TATA

"A promise is a promise"

- Ratan Tata



"What is good for India, is good for the TATA's"

- Jamsetji Tata



Words well spoken by two great men of Indian industry. Salut!

Mr. & Mrs. Lobo

One more of the gang has bitten the dust. Lester Lobo has gone down fighting on the 12th of January 2008, to a worthy and beautiful opponent :) Wishing them the very best of times together as a married couple.

Here is the toast I presented to them at their reception (publishing only the important part!)

May every sunrise be in her arms and
may there never be a sunset that sees you two apart
may the most melodious thing you hear each day be her laughter
the brightest thing you see be the twinkle in her eyes
the most fragrant thing you smell be her presence
the most tender thing you touch be her embrace
and the most sweetest thing you taste be her kiss


ps. I searched everywhere and couldnt find anything suitable so made this up. So its original and copyright is reserved by the parties here.

Hit me!

Am looking forward to 2008. And if you are gonna be a part of it watch out for this space. The gut feeling is that this year is gonna rock my socks out. Why? ... well keep reading this space for that all through next year.

oh sweet 2007
Enjoyed myself in Gurgaon, saw probably the best idea in the Indian startup space and interacted with some really talented guys all through. Found out the do's and don't of a startup all over again, got me reminiscing about QB all over again. Then came off to join what I think is probably the best opportunity within MS and other MNC's. Professionally have pushed forward on the technical as well as behavorial side, but am still a frank jack :) Amazingly I still keep running into people who think I should keep my mouth open rather than shut.
Personally the year has been beyond comparison. Dad's health has improved beyond our wildest wishes, all thanks to the new entrant to our family, my sister's son Joshua Thomas Sequeira. Many of our childhood friends too had kids, actually all of them had kids this year and the building in Mumbai was having the "good-news" all through the year :)
And ofcourse the other things like new friends and revisiting some old ones. Some beautiful conversations and some gorgeous smiles and all those little things made life a bit more interesting. It all made for a smacking year.

Now bring on the next 365 baby!

Where's me moolah gone?

If I had shed weight as fast as the BSE Sensex did in the past few weeks I'd be swaying with the wind right now. What hell is happening on Dalal Street ? Well I was predicting a massive correction but even I did not expect it to be at this pace. I have lost 30% off my stock value in the past 2 days without even trading. Seems like there is some Harshad Mehta at play here or these funds and investment houses are playing the markets in unison. Come on Mr Damodaran save us retail investors from the wrath of these mammoths.

Taazaa Khabbar

This is getting me really excited. Cisco has announced Cisco I-Prize. This is a huge initiative by Cisco with the winning team getting to share a sign-on bonus of 25,000USD followed by having Cisco actually invest millions into your idea as an emerging technology over the next few years.

So if you have it in you, give it a shot. And if you wanna collaborate, get in touch.

Read more here

Shooting Stars and Diwali

Well that theory about the wishes and shooting stars sure as hell didn't come true for me. I guess that works only for American citizens... hehe.

Well its that time of the year again. For some time now the sound of loud explosions does not cause fear and the smell of our desi gunpowder is all over the place, right from dusk till dawn, yeah it starts at dusk! The stars are outnumbered by the festive rockets and lightning flowerpots and smooth harmony persists in the mass hysteria at your friendly neighborhood sweets shop. Everyone is headed home to spend time with family and the mood is all so cheery and happy. Everyone's purses are being emptied by their parents, children, siblings or a long lost friend and no-one is complaining. Its pouring in emails and everyone's "online status" reads a greeting or two.

So I too am headed to join in the celebrations and here's wishing all of you guys a very Happy Diwali. Be it my friends from Andheri, Matunga, Vashi, State College, Bangalore, Gurgaon or Hyderabad. Life has taken me many places but I'd swear by the sweat on my brow that there is just no place like home, especially during festival time.

ps. so what if I am a Christian, the sweets are just as delicious for me as they are for you ;)

Shooting Star

Guess what! Saw my first shooting star yesterday night, in hyderabad. Made me realise that its never too late for anything to happen in life and neither is anything impossible. Yeah I did make a wish, a small one.

Species LandLord Invertebrate

Out of the necessity of travelling outside Mumbai for my job I have always had to rent out apartments for my survival in various cities. Now that I am in Hyderabad I have come to the conclusion that where ever you go the genus Landlord Invertebrate is a direct descendant of the greedy overlords that our ancestors thought were slayed along with the dragons.

Here are some of the peculiar traits of these species. I hope that these will help you identify these specimens and stay clear of their path.
1. Greed - While this is a feature of every animal I have to say that landlords are way more greedier. I have been working for the past 5 years in the industry and even I cant expect a 10% increase yoy every year. That combined with the inflation rate that is at least 5% every year how can anyone expect a rental increase of 10-15% every year ? That too without any maintenance being done on the property.

2. False Claims - Every freaking landlord advertises his house as near a school, hospital, grocery store, IT park and mall. They will always say that this is just a stones throw away, while the reality is that there is stones and muck everywhere on the way to these places however close they are from the apartment. More ever once you occupy the place you can forget anything to be repaired by this species. They will always say that it will be fixed but if you wait for it to happen you might as well be without it. Yeah but if you say that you will fix it and cut the cost from the month's rent you can at least expect a quick reply from the species.

