When will government agencies understand their role

Allow us to live in free economy. Let government ensure clarity and openness.

http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/dgca-halts-airasia-indias-plan-to-charge-fee-on-check-in-baggage/

Why is DGCA dictating the terms any private airline should use. DGCA should ensure that marketing and message is clear. Its responsibility should be to ensure that market and layman understands what is offered and then make rational decision.

If people, value, checked in baggage more than Rs 199 let them decide where to buy the ticket. The agencies loss of direction and overly control cannot be explained by free market economy.

DGCA did good moves in past to ensure that airlines clearly highlight that price promoted is just base fare and excludes taxes and surcharges. DGCA should continue to ensure that no mal-practices or biased policies are followed by airline players. It should not get into operational and pricing details of services offered.

AirAsia came with idea of low cost airlines and decided to launch every item as piecemeal. Let agents and tech savvy consumers decide if they want to fly airasia or travel by train/other airlines.

When I am feeling raged by the message, I wonder how Tony Fernandes might be feeling.

April 13 - 20 - Enlightenment started happening

I start seeing a pattern just after first week. Second week gave new perspectives, new insight and enlightenment. In past when someone used to tell me that my perspective changed during case discussions, I couldn't fathom on what they mean. Now after having experienced it myself, I can repeat same story to inquisitive minds asking me same question. Good becomes bad and bad becomes good after revelations by professor. They make us walk the journey beautifully and at pace determined by them.

The study load is heavy but each lecture is engaging. We are learning to market dreams and do number crunching at the same time. Overlaps between subjects have become evident in second week itself. Fellow students are setting bars of presentation high and its a motivation to me to step up my effort further and match them. Its not a competition with others but with self to show that I can do same.

I had my first quiz for micro-economics. At last minute it was announced to be open book and we all knew that it will be heavy on subject application. The questions asked were really challenging. It left me pondering if I should develop understanding or gather facts or balance them. Trade off between two has to be made as time is limited commodity.

I also heard that what cannot be measured cannot be improved. It is so true that I cannot improve on something I cannot measure. But can happiness be measured? Can number be put to hug kids give when I used to reach home and be with them? But then again, can I say I want to be more happy or more loved? Some things are what makes us humans, a system. I was also introduced to elephants and cheetahs. I was aware of them but couldn't think of it while reading the case and didn't see it coming in class before professor announced it.

On personal level, I am still getting settled and absorbing the fact that I can see my near and dear ones on video chat alone. I haven't forgotten on extra things I want to do while being in college. I will keep reminding myself of that and work towards it.

Update on March-28-2015 - Life flew by and I couldn't keep up with blogging :)

April-7-14-2014 - PGPX journey begins

Its been only 10 days since I started from US to IIMA. But for multiple reasons it feels like months. Away from family, managing all alone when I got used to having company of Garima, new friends, new environment, plans not getting executed as thought of, weird wireless setups that don't allow facetime or skype on phone and coming to terms with it, assignments and studies all the time. List goes on. But the feeling is of living each moment to fullest and not of despair. Sumptuous breakfast, lunch and dinner with round table discussions with friends make 1 hour on table seem less. Engrossing lectures by professors make you wonder why the session was only for 1.5 hours and why can't the professor just continue. Adhoc works like getting mobile connection or closing my US mobile connection are taking time and making me anxious.

But its true that more you talk or discuss, less anxious you feel. When I discuss with others about the challenges I faced and see that they are facing same challenges, make me feel that "together we can do it".

We will, We will!! do it

Till last week, I can say that I had apprehensions on going back to school. But this one week was stimulating. Learning doesn't pause and I lie peacefully in bed at night thinking that the day was well spent. This feeling was not normal during many office days. In this period I could see that each professor has different style of engaging the class. The presence of mind of professors is too good to give wonderful one liners that can cause waves of laughter. The way they shatter the myths of business in our mind, is wonderful. The world isn't black and white and paths of life isn't always paved. The talks with fellow students have begun and I love talking with students from diverse background. People have spent time in sales and marketing, FMCG, brand building, NGOs, researchers, legal practice, teaching and so much.

Time is essential commodity and the one which is most scarce. Its supply is limited and demand is inelastic. Only solution to buy time is to take away time from some low priority item.

Knowing that numbers alone can be deceiving when the context is incorrect was interesting. Discussion on  court cases solved on probability and number theory and lawyers making money in the original case and counter case fighting over the interpretation of numbers make you wonder - oh yes the world is like this. Imagine someone accusing of a crime by saying that since finding a match like you on description by eye witness is 1 in 10 million so you are guilty.

I happen to visit CIIE yesterday and it was interesting to meet with people who have entrepreneurial zeal and ready to work day and night to make their dreams come true. The discussions with guest speaker on how to take some of the ideas forward made me feel like I am standing in "Shark tank" discussing if licensing is the right future or working ground up is the recommended path.

Who says that "city that never sleeps" is vegas? Its IIMA that never sleeps :)...come and see our batch!!

Caste based Reservations - affirmative action

I firmly believe in equality and offering help to underserved communities to improve. I can relate to simple example in setting of school. My friend was not able to understand geometry concept in class VIII. He was finding it tough to visualize on how to start solving a problem. He didn’t have access to guides or books other than text book. He needed extra guidance and someone to explain him concepts at his pace. He didn’t ask for extra marks or grace since he cannot buy extra books. He was poor but not begging for marks or grades. I helped him by explaining the approaches to start solving the problem. Note that I am saying approach and not solve questions for him. He turned out to do good and become an engineer later in life. He being poor didn’t demand quota to pass class VIII. He needed support.

Reading article today in economists (link) about affirmative action made me realize that caste based, color based quota is prevalent in many countries. Every country is seeing failure of