Finally its over...

After a lot of struggle... frustration shall be the right word... I have been trasnferred to Noida from Chennai. The time of using sign languages, walking on streets and asking people directions, understanding English part of their Taminglish is over. Moreover, people will not consider me a foreigner at my own soil and will not insult me by intentionally speaking anything while they know I won't be able to follow. But I must say that last 1.5 years of Chennai journey was overall good experience when I stand at the end of it.

I have taken flavour of South India, now heading for North. Hoping to see new people and experiences. Though issues with Chennai are more of awareness issues. I hope for people here to see other side of life. I would love to revisit here but not for more than 3 days in a year. Of course this place has its own positive sides, but I can make a list of negatives too. Hahaha...am I not sounding like a neighbour who says on one's funeral "Accha aadmi tha yaar...." after backbiting him for years? Whatever its over now.... ab Dilli dur nahi... :)

Time to get rewards

Its been 17 months of efforts in spite of knowing results are affected by major other factors. I have tried every possible way to make odds in my favour but don't know what is written. It will take two-three more days to know what luck says.

In last 17 months I have learnt things are not the way as it seems in early days, obviously LIFE is much tougher. If we ask a school child or college boy, how will you solve a tough problem or situation, I am sure answer will come by more hardwork. What they do not know is there are other factors which might neglect your hardwork like force on a object at 0 degree while trying to displace it. What I mean is it is not only hardwork that matters, you have to set a lot of things right. The list is endless but top on the list are people.

It is people's will which drives our life majorly. Think: To the hospital we were born in, school, college, restaurents, house, friendships, love or even the crematorium, it would be people's will. Our work is only to sail in river or pond we are put in and to pass through it with crests and troughs. May be in our own style but all of us have either pass through or sunk in it :) Now think of this river or pond as the opportunities in life, only few of them are grabbed by us, most of them are granted by our parents, friends, teachers, seniors or by luck.

In this time, although I GOT several such opportunities.... and have performed, I have also paved through situations to turn people's will to give me the opportunities, there also I again performed. Now it is the time to get the rewards, time to pluck the fruit. Is it rippen? Was I able to negotiate with one of the major factor other than hardwork to win? Will update you in a day or two.

Wanna break out...

It's a metro. There are only 2 McDs here. Only one mall (City Centre). Overloaded online ticket booking for bollywood movies. Sweating climate. Rare no. of guys clean shaved, no gals on scooties. No appreciation of beauty, no handsomeness admired. Dishes written in starters are served after maincourse. Man-woman remains distant as they are lying in separate toilets.

Its a peaceful place. But whats the point without a life.

Wanna break out guys...wanna break out.

Media today....

All migrants shall be grateful to Sachin Tendulkar for his comments on secular Mumbai. At least somebody gave a shout. I myself being a maharashtrian have been living with my family in Madhya Pradesh. It might surprise you but we do not even know our initial place in Maharashtra, we have been living here for ages.

For a moment, lets consider Raj Thackeray has a point to make and ignore the FACT of this being a political gimmick, shall all Marathis go back to Maharashtra and start all over again? That would certainly be a foolish thing to do. But here I am not going to make any comments on how to make India secular and what does our constitution says, we have our media doing a good job on that. I want to highlight couple of points which are ignored by our media in run for TRP or lack of coverage:

• Maharashtra being a lucrative place for job seekers and Mumbai being the commercial capital of India, its in limelight. What about other metros? Like Chennai, local people do not talk to you if you do not speak Tamil why is this basic point ignored and not highlighted by media when the basic rights of every Indian are concerned?


• Why railways examination notice was not given in local language newspaper too when the expectation from candidate is not to know necessarily any national or international language. I suspect a big ghotala here.


• When you say Mumbai belongs to everyone why not Delhi, Ahemdabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore or Kolkata???


• In Tamilnadu, Hindi and English or any other language for that matter is highly discouraged while we shall respect all cultures and languages, why this point is never highlighted by media?


• There has been debate over Hindi being the national language of India. Nearly all states of India will accept this but not South. This issue neither resolved nor heard on any media channel !!! I promise a national language can help a nation like India grow much better.


• What about the incidents in which people are thrown out of their reserved berth in trains, if they decline to adjust with bullying people in Bihar and UP


• How about the resolution of criminal cases taking place in rural areas of India which are covered by media initially but run out of our TV screen once viewers start loosing interest due to delay in justice or they add masala to it


• Exploitation of general public by Traffic Police on regular basis, I mean if some rule is broken by someone, he is charged Rs. 50/- without a reciept which goes in thulla's pocket but if somebody want to go through the procedure he is made to pay Rs. 500/- well in that case who will follow procedures, no sting operations for this (may be price of selling these videos back is less)


• Media highlighted criticism of Tharoor for using Twitter. I was expecting a huge support to be given to him. He is reaching faster to us than many other prominent government officials.


• What happened to Kasab? It's been one year.

Enough for now. This criticism is for English Indian New Channels. Hindi channels like India TV, Aaj Tak or Samay where a politician loosing his dog, Kaal kankal or Vardat can be the prime time shows, are hopeless. Almost everyone would agree we have hardly any value adding Hindi news channels.

