leavex

You have I am sure heard of the eureka moment which was I bet embarassing for our dear old greek scholar. Well during our usual meandering water cooler conversation at office we i guess collectively struck on our own rather more useful eureka moment. Thankfully we were in office attire so even if we did run around it would be mistaken for some stressed out people at work and overlooked as normal behaviour ;). Anyway now back to the eureka topic, or rather the title of this post. The concept is a leave Exchange system sort of like your Sensex. You always find there are always these two categories of people the haves and the have nots. I am talking about Office Leaves not money, in which case I am yet to find the contented haves :). While some people seem to have spare leaves, or in our office terminology earned leaves which they can take, in abundance while others always suffer due to shortage. The system of Leavex is an exchange wherein both these sects gather and decide to trade on leaves. In offices like mine wherein they have policies that dictate that if u have more than a limit of accumulated leaves they just expire :(. Given such an apparent loss in value we decided that its quite a pity to let such a precious commodity go to waste. Rather what we could do is to let people who have excess of such leaves to sell it in an open exchange so that they can actually encash the same and provide it as a valuable resource to those who have leaves in shortfall. I am not sure if a lot of you guys out there had a similar idea but the concept seemed quite useful to proclaim to the world. What started out as a water cooler conversation turned out to be quite a discussion on further extending this concept. We wanted to see how to value this commodity called Leaves. Should we term one day's leave as the potential salary loss if we did not have the leave and had to take a loss of pay. Sounded like the ideal value for a leave. However the whole idea of a free market was to value a leave in terms of what the buyer would be willing to pay in which case we should value the leave that we have based on the potential loss it could cause to the buyer if he did not have the leave in his hand. So If say a peon were to sell his leave on the exchange and the Ceo of the company were to buy it then probably the leave would have to be evaluated on the basis of potential loss of salary for CEO for one day rather than the potential gain of the peon in having this extra leave with him. Interesting concept huh? Would definitely like to here more comments on t his concep and see if we can develop it further.

Revival

Well well,
Its a rise from the ashes for this blog. Somehow I guess this blog got dead and buried and in a general sense of speaking its harder to revive something than to create something . So here is an attempt to go where I havent gone before which is to shake that laziness and actually get busy with my fingers :).
Lets start of with analyzing this post from Jaya, regarding seeing Movies and eating alone.
I guess I am quite the opposite and cant disagree more with the idea of doing either of these things alone.
The thing about watching movies alone in the theatre is that it seems quite a point less exercise to go all the way to a theatre alone to catch the flick. Seems like I might as well rent out from the nearest library or try and get a sneak peak free online with the resources at your disposal (Hope the cops that read this blog are dumb enough not to understand what I am basicaly trying to say rather than just hint ;)). Somehow I feel that going to movies in a theatre is more than just watching a movie and is rather a social gathering and a place for probably some post movie autopsy by the so called "experts " including yours truly :). It would also serve as a getting in touch outing on the weekend with friends with whom you want to stay in touch, but really who are we kidding, there is nothing really to talk about half the time :). Somehow can never see the point of going alone to movies.

As for eating alone well I guess I have done that quite a lot of times but still cant quite place even once when I was comfortable with it. In fact everyone of the times I was just trying to gulp food and get it over with fast. More than possibly the fears of other staring at me I, think it again relates to what I had mentioned earlier which is again that eating seem to be for me a social gathering where both silence and conversation are both a part of the comfort routine of eating together. Seems to somehow give u a bit of a loser feeling.

With this I hope there are many more such incorrigbleramblings to come forth and the revival is a full fledged continuance. Heres to more such ramblings.

