I got a chance finally to write in 2012

It has been a month since I came to Chennai, but never thought Chennai would make sure I dont even login to my blog for this long.

With an opportunity to spend more time with my parents, 2012 has given me an amazing start.

The past one month in Chennai has helped me learn about so many things about our Chennai culture (most of which is applicable to culture in India), I intend to write about it as much as I can. Here are some examples:

1. Customer Service: Customer service (or the lack of) is an area where there is a huge gap between what a customer is promised and what they are given after the sale is done. 90% of the time, you will see that customers are left with a bad taste in the after sales support experience.  I learnt what an amazing opportunity we have here, to provide awesome customer service and grab this market away from all those providing bad customer support.
2. Time Management: People just commit to a time and are always an hour late. I am worried I might be getting this bug, as I noticed doing this myself once or twice.

I have many such examples and I intend to spend quite a bit of time on each topic to learn more about them. Such gaps fascinate me as I look at the opportunity that exists to fill those gaps.

In any case, more to write about this and many more topics soon.

The way in which she has performed this is impressive. The level of maturity she has shown in the delivery of this song shows the amount of hard work that must have gone into the preparation.

Though the concept and most of the words have been copied from 1980s Balachandar’s tamil movie, which was refined by Revathy Sankaran in her remake of it, this kid has pulled it off in her own style with further refinement by adding Georgia accent, Russian and Italian accents.

I was so amazed at her performance that I spent some time finding out who this kid is. I was amazed by various talents this kid has. Now I know two things about this kid:

1. The kid is extremely talented and gifted. She knows how to speak, dance and sing. (Just see her videos uploaded by her father and you will agree with me)

2. Her parents are really interested in making sure she learns various things in life and also work hard enough to perfect them and execute them as per plan.

Hats off to Kavya and her parents.

With the booming economy in India, it is becoming more and more difficult to find helpers for various jobs. Some examples are car drivers, baby sitters, maid etc. (If you are in India, I am quite sure you are also going through something similar when looking for helpers.)

The best part of this is a common funny pattern that we found when we interviewed people for such positions.

1. They will call you over the weekend, discuss the salary part, timings, etc with you and say they will take up the job and come from Monday.

2. They will call on Monday morning and give you an excuse saying someone died in their family. The last excuse we got earlier this week was funny: Uncle got electrocuted and died

3. After two days, either they will come and join or they will disappear.

My theory based on my guess is as follows:

a. They respond to multiple advertisements and call all the employers over the weekend and confirm that they will come on Monday.

b. After all the interviews are over, they will go to the employer who has agreed to pay the highest.

c. They try out the employer for a day or two and if they dont like it, they go to the next employer in the order of higher salary, giving this ‘some one died in the family’ excuse.

d. They also know very well that ‘death’ is a very sad topic and every one will feel sorry when that excuse is given and ask no questions.

On a serious note, I guess it is a supply vs demand problem. But on a funny note, I decided that while interviewing, I am going to tell them this:

No one in your family can die for the next one year .

I know some of you might think, I am a bad guy who is heartless – believe me, no one will die in their family and I am sure they have many more imaginary uncles and other relatives lined up to be killed for different reasons while applying to new jobs.

Want to see how that goes. Will actually say that to the next few people who call up for jobs and let you know how the reaction is.

If you have had similar experiences, post it here. I am sure it will be fun to see the pattern.

While Vijay Mallya has asked the Government for bail out money (is Kingfisher too big to fail ), the Government has rejected his request.

This brings up an interesting point.

Vijay Mallya has been a serial entrepreneur, having a track record of running successful businesses. Examples:

• UB Group: The brewery group that produces Kingfisher beer and related products (It is one of the leading brands in India today)
• Royal Challengers IPL Team (Not sure if you know the value of all IPL teams have gone up 100 times)
• Force India Formula One Team (Bought for 90 Million Euros in 2007 and a smaller stake sold for 100 Million US Dollars to Sahara later)

Some people have said it is just not right for Vijay Mallya to ask for the Government backing when he is a multi-billionaire and he can bail it out himself (But I guess the rule of business that a smart business person never uses their own money is being used here.)

