iwoz

Managed to complete reading iWoz this weekend. The downtime with a severe cold and the absence of a television helped me wipe the dust of some of the books lying around.

The book is a definite read for many of the engineers out there who would love to remain engineers for their lives. The story of Steve Wozniak is definitely intriguing. It also validates my beliefs that no one is born a genius but rather born into it. The circumstances surrounding your childhood, more especially the things that are exposed to you then determine your path for the rest of your life.

The literature buffs may find repetition and overlaps consistently. It seems like a book organised out of disorganised post-its rather than a complete autobiography. Some may find the lack of humility or modesty in the prose but when it comes to a person like Steve Wozniak I guess there are few that could question the claims he makes.

All in all a must-read for an engineer out there. Have fun.

Don - The Remake

If you happen to be headed out to watch Don or planning on doing so, please don't! However if you happen to be headed out to meet Sharukh Khan please tell him that he is old now and his attempt to be different is as nauseating as his original acting style.

Cleartrip.com sucks impresses

Original post below**

First check out the comments section of this post. It seems that Hrush Bhatt has been enjoying his weekend by surfing the internet and checking what people think about his company cleartrip.com. Luckily for me he ran into my crib-post and well he says he has got my refund credited back to my account. Now I haven't checked all that yet but hell I am impressed... very impressed. Regardless of whether the refund is processed in a day or a week, I hope it is done in a day though:), impressive is the fact that someone actually wants to see what people think about their work. I am really impressed by the fact that some entrepreneurs out there actually care about their customer's and want to cash in on repeat business by providing decent levels of customer service.

We Indians are accustomed to an apathetic attitude from dealers/resellers.. heck anyone who sells us anything is sweet and polite and flashes the "customer is king" placard on their walls, but once the sale is done they don't even bother checking up on their customers. No one seems to bother and see how many repeat footfalls they manage, because hell as we have it there are around 1-billion of us and if a customer doesn't return someone else definitely will. Someone else who will probably keep his/her mouth shut and accept a shoddy meal (Tamarind @ Koramangala, Bangalore, Something Fishy @ Langford Road, Bangalore) or someone who won't care that they don't provide a customer care number at all (indiatimes.com, though they have added toll free numbers recently) or someone who quietly pays up for services that are not being rendered (Cable Operators).

Ideally the goal of businesses should be to respect their customers and provide high enough quality of service, high enough to turn their "customer service" centers into "customer care" centers, only to check up on their customers and wish them well.

So much needs to change and there is so little time. So here's wishing the new breed of Indian entrepreneurs the very best and hoping they have read some of the books Hrush Bhatt and his colleagues have. Now only if the Jet Airways staff were reading my blog! Right Hrush?


ps.
Since I have listed part of my black list, here are some on my favored list
1. Kingfisher Airlines
2. Legends of Rock @ Koramanagala, Bangalore
3. Bejing Bites @ Richmond Road, Bangalore
4. Citibank
4. ICICI Bank
5. Syndicate Bank
and some more....


** Original Post
Booking a ticket online... stay away from cleartrip.com. I mistakenly booked a ticket via their portal last month (just when it was launched) and had to cancel the ticket and then the mess began and hasn't ended yet.

After I hit the cancel button I get an email that states that I need to take the paper ticket to the particular airline counter (in this case Jet Airways) and get it cancelled myself and then submit the canceled stub back to cleartrip via and email. What a ludicrous thing to do or even propose, and worse still this was an e-ticket, there NO paper ticket issued here. After howling at them a bit I manage to get their attention and they say that the refund will be duly credited back to my credit card within 15 days. Today its over 30 days and I still haven't received the refund so I call customer care (what an antithesis) to be told by a kid named Renuka that Jet Airways hasn't processed my refund yet and hence the delay. What the heck! I made a payment to cleartrip.com and I should receive a refund by them itself what do I care about what they need to do behind the scenes. Shoddy site, shoddy service.

So if you are booking your tickets online stay away from the cleartrip.com website, without hesitation.

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So where was I?

I just read that Vidya Balan supposedly studied at St.Xavier's College, the very same place that I graduated from. So how come I didn't bump into Miss Vidya Balan anytime. Damn god sure knows how to keep the beauties away from the beasts:)

And yeah as things may have it Vidya Balan turns out to be yet another mallu chick. Damn! Treasure chest down in southwest India. Unfortunately as an ex-colleague just pointed out all the good looking mallu girls are out of mallu-land.



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