Ingestion and Egestion : The fundamentals of survival

Life in Russia is turning out to be quite an adventure... The major factors I guess has been the harsh climate and paucity of english speaking individuals. There are so many things different from India..I am reminded of the asterix comics (dont remmeber which one) wherein every subsequent race said the other race was crazy...I guess it started out with the syrians accusing the assyrians crazy then the assyrians branding the gauls crazy and so on and so forth...anyway as I was saying the russians are crazy(in a different way)...for starters the steering wheel is on the left side ala american way.. thankfully the voltage is still british at 220 volts.. for switching on the lights u have to switch them 'off' or atleast thats the off position in India...Our first biggest challenge was trying to get accustomed to the use of the proverbial tissue paper :)...yes u got it right.....try as I may i really cannot appreciate the cleanliness achieved through tissue paper.. In fact both me and my friend were so uncomfortable with the use of tissue paper that once we shifted to an apartment we just made a make shift plastic container out of the water bottle.. i am reminded of the scenes outside mumbai suburban rail network:)... the crude make shift containers substituting for 'lottas':)..yeah we had our own 'lotta' to solve our discomfort wth the tissue paper..First challenge successfully surmounted ;)..Now that the problems with egestion was solved next came the problems with ingestion i.e. food...this seems to be one of the biggest challenges abroad anywhere i guess...and if u are vegetarian..God save You :)...The challenge was quite interesting in a sense i had to convey a vegetarian choice of food..given that it is a rarity.... to ppl with whom there is no common language of communication..quite an iffy challenge( guess i will soon be a champion in dumbcharades...cant wait to beat all the young college turks at thier own game) ...for doubters i guess u should try it out :P...anyway this i guess it has been one of the primary motivators for learning russian..at least names of food items...Within a few days of hotel stay we shifted to an apartment near to the office..It was a reasonably furnished apartment.. but this led to the next big challenge namely 'Cooking'.. Now ppl close to me would know that my exposure to cooking barely even covers Maggi, and Boiling Rice..which would have been ok if at least the friend with whom I am sharing an apartment did know something.. but then i guess that would have been asking for too much.. So me and and my nearly equally ignorant friend launched ourselves into the culinary journeywith next to zero knowledge but with full enthu (after all its a matter of survival :)).. I can tell u that everyday is a new learning experience...The thing abt cooking i guess is that there is not too much theory but its all practicals:) i mean there is gnerally no way of conveying if anything is cooked...its just that 'u know' if something is cooked or not...Not too much of an exact science if u ask me..This i guess bring us to the next question. Is cooking really a science or is it an art...In fact this was one of the interesting debates that me and my friend while trying our hand at cooking :)...We even decided to categorize cooking into various activities and guess what we came to the conclusion that cooking doesnt involve too many activities as such but more of a monitoring job.. Its a constant overseeing job rather than u actually havinbg to do anything.. I mean more often than not its ur resources like heat, oil etc which are the actors.. u just have to ensure that all the interactions between the resources are just right..Now this act of monitoring resources and getting the results is but an all too familiar name for us MBA grads i guess...ergo Cooking was categorized as a Management Activity.. So there after another terrible day of cooking exploits (well actually lets just say we were hungry enuff to appreciate our own cooking) we came awa with a brilliant conclusion cooking is a mini management degree in itself...A brilliant research work for a night spent at cooking if I may say so myself.. But after this surmise our initial question still remains unanswered i.e is cooking an art or science...By this time we had finished our cooking exploits for the day.. so we decided to investigate this question for another day.. but for the uninitiated there is still a huge debate going on abt whther management is an art or science...So the jury is still out.. do watch this space for the results...I hope to update this space soon with more finer insights abt rudimentray tasks and strong opinions abt toilet manners :)

ps: I have a pic of our lotta... in case u do need a reference model;) lemme know

View From my Hotel

As Tense as all the trips ! Part II!