Coming back to English new channels, I request them to focus on key issues of India rather than following Salman-Katreena or Saifeena as they call it. Following Indian Cricket team is okay, but would not be of much help to them. I really appreciate them for reaching people with the help of Facebook or Twitter, but the actual content is still missing.

Advertising through social networking sites.....

Hi !!! I recently joined social media marketing group on linkedin. I saw a open discussion over "Social media is..........? (Fill in the blank)". Here is what I say:

Social Media may give reach to mass audience but it makes difficult for business to pull right kind of people to turn them into customers compare to other media. Other media allow you to reach targetted audience, say a newpaper like Economic Times will only interest business news readers but when you create a company profile on facebook you reach mass audience i.e. entire pool of facebook users. When you put thoughts or advertisements in newspaper, it might reach 1 Lakh people and may interest 5000 people (5%). But on facebook, it will reach approx 30 crores and will interest 500000 (0.2%). Finding customers through social media is like finding water in desert.

But there are still some benefit of social media:

• No. of audience is massive.
• They are interactive. You can reply back and ask your questions to the advertiser like in Orkut profile of a company you can scrap them or start a discussion for review in a community. They are not forcible like television, newspaper or pamphlates, where you have to make a judgement with limited amount of information.
• They do not bother audience to share their bandwidth like tele-calling, door selling. Ultimately, a person will only log-in when he intend to do so.
• Most of them are for free.

It is up to business to decide their approach how they want to use it. I believe we can not be dependent on social media for marketing but it is the best for creating awareness.

Where is Customer Satisfaction??

Hi, How are you people? Me?? I am so-so here. Why? The incident goes like this.....happened some days back, my day started in a very strange way.

To start lets go one day back, after a tiresome day at office I came home at 9:30 pm and went to bed 11:30. After a short night I woke up 'exactly' at 05:30 in the morning and got ready for my new hobby 'Swimming'. As usual, my roomie who rolled up with me for the quaterly package (and could not complete his three weeks at the end..:) shut his alarm and waved me babye putting pillow over his head. True to my committment, I drove all the way to pool, took shower and entered the pool.....
Then,

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As soon as I dipped and reached corner of the pool the Chaukidar comes to me and tells me that my subscription is over. ( : o ) was my reaction that I still have 20 more days to go. I tried to explain him but no change (this no change was quite expected by me since he does not understand me nor I do to him, please refer my previous post). Finally, after certain exchange of arguments fellow convinced me to come out of water. You already know after coming out of pool and change, it is impossilble to go back again. I met the caretaker who also happens to be the owner of the place and explained him. He was even beyond, he was not convinced by my explanation of count of months and blindly told me you had subscribed in April once month earlier than I actually did. I forced and made him bring register which had registeration details. The chaukidar was vanished by then, I saw him standing away from us.

BULLSHIT!!!

I subscribed in May and somebody counted May 17th to Jul 16th as three months (you can count they are actually two) and this peon just without consulting his seniors argued & did something obnoxious. Finally, caretaker agreed and politely asked something which I couldn't get but meant 'Is your swimming over'& 'you can go back in' and I gave a sarcastic smile & could only say "This guy just pulled me out man". Over this, he reluctantly said sorry and I left for my routine hoping this he will not stop me till last day of subscription. This is very personal but let me tell you one more part of it when I joined he made me pay one day's fee extra since I was paying him for quarterly package a day after.

Point is Is this what you called as customer satisfaction? Unbelievable. Where business are ready to pull customer through whatever it takes attitude, there are still people who are very rigid and take supplier-customer relationship as just exchange of currency and goods. As a part of service this would have been well avoided by peon showing me the register after my dip and I could have clarified or he would have brought caretaker to talk to me. But I have seen this quite often that customer experience is taken for granted here.

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Later in the evening, when I went in reliance communications shop it was around 30x18 sq feet. It had three executives on the counter. Generally, when you enter brand shops you are greeted by shopkeeper. Here, nobody bothered to look at me. I asked one lady there to tell me about the broadband scheme she directed me to a pamphlate kept apart. I went through it and had some questions I was given a response whatever is written is the only info available. You read yourself !!!

:)

Now tell me, I was just wondering...with this speed..... when they will reach customer delight???

Crowded solitude....

Hi. You must be wondering what is crowded solitude, both the terms sound quite contrary but that is how it is: My present situation. In school, I have learnt India is a country of multiple culture, religions bla bla bla. After coming to this place I am realising this. When nobody understands you, your language, your choices etc. you become a foreigner at your own place. People who have not come here, this is for you: If you want to experience visiting abroad without having passport or visa trust me this is the place :)

NO OFFENCE to localites, they are lovely. But there is something called as acceptance in default culture of humanity, which is to accept others as they are, if not to change yourself but to accept. I feel real stupid when someone says we don't want to change our culture. Hello!!! Wake up, culture is a like a flowing river you can put blockages but it is going to show its effects somewhere else.

I personally believe age old orthodox beliefs can be sacrificed to take the new rides and explore new arenas.

What about you?