Overall, this appears to be a situation where a person with a good track record has faced the first big setback in business and it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

For my friends who do not know Tamil, here is the meaning:

Kolaveri is made of two words ‘Kola’ and ‘Veri’. Kola means Love, Veri comes from the english word Very. So by now you should have guessed it, yes, is very much in love

So the singer is asking this girl, why are you very much in love. The entire song is around this logic. I hope you enjoy the song.

Please feel free to express your love to anyone you want by simply saying ‘I have Kolaveri for you’.

Update: I found a remix of this song already on YouTube.

This picture I saw online reminded me of a creative way of making it easy for people in India and the US to call it a bike

This movie is all about how things can be done in a wrong manner in life and how things can go wrong all the time.

Hrithik Roshan is the hero and he is a US citizen living in Las Vegas. He plays the role of a crook, who marries 11 times to cheat the Government and get Green Cards for people in exchange for money.

He is also a dance teacher, teaching for 100 Dollars per week – one good thing was that Hrithik showed some good dance moves in this movie, which are quite different from his usual monotonous dance movies we have been seeing from his first movie.

In his dance class, a rich girl falls in love with him, and he fools around with her to get her money. The heroine in the movie is a mexican lady, who also fools around with Hrithik’s girl friend’s brother for his money.  If you thought the rich kids are nice ones, they show the brother and his dad killing anyone who tries to cheat at their casino. Overall, this movie tries to maintain its level of consistency in depressing negativity throughout the movie.

The story revolves around these two falling in love and the rest of the story is the usual Hindia masala movie.

The ending scene is the best, which no one would have anticipated. There are four cars chasing the herione’s car and she is cornered in her car, with a cliff in front of her and the four cars right behind her. She stops for a minute (yes it is for one full minute), and while the bad guy comes walking towards her in slow motion. Guess what she does? She sends an SMS to the hero saying ‘I am going..sorry..forget me’. I could not help laughing..I guess if she had data plan on her cell phone, she would have sent a facebook message, twitter message, an email and might have even written a blog during that time. I hope I dont give new ideas to this director for his future movies

In any case, if you come across ‘Kites movie’ in the future, please run away for your own safety.

In one instance, a person opened a mobile soft drink stall called Gogola and nicely copied Google’s style.

In the second instance, this person has started his own mobile fast food stall called Facebook Chaat.

It caught my attention and so I am posting it here.

Unlike many other politicians, Mamata Banerjee has maintained a very humbly lifestyle and is a role model for many aspiring for a political career in India. (It is extremely rare to find a politician who is humble in India).

Mamata Banerjee has been quite active for a long time in Indian political scene, and was a part of Indian National Congress party for a very long time. Later in 1997, she started her own party and called it All India Trinamool Congress.

Not sure if you know, the CPI-M led Left Front had been elected in West Bengal state for 34 years and holds the record for the world’s longest serving elected ruling party anywhere. Mamata Banerjee led her party to a landslide victory this year in the State Assembly elections and is now the Chief Minister of West Bengal. Earlier, she was the Railways Minister in the Central Government.

In 2006, she led the famous Singur protests against Tata setting up the Nano plant in West Bengal. I am not sure if that was the right decision or not, but Narendra Modi later came up with an agreement with Tata and the Nano project is now fully functional in Gujarat.

Mamata Banerjee has been in the news recently for her active opposition to the rise in petrol prices in India and might even break away from active partnership with the central government, and might end up just giving outside support to it. This is a very interesting situation as she represents a good number of MPs and hence cannot be ignored by the ruling party.

As mentioned earlier in the politician review done on Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi are two major forces that the US Government is keeping a close watch on, as they believe these two politicians have a high probability of becoming the future Prime Minister of India.

It will be interesting to wait and watch what happens.