The flight to Dubai was spent pretty peacefully..in fact the moment the flight took of both of us slept of... I for one dint wake up untill the announcement came that we were abt to land in Dubai in a short while.. This got me all excited..Emirates airlines has this really good in house television where we can actually be privy to what can be observed at the cockpit..pretty neat i thought.. also there was another video channel which gives the flight directions... the topographical map etc.. A cool feature..especially for a first timer in emirates...I was trying to see if I can see the Ship like hotel (burj-al-something) from above but no such luk..not sure if there is any construction like that anyway....Dubai Airport had pretty neat construction... no pictures of the airport though...trust me to have actually checked in the camera :(...anyway although we were awestruck by the airport ... everything wasnt as smooth...how could it be with the kind of luck that we were having...we had some problems while boarding the flight..coz amazingly a couple of indians and we had our passport being taken away for some stupid excuse like scanning (is it coincidental that only Indians were faced with this problem?...worth thinking abt)..anyway that incident apart we boarded the flight for moscow...there were a couple more indian students ( medical....pretty obvious..eh) travelling to moscow along with us..really dint strike much of a conversation coz I wasnt feeling that alrite ( this is more of an understatement.... i had sharp pains shooting in my stomach periodically and i was struggling with this ailment throughout the trip) guess it was to do with predominant travelling in a sitting posture....my friend sampled a bit of the cuisine served in the flight and completely lost his apetite...a rude welcome to the world of bland uncooked/semicooked european food:)...I for one had food as the last thing on my mind...struggling with my stomach ache...We taxied into mocow at arnd 2:00 p.m. moscow time.. Temperature outside was announced as -16 degrees...This really had me all excited.. I had my jacket with me and the gloves...thought i was ready for battling the cold...all arnd me ppl were gearing up... for the battle with jackets et all...from the flight we there was an aero bridge connecting directly into the airport..The way open for barely abt 3 seconds...Just for three seconds we were exposed to the cold of -16 degrees... for the first time in my life...The experience completely knocked the wind out of us.. we actually could not speak for a minute..completely taken aback by the coldness..everywhere arnd it was ice... and even the runway was covered with ice..on hindsight a great job by the pilot to land smoothly in the runway..too numbed by the cold to evenr notice the skills displayed by the pilot..At the immigration, we faced our first hurdle..A commmunicating challenge..none on the officials knew english..and they asked some queries..we had no clue as to what they were asking.. Fortunately there was somebody from the client side waiting for us at the airport wo talked to the officials and clarified as to why we were in Russia braving the cold :)..Moscow airport was a bit of a letdown... Dubai airport set too high a standard :)... The client representative handed us the ticket for our Next Flight from Moscow to a lil known place called Ufa some 1200 kms from moscow.. In most countries that would be a formidable distance including India.. but not in Russia..where the trans siberian network takes eight looong days to complete its journey!!!.. We had to kill arnd five hours at moscow airport...Dint even think abt venturing out in the numbing cold...Killing time at the airport..is a bit of a bore...My friend was browsing thro our ticket.. and thats when we got a real rude shock.. the ticket was dated for the previous day.. most of the stuff (meaning all the literals) was in russian but thankfully the numbers were the same as english numbers... and clearly the date was for the previous day...another adminsitrative goof up...We wanted to confirm our fears... but then communicating in English is one of the biggest challenges.. we did find out a person at the informative desk who had a semblance of knowledge of english who confirmed our fears... The person also direct us to the counter of the airlines where we can try to get the date changed provided of course tickets were available for the day of travel..Luckily Tickets were available...After a bit of contemplation we bought the tickets 1033 roubles each... pretty decent price i guess for a distance of arnd 1200 kms.. at short notice..

The security check at moscow is pretty rugged process... We had to take out even our shoes and get it scanned...Boarding the flight to ufa in the cold would now be our next big challenge... We had to go out in the open and board a bus which would take us to the flight..no aero bridge this time arnd...This time though we were better prepared.. We had all our winter gear on us.. including thermals, monkey cap and gloves....The prepapration though barely seemed like anything...I mean it was as if we were stark naked in that cold.. Made me think that what was civilization doing in this extreme temperature... again we were way too shocked by the cold... and completely speechless...and to top it all since the airport did not have any buildings nearby it was actually a lil windy....Finally boarded the flight to Ufa.. By now you would have guessed how i spent time in the flight..yeah u guessed it right...completely knocked out.. dint even know when the flight took off... in fact when i woke up the flight was actually taxiing to a stop in a wilderness which i later came to know as Ufa at 2 o clock in the morning local time.. There was no runway and as far the eyes could see everywhere it was a thick blanket of snow..the pilot did quite an amazing job once again... We got out of the flight.. to a temperature of -2 degrees and more windy conditions...boy we were getting used to the conditions pretty fast :)...We boarded the bus and ater a few monutes the bus stopped at some gates...It seemed a lil strange coz i couldnt actually see any airport beyond the gate..we found out that the gate was exit out or the airport and we actually had to wait outside in the cold in open windy conditions till our baggage arrives..imagine our shock...Cold is an understatement to the feeling that was engulfing us during our wait.. for the baggage..Einstien Theory of relativity worked with perfection.. and it seemed like we had to wait till eternity till our baggage came along.. We were trying to keep ourselves warm by walking in cirles( quite an exercise given the fact there was thick feet of snow all arnd) and rubbing our hands and for the first time without cigarettes i was letting out smoke from my mouth like a chimney...Me and my friend were distinctly feeling the cold more than anyone else and this was partly because ppl there were used to it i guess.. and then partly because i guess our equipments for preparing us for the cold wasnt really that great as what is available locally, which is what everybody arnd was decked with.. Finally after the wait till eternity the baggage arrived...and we quickly grabbed ours..thankfuly our cab was waiting for us and we quickly got in.. back in the comforts of the heated car...Finally we reached our hotel and were just abt ready to hit the sack for some more and much needed sleep..this time in the proper posture...but then our day and the string of bad luck was not to end so soon :)... we reached the hotel and got to know though our resevrations were for the day but the check in time is usually 12 in the afternoon..the time in UFA was three o clock in the morning..The ppl at the reservation who thankfully knew english said that at present no rooms were empty and we would have to wait till 6 in the morning for the rooms to get empty... All we could was kill time at teh 24 hrs cafe at the hotel.. till then..Although we did have tea at the cafe...the caffeine content was not enuff.. and i again went into deep slumber in a sitting posture.. finally my friend awakened me at six in the morning and said the rooms were... immidiately we grabbed the keys and hit the sack for a much needed rest...

As tense as all the trips! partI

The trip to Russia is gonna be one of my most memorable trips due to so many innumerable reasons not the least of which being that it is my first official tour... The takeoff of the trip was filled with so many uncertainities for starters.. Firstly we were supposed to leave on thursday early morning from chennai and we were in our office on wednesday morning in hyderabad still not sure whether we would actually make it. The reason being that the visa was supposed to be processed on wednesday at Chennai Consulate and obviously without which there would be no possibility ofthe trip..So the morning in offfice was spent on worrying whther the visa processing would come though and whether we would get confirmation on it before catching our flight to chennai at six in the evening...We got word on the visa only by around 1 in the afternoon from chennai and it was that among the three of us destined to make the trip one of our visa was rejected due to some administrative goof up..So myself and nvr were supposed to make the trip.. And now started the running arnd...first for collection of forex which seemed to take till eternity for approval and availability and boy was it a long drawn process coupled with problems with availability of cab to drop us at the airport in hyd..so by the tim we left office it was 4 in the evening...came home and suddenly u find that the last minute packing necessities rarely ever gets over in a minutes...it became quite a long drawn process given my lapses in memory.. and by the time was done with eveything and ready to take the cab the time on the clock read 4:50 p.m. The distance between my home and the airport with the least traffic would take arnd 20 mintes..and as luk would have it encountered heavy traffic on route..but not just that there some more bad news coming.. my friend to whom i entrusted the responsility of getting my jacket from his home to the airport..however my friend equally blessed with poor memory had but obviously forgotten it..now u might be wondering whats the big deal with just a jacket being forgotten...however we are traveling to russia where the day time temperature is -16 degrees !!! I have lived all my life in te trpics and even my vacations have not been spent at any temp less than 10 degrees...so u can imagine its gonna be quite an experience and on the way to airport i find out that the my friend who is just abt to reach the airport say that he has forgotten it ( I bought this damn thing just for the trip on the previous sunday for the specific purpose of battling the cold in russia).. anyway then we decide to call another friend to take it from my friends place and deliver it at the airport..while i am biting my nails trying to figure out whether i would reach the airport in time or the jacket or neither...finally i do make it to the airport..the time on the clock 5:30..to find out that i am the last guy to check in and the boarding announcement has just been made.. however my jacket is yet to arrive so I requested the guys at paramount to give me some more time to wait at the entrance to take my jacket...however the traffic as usual messes up things and the final announcement of boarding has just been made Ground flight attendant asked me when is my next connecting flight from chennai..which is thankfully after quite some time at arnd 3:30 in the morning the next day and this time luck was in my favour and paramount was flying one more time frm hyd to chennai on that evening at arnd 9:00p.m. The attendant promised to deliver the jacket through the next flight operated by paramount..so with a quick exchange of phone nos and a lot of trust i boarded the flight to chennai..spent the entire flight duration abt hundred things whether my friend who is supposed to get the jacket will hand it over to the attendant trusting him and then further will the attendnt actually come good on his promise and will paramount cooperate for the delivery of the jacket on the next flight...so many complications..Landed at chennai collected my baggage and tried to talk to some authorities there and explain my problem...(In all these complications I had to basically rely on my friends phone as my phone did not have balance and could only be used for recieving purposes and that too due to roaming in chennai will not be possible)... As luck would have it my friends phone conked off due to low battery when we landed in chennai... anyway all though the authorities there seemed really busy promised that they would get in touch with me once the jacket arrives.. again a quick exchaneg of nos...so with more tense moments to come we waited at the airport for my jacket to arrive..In the meanwhile had my dinner and my friend got his phone working and we finally we had a communicating device (cant imagine a life without cell phones)..as luck would have it again the flight to chennai was delayed by half an hour and by the time it came to chennai at arnd 10:40...there was shift in duties at the airport and the paramount authorities to whom i talked to were no longer on duty.. so i got in touch with the person on duty at the airport who of course is completely unaware of the situation.. I called up the attendant at hyd and he reassured me that he had sent it by the next fight and i had to wait to see if it arrives at the conveyor belt as no one else seemd to have a clue....luckily it came through..there now at least i had my jacket ( means of survival in extreme cold). We trudged along to the international airport which thankfully was adjacent unlike in Mumbai..and guess what we find out that the flight is delayed by around one and a half hours.. we practically slept of at the airport after running arnd the whole day..The airlines guys( emirates) had arranged for snacks for everyone but we were in no mood to eat basically slept at the airport... finally began our trip to Moscow via Dubai...


