoed by many of my friends, and is often the talk to discuss over the lunch or the tea breaks [if not discussing the bad performance of company or the stocks or anything else of credible importance].

This is the normal procedure. You have a problem with the service provided by any service provider and you dial the helpline number. Now the problem starts from that time itself.

Journey Begins:
In many of the cases you may find the 24x7 helpline as defunct. Ring would go to eternity but not a single sould would have time enough to recieve your call. You feel ridiculous as you might think that 'What are helpline numbers stands for?'. As they say in chinese, Long journey begins with small step, hence, your journey to misery had just begun. This I had experienced in particular with my fixed line operator providing the Wireless Local Line. There was some issue with the billing and disconnection happened before the reaction time. Miserable, when tried to call helpline in day time - No one answered - It was repeated with one hour interval but result in every case was same. And this very company claims to have a turnaround time of complaints in three hours [when you go to book a connection].

Cruise Control:
Now lets say someone picks up the phone and at first u thanks god and try your best to control your already fuming anger and ask your query in as much polite voice. After verifying you upside down [this is a mammoth excercise in case of Banking call centers. You might be expected to remember your mothers maiden name which you must have filled four years back while filling out the application form. After all 'Hum Hai na' to torture you] they will finally come to the query. In most of the cases, they would furnish the information you already know, information for which you might get either from the site or somewhere else but you won't get the satisfactory answer. All these call centers had a typical by-the-book approach. Ok. If a customer calls...say hello....then verify the customer credentials...and then if query A....say Solution A....query B...Soln..B.......continued. If you still could not find the solution, politely pass on to the other 'executive buddy' of yours, which is anyway never going to be picked or try to give circular logics.

Dead End:
If all the above fails and customer is still persistent then your trump card should be 'Bhaat kan we do saaar' [This is the typical kannadiya style answers I had heard most often]. I guess all these executives are trained in advance that a customer on phone is analogous to thunder storms who can scream, shout or yell but cannot rain. Hence you are safe. However, if you are hell bent on it and goes on further and demands the manager name/number, you will be told in a plain vanilla language that its against the rules. Hai Koi Jawaab!!!

Prevention is Better than Cure:
So please, next time you subscribe to any service and you are provided with a flashing helpline numbers and more than than that, if it is accompanied by even more audacious claims, then simply ignore that. Believe me, that 'executive agent' won't be anywhere when you will face problems of your lifetime. So make sure to ask for any other contact number in case of any emergency. Do not forget to ask for his/her immediate supervisor's contact details.

Someone described insanity as : Doing the same things again and again but expecting different results. Lets learn from the experience...

Strange Phenomenon : Any Explanations?

Recently I discovered a strange phenomenon and with the help of any logic, I was not able to explain the situation, howsoever weird it may seem. Some of you might discard the following event as ambigous or untrue but strange it is, its true.

As usual, it was a boring Monday and I was in an auto enroute to my boring office to complete a boring project. Auto driver was skilled enough to cut across the traffic and its subsequent jams. We came over to place were on the left of the roadside we had butcher's shop and an open ground behind the shop guarded by walls from the three sides. But it have sufficient space left. Assume a shop at the corner of a rectangle and all the sides as walls but one of the length is roadside[alongside of shop location] with no walls. Only point I want to emphasize while explaining this geometry that any person at the opposite corner had plenty of space to run away, if he wishes to. He is surrounded by walls from three side but one side is wide open.

Now comes the strange part. Just the diagnol of the shop there were the chickens and the goats, who were feeding themselves with leftover grass and on the other side of the diagnol, there was this butcher doing his normal work - butchering the 'unlucky one'. Since I am a veggie, I could not dare to look that it was a chicken or a goat but it was big enough to be a goat. Anyway, the strange part is that, all the fellow animals grazing were not tied. They were absolutely free to roam around. The act of butchering was very much visible to them, yet they simply ingnored it. They kept on grazing with much of cool, calm and composure.

My question is that, why is it so? Inspite of their fellow partner being butchered mercilessly in front of their eyes and subsequent process of skinning going on, why are they not tempted to flee away. They had ample space to do that but they didn't. Hard as I may try, but was not able to explain this phenomenon, at least with any logic.

Can anyone explain this??????