3. Sexual Discrimination - I have always noticed that the rentals for single girls are always better, cleaner, cheaper and aplenty. And in 100% of these places the landlord always likes to have a "friendly" conversation with his tenants on a daily basis.

4. No Bachelors or Family preferred - This is the most irritating problem that is hampering me from enjoying my bachelorhood. These specimens always prefer families as tenants for whatever reason. Bachelors are seen as rowdy creatures that don't need adequate housing. Now weren't they bachelors ever?

5. Pesky Rules and Regulations - Now if you manage to find someone who doesn't mind having bachelors as tenants then that specimen comes up with his list of rules and regulations. No friends, no drinks, no smoking, no girls, no loud music and the crap continues. Now you charge us such filthy high rentals and still feel that it is your prerogative to decide on how we live our lives. Gimme a break.


To all the creatures of the Landlord Invertebrate species I wish you all the harm in the world. May you face extinction and may your life be as miserable and as crappy as the things that you do upon your tenants.

Remember that your existence is because of your tenants and not the other way around.

My middle finger to you all!!! @#$%^!

NRI Theory

The dream of every individual is to own his/her own house sometime in their lives. Considering the ever reducing life spans of our cosmopolitan lives we would like to think that this event happens sooner rather than later in our busy lives. We find it as a great accomplishment when we manage to go ahead and get that home loan and buy a house even though the former is at an obnoxiously inflated rate of interest, leading us to pay nearly twice the actual amount of our dream house.

Now lets observe the situation around us. In most desirably habitable places the apartments are all sold out even before the first floor slabs are done with. However when the whole building is ready to be occupied no one is in the apartments. Who the hell are the people who bought these apartments at such ridiculous prices and can afford not to live in them. Let me introduce the culprits - the dearly beloved N.R.I. who seems to be earning so many truckloads of money that even though they have no intention of returning back home they will almost surely go ahead and invest their money on some real estate out here, leading to a surge in prices and ruining the dreams of the regular MIG Indian aka myself.

Now many of them will cribb their asses off telling me that they are actually contributing to the great Indian economy by pushing in their valuable dollars into the mill. Gimme a break yaar, if you want to really contribute non-zealously to the growth of the country while you earn a hefty sum abroad do so via some charitable institutions or maybe the capital markets or maybe some India centric investment funds.

If nothing else atleast wait till I manage to afford myself a decent 2bhk!

Quitting Guavus

Have put in my papers at Guavus Networks. Why? Hmmm.... read here
Where? ....Am moving out to Microsoft to work with their VSTT group. More on that once I get some info on what I can disclose about my work there:)
Cheers

Gori Chamdi - Reader's Digest Joy.

After a really long time I happened to pick up a copy of the Reader's Digest this month. Luckily for me there was a new additional supplement called Reader's Digest Joy - for free, along with the issue. Super! I reader the editor's (Mohan Sivanand) note which read, and I quote,

"The Indian edition of the Reader's Digest reached out to more than seven lakh urban women, which is more than the combined reach of all the top Indian women's magazines" ....
"We decided to reach out further with this first issue of Reader's Digest Joy, aimed at our women readers"... blah blah blah.

Oh what a wonderful thought Mr. Sivanand. Since you are so very much in touch with such a large diaspora of the Indian feminine society can you please tell me the reason you chose to stick a pic of a brunette chick on the front cover of your oh so Indian "Joy" ? Total humbug.

This crap is very evident in all our desi publications with blatant neglect of copyright and sticking in pics taken from just about anywhere and mostly of foreigners, sometimes doing crap totally unrelated to the article too. Why cant you stick in some good desi kuris in there. See the recent flurry of sweetness in the Times of India, with pictures of the hip chicks goings for admissions to colleges and some doing boat rides with their families. I wonder who that dame was on the boat ride, very beautiful, had that Mumtaz kinda look in hair and eyes with a 21st century bod to melt ya down. Anyways I digress what is the infatuation with white flesh that we desis seem to have. Come on take a look at the beauty around ya isn't that good enough. If not, go home and get a spanking from your mom right now!

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to hold true to one’s convictions and ideals while facing down the bureaucracy that inverts entrepreneurship’s fundamental premise of service. – Dr. Elliot McGucken from his lecture, “Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship.”

Yatra.com impresses

I recently attempted to purchase 4 tickets from Delhi to Srinagar, for a friend of mine . While scanning through the various travel portals out there yatra.com was offering a good deal. We immediately went on to purchase the tickets. However I had to fill out the lengthy personal details of all the 4 travellers. When I completed the form and hit the submit button the site claimed that the tickets I was trying to book were no longer available :(. Worse still it also mentioned that since the credit card was precharged for the tickets I would see a deduction on my card and it would be reverted at the earliest. This ofcourse got me all fumed up especially since I had a hefty bill from the previous month itself. I just thought I'd wait for a day or two and see what happenes and this is what happened.

The very evening this occured I get a call from their customer care rep. detailing and apologizing for what occured. He went on to ask me if I still needed to book the tickets so that he could check and let me know whats available. I said I didnt need them anymore. He then specifically told me that the amount debited from my card would be credited back within 3-5days.

Now thats customer service. Keep up the good work yatra.com. You have my vote for splendid customer care. Thanks

Update: Can you believe it. I actually got my refund back in 5 days, as promised.