More tense moments in Part II...contd

Choices...are they an illusion!!

I was recently talking to a colleague of mine..and invariably most of my casual conversations somehow revert to movies..well i was discussing with him about the good old days when there was just the monotonous doordarshan and no other choices in terms of channels... now i know u must be wondering ..what do i mean by the GOOD old days..surely arent we better off with the vareity thats available to us...Most of the times i am pretty sure we are better of with the plethoras of channels that we have at our disposal for our viewing pleasure..but certain times i am a lil disillusioned by the choices...for example i remember we used to have in dd the weekly once english movie in dd metro..which me and my dad would religiously watch and i would end up somehow sleeping halfway through..but i loved them for what they were..the rare times when i founf myself privy to english it was a real thrill to watch english movies more like a coup that i pulled off :)..also there were these regional movies that used to be shown on sunday along with subtitles...It really used to be fun to see movies in so many different languages which i really dont get to see anymore.. Sometimes I feel that inspite of dd having just two channels were able to cater to viewing pleasures while at the same time not making the idiot box addictive..but then if u ask me do I watch doordarshan now at all...well u gotta be kidding doordarshan is for losers who dont have choices :)...i have felt the same kinda disconnect nowadays with radio as well..for example i really got hooked on to radio when i was in tenth..loved listening to fm air 107.1 especially the limited times when english songs were being played.. I remember that cyrus broacha did an amazing job in a program called 'chaar baje band baje'..u guessed it right it was at four in the evening :)..then later on when i was in chennai during my engg days i used to listen to 107.1 fm religiously between seven to nine..which is when english songs would be played but u know through those four years i could slowly see degradation of the quality of rjing..which increased with the plethora of private channels coming up... In fact now in mumbai I think there more than 4 private fm channels...and if u ask me none of that have manged to differentiate themselves through their sound (a bit like the himmesh reshamiya songs...cant recognize one from the other ) i mean if it wasnt for the constant jingles airred in the channelse reminding us what (as in which frequency/channel)we were listening to we would never know. I remember it was not the case be4 I distincty remember 92.5 fm airing only english which metamorphosed into a mix of hindi and english songs...but atleast the kinda songs that they aired had a distinct flavour to it making us instantly recognise the frequency to which we were tuned into even if the radio jingle did not comeup constantly..however now its not the case, its the same content in every radio channel in mumbai...maybe it was due to maket compulsions..but i still fail to see the point in not differentiating oneself from the competitor...i somehow felt that AIR with just a single fm channel had enuff vareity and managed to pack in all kinds of songs from hindustani to rock and from carnatic to old hindi classics the entire works throgh time slots...this leads me to the point behind this post which is that sometimes choices suck!!!