MH Bank embarking on some new stuff - really creditable

Just read an article at esakal.com . The article is linked here.

Maharashtra Bank, a bank which caters to the banking needs of mostly rural and urban Maharashtra is embarking upon a new Solar Loan Policy where-in they are willing to give loans to people who are willing to switch to solar power equipments at affordable interest rates.

Maharashtra has had a electricity shortage from times unknown. As a backlash of this there have been many programs started where-in people are being encouraged to explore alternative modes of energy so that the dependence on the State Electricity Board reduces considerably.

This program is one such example. Although the program concentrates on the needs of the rural areas, the loans are nevertheless available in urban areas as well.

Anybody who really feels about the environment should really go and check the terms of this loan and make use of this offer.

Its not many a times that these run-of-the-mill banks do such new and innovative programs.
In fact hardly any bank does it at all !

Virgin Atlantic and bad customer service

I am never going to fly Virgin Atlantic (called VA from now) ever again because of its utmost crappy customer service from top to bottom.

Till now I always thought that VA was in a better league than other airlines. My experience on Wednesday Feb 21st changed my opinion. Va flight 351 from Mumbai to London was canceled due to Technical Problems. Something went majorly wrong and they canceled it.

Fair enough, things go wrong, shit happens. But this is the time when airlines need to show their strength at customer service. And this is where they exactly failed, big time. 250 passengers were boarded on the flight. When the flight didn't take off within the first 1/2 hour people began asking questions. The captain announces that there is some problem and he will get back within 10 minutes with the answer.

His 10 minutes usually actually meant 1/2 an hour! He seriously had no sense of time. It wasn't until 3 hours that he finally heard from engineering that the plane had a serious snag and won't take off today.

Now starts the fun. People had come from far away areas like Pune, Ahemadabad and Nasik for this flight as these cities do not have a international airport. They were naturally curious as to what alternative arrangement will the airline do till the time a next flight is arranged.

The airline officials audaciously declared that the passengers either need to figure out their way to their relatives in Mumbai itself, or the ones who didn't have anybody in Mumbai need to figure out hotels in the city and the airline will reimburse the charges. Given this imagine that most of the passengers traveling to London were British tourists to India and had no idea of Mumbai city let alone starting to search hotels for themselves !

Among the passengers was a old lady who couldn't walk and needed a wheelchair. VA couldn't arrange for a wheelchair for more than 2 hours ! Poor lady had to sit on the airport floor for around 2 hours before a wheel chair was arranged.

During offloading of luggage several passengers had their luggage damaged as well. VA refused to acknowledge that.

After much complaining and pushing by almost all passengers VA officials finally agreed to hire a hotel consultant to assist passengers to find a hotel. They promised Rs 10,000 to each passenger for hotel & travel and other expenses per head. Unfortunately the consultant they hired found out that there were no rooms available for the 250 people in entire of Mumbai !! When, after a long search he did find some room the room costs were 17000 Rs a night. This meant that passengers needed to shell out 7000 Rs themselves or share the room with other passengers!

Imagine a city of more than 5 crore people having no rooms for even a single person! This move was seen as the biggest put off by passengers. Everybody was complaining about VA trying to sacrifice passenger comfort in an attempt to save money. At one point people were furious about all the mess up and were out fighting with VA staff.

Passengers who were traveling to the US through a connection from London were then later offered a alternative Delta flight which was leaving at 1-10 am that day. Those who wanted to report to work the next day (like me) were happy to get on board that flight. Others chose to stay in the hotel and get on the next VA flight the next day.

Overall after this horrible mismanagement at VA in times when their customer service is really at test I will try avoiding the airlines completely. No more foreign airlines from now. I am going to stick to pretty good Air India and Jet airways from now. They at least arrange for wheelchairs immediately!

Inkless Printer

This story caught my attention since I am a big environmental enthusiast :-). Xerox, a $15 billion company is embarking on a technology which will give us an inkless printer which can write on a paper over and over again around 50 times.

The fantastic article is "Inkless Printer"

I think within around next 50 years we will nail down the basic environment issues around oil combustion and paper usage completely with the way technology is moving.

Finally an early stage startup fund ! India's desperate need is finally addressed

Just read an article here

Its heartening to hear that India is finally being considered as a serious player in venture capital industry. Till now like of Shaadi.com, Sulekha.com and several others have raised some cool venture capital from several valley based firms.

