Another gem from Osho

Every now and then this Osho makes me realize that life is worth living and nothing is wrong in this world. In fact everything is right. All you need to do is stop compromising with life and everything will be right.

Here is another gem:

"There has never been a person like you before, there is not anybody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you. Just see how much respect God has paid to you. You are a masterpiece — unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique. Even the hardest heart,
the rock-like heart, will start melting in gratitude"

My dear NRI

My Dear NRI

You leave me speechless at times. Your concern for your homeland and patriotism gives me goose bumps. You are forever obsessed with anything and everything Indian – cricket, bollywood, kollywood, corrupt politicians, carnatic music, and everything else which one would associate with the word INDIA.

But somewhere in this love affair, you lose your objectivity. Your obsession for anything India gets transformed to a nit-picking campaign which you brilliantly blow up to ridiculous proportions. For example, if a kid gets lost in an Indian city even for a moment, for you that’s a sufficient enough evidence to conclude India is unsafe for children. Going by this logic, if an adult loses his way in an Indian city, I guess we should all conclude India is unsafe for adults too.

Every third post in your blog would be about the lack of discipline in Indian roads, the corrupt political system, the unscrupulous bureaucracy, the snail’s pace functioning of government departments etc. If only the rating agencies like Standard and Poor or Moody’s got a chance to read your blog, I guess India would be downgraded from ‘Sumaara Irukku’ to ‘Naasama Pochu’.

It is an irony that in this very nitpicking campaign, you betray the same Indian trait which you decry with all your heart among your resident brethren. I mean, you sit safely in a developed country and keep on gossiping about your underdeveloped motherland. How useful is that? Look at it in another way, you make a living in a foreign country and all but obsessed with your home country when you could do a lot to better your adopted country – typical Indian trait again.

Chinese Communism

The Govt wants the land cleared for building some complex. The family living there won't budge. This is in Chongqing, central China.

For a complete read of the article read here

Sikh Park

There is this Sardar who's started Sikh Park on the grounds of South Park. Check one of his riffs.

Do you think this is true?

Do you think this is still the state of Asian culture?

Osho Thought

Existence is abundant - millions and millions of flowers,
millions of birds, millions of animals — everything in abundance.
Nature is not ascetic, it is everywhere dancing — in the ocean, in the trees. It is everywhere singing — in the wind passing through the pine trees,
in the birds....
What is the need of millions of solar systems,
each solar system having millions of stars?
There seems to be no need,
except that abundance is the very nature of existence;
that richness is the very core; that existence does not believe in poverty

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.