Why the heck so much

She hurries down the stairs without noticing anyone around her while everyone around is not taking their eyes off. After a while I see the stairs and I again catch her coming down the stairs. Lucky chance haan? Well!! I come to know is that she's been doing this for past 15 mins at least.

Another one is doing chin ups and the instructor is pushing her for more and she happily obliges. While I am just recovering from the nausea of my previous exercise in which I lied about doing half of the repetitions.

I am not talking of one single girl whom I am admiring but its like every girl in the whole gym is absolutely fit to be wasting time in so much.

What annoys me the most is that when I am ready to pass away after running for some time the girl beside me on the treadmill goes on to increase her running speed and she has been running there 10 mins before me.

Why the heck do these perfectly all right girls come to the gym and exercise so much? Most of the girls have instructors even though it costs you an arm and a leg to get a full time instructor. At their body shape, I bet she knows every exercise there is in this world to keep her in that shape. I could have bought the argument that since they come to gym they are so healthy but just a look around the gym shows you that 70% of the guys are overweight. They also come to the gym right? Either most of us realize it too late and come to gym or most of them are just for the eye candies. For girls then, god knows what drives them nuts to doing this.


Technorati Tags: Fitness, Humour, Life

Will cricket become hockey?

What I am going to write here might just be a consequence of a feeling of utter wastage of time, money and mockery of the attachment shown towards the Indian cricket team. Its a feeling which wont go away without venting. There will be a zillion bloggers/news channels and natthus who would analyze the match, split its guts apart and take different sides but I just have one piece of advise.

Greg Chappel, with immediate effect, keep security guards.
Dhoni and others from UP and Bihar should apply for home loans already.
Most blatant, Sachin should consider retirement as an option

Well I know PJ would have happily surrendered to beating of Suppi and Anshul had India won but I am sure he is much worse with this.

For the optimists who are thinking there is a chance that Bermuda beats Bangladesh, its near impossible unless our Indian players apply immigration to Bermuda and play from there side against Bangladesh. Still not an easy task as history has told us.

** Update
What would have happened if Bermuda was not there in our group and we had some other moderate team?

While checking the stats, some interesting things for the world cup 2007 stats till now:

Top 5 scorers till now.
Sehwaag and Ganguly figure out at number 4 and 5.

Most Ducks
Dhoni comes a dashing 2nd with many Indian names and obviously Sachin in it.

Top scores
India tops the list of all times in world cup here and that's what makes me think, what if Bermuda was not there to play with us.

A few bad apples spoil the bunch

I had an irritating incident with one of our own call centers who started giving call to my cell phone some 2 months ago. The telemarketing offer was for Indian channel subscription which I had refused bluntly, in the first call I got as it required 12 month contract and a down payment. I clearly told I won’t be here for long so it’s not possible for me. It was not the usual blunt “no, I don’t want to hear anything more” which you get used to because of many stupid things being sold by telemarketing. I was sort of looking for getting a subscription and so at least I listened, asked a few questions and had to say a no. Also since this was from a renowned US channel provider I was not too worried either. Now if the call center person senses the slightest inclination, you’re bombarded with all the marketing tricks in his/her sleeve. So I got another call next week and then the week after with the things getting more irritating with talks like “Arre apni wife ki hi sochiye woh to bore ho jaati hongi”, I said I don’t have a wife, “Accha aapki girlfriend ke liye hi le lijiye”. I was ready to stretch my hand and take scale blows for not having girlfriend than listening to this crap. And these quoted sentences were exactly like that and in Hindi. I could guess the lady there was Indian from the accent and she finally broke it anyhow. Finally after few calls she said “I shall confirm with my manager” and came back that I could have it my way.Now the story went worse from there when I saw that my account was deducted for an amount no where in the calculation told to me. In fact it was 10 times the monthly payment. I called up angrily and amidst lots of sorry, apologies, “I actually did not know that there was such a clause”, “Aapko ye paise 6^th month ke end pe mil jayenge” and what not, what I finally could get is that “We are outsourced to get customers but we cannot handle
customer complaints and you’ve to call up the channel provider directly”. This call center was given a target to sell hook or by crook. My experience with the direct call center of the channel was pretty smooth. They confirmed that there was no way someone could waive off the contract and hence the amount was deducted and they said if you’re not ok we would refund you the money and apologized for whatever happened. I was so mad that I left a complaint too and
they apologetically accepted that it was a third party seller.

This incident made me think of what kind of image we are developing where India’s
one of the largest market lies. A call center executive, who doesn’t even know the facts of the thing they are selling, is sure harm to their company more than the harm done to the customer. If it was in US the company CEO would be seeing shutdown in the few years of its inception. Anger directed at call centers which are mismanaged is already raging and these kinds of incidents leave people even more skeptical if their call is being handled by India.
Look at this article which lists down what kinds of frauds have tarnished the image of the Indian BPO. I think the problem lies with the new small players taking the plunge lured by the pie they could cut out of this boom. These don't even have proper means to hire good talent and that is if at all any sane head thinks of applying there. Employee retention is becoming a problem for the biggest back office players and so these small companies must be grappling with shorter training times and then losing those trained to these biggies. All this must be ending up in a fresher out of a college in Delhi time passing in a nukkad ka call centre for 2 months to make quick bucks to spend it all in Ruby Tuesday when he shifts to the big brother.

Now all this can be a one off incident and does not invite any analysis and Who knows the second call I made would have been from a very well accent trained Indian who handled my call well. Well that's what I am saying, a few small companies might spoil the whole impression. I think there is a need for consolidation in this sector to the extent that a few big companies handle it in a much better way. Maturing at this youth/middle age might go a long way in keeping the growth this sector is witnessing.

The customary car photo

One thing everyone from India will have on his/her orkut profile is the famous car photographs. Rented cars, bought cars or any damn car. Whatever it might be but its a similar feeling (if not the same) that you used to get when you bought your first car in India. Such an occasion would happen in a middle class Indian family when the kids are almost out of the college or the daughter is married or time when the money does not have any specific aim. Here in US you get well earlier than you would have thought. Mostly because the first time you come to US where you have to have a car (Except for a few cities that I have not seen). When god gave legs to the rest of the world, he gave cars to the US citizens. I could have posted the links to a few samples but due to sheer volume and anonymity, I'd leave it at that.
Well since I am talking of cars, another thing that annoys me is that here bike is a far better difficult to obtain and ride as compared to car. Some times I even feel like asking my bike from India and ride it to office. One: It is very time effective as you can sneak in between lanes. Two: Its stylish, perhaps like what the car is in India. Three: I guess my unicorn would be far more fuel efficient than any of the bikes these people run here. Well the only question left is how would it do at 120 kmph everyday.