However, all of these ventures were late stage funded. All this time there was a general fear psychosis from venture capital industries for early stage investments in Indian companies for some unknown reason.

Google has started a seedfund as the article mentions which is going to be a great help for folks with big ideas but no money and probably little experience in execution.

Now that Google has done it others will simply cave in and follow.

Osho thought

Nothing is good, nothing is bad. When this dawns in your consciousness, suddenly you are together, all fragments have disappeared into one unity. You are crystallized, you are centered.

This is one of the greatest contributions of Eastern consciousness to the world.

-- Osho Rajneesh

The Kohinoor row

Suddenly out of the blue we've waged a war for the return of the Kohinoor. What were we doing all this time ? Sleeping? Why didn't it bother us 50 years ago when we got Independence?

This is what i hate about our entire Indian civilization. Living in the past. Identifying heavily with the past. Whats wrong if we don't have that hira? Do we loose anything ? Or Do we gain anything?

Heritage. Crap! When we slowly and gradually lost independence in the 1700's and 1800's where was our pride and heritage? Why the fuck did we fight against each other and let the British take advantage of it ? Why didn't we protect our Heritage and sovereignty that time?

Lets get rid of the cloud of our past and try to do things which don't let us feel ashamed of us again and again. We've had a bad recent past and we've gotten out of it. Screw the Kohinoor. We don't want it. If Pakistan has claims upon it, let them get it. We've got too much to worry about. We got to get rid of poverty and march ahead in our quest of becoming a prosperous superpower. Fuck the Kohinoor. We don't need it.

www.goolti.com - Review Desi Consultancy firms in the US/India

I've embarked on another small venture. http://www.goolti.com. This one is a simple forum where people can share their experiences of working with Desi consultancy firms in the US.

There is a lot of dirtiness which goes on in the Consultancy companies run by Desi's out here in US.
1) Some don't give H1B original papers to their employees.
2) Some in the fear that the employees will leave the firm immediately make them sign a contract.
3) Some hold up some part of their salary so that they don't leave immediately.
4) Some have horrible experiences since they are on bench and their employers don't get them a contract soon.

The list can go on and on. Specifically, students who switch from their F1 visa status to H1B status are special targets to harass since they are new to the game and can be exploited.

www.goolti.com is a site where people who have gone through such good/bad experiences can voice their opinions so that other people benefit from it. Its a simple user forum where you can write a review for others to be viewed and commented on.

Please note that the users can also put up 'good' reviews about their consultants.

I hope this finally becomes a mode to force these consultancy companies to play a fair game.

You may be the last generation who has the possibility to rebel.
And if you don´t rebel, there may be no more chances: humanity can be reduced to a robot-like existence. So rebel while the time is still there!

--Osho Rajneesh

How was the Universe created?

I've reached new levels today in understanding, How the universe was created. The question which is haunting the mankind for centuries in the past and which is going to haunt the mankind for all the time to come has finally been solved by good old me!

So the thing is, the theory that somebody created this universe is absurd as far as my mind can think of. Because, it leaves a circular question open. If X created the universe then who created X? And this question can go on and on and on. So, I refute creationary theories completely and won't bother about them here.

Next, assume that what ever you see as created never really existed. The earth, the stars, the planets, the galaxies and the nebula's, everything. Assume for a while that all that your mind understands as 'creation' just disappears. So what is left now? Total darkness and emptyness, right?

What is left? Nothing. Right? Now what is this Nothing? As far as our minds can perceive 'Nothing' its just absence of 'everything'. If everything disappears, what is left is deep dark space. Fathomless emptyness.

Now, max you can conclude is, out of this emptyness our universe was created. How? Don't bother about that. We will focus our quest to the base. The root, rather than the fruit. Once the root is sorted out, the fruit can be reached.

Next. Can anybody create this emptyness? Absence of everything is presence of this deep dark space. Now 'Nothingness' does not need creation. I mean c'mon its nothingness after all. How can you create nothingness. At least I'm convinced on the fact that 'Nothingness' needs no creation and hence bothering about where it came from and what is it there for is crap and waste of your time.

So, however far the physicists reach in concluding the birth of the universe a final explanation with proofs cannot be ever available.

Hence today, in a final revelation, the final light has dawned and I conclude that this existence never began in the first place and hence will never end. It never was created and hence will never be destroyed.

Hope this explanation made some sense. At least it makes sense to me.

Entrpreneurship

Full marks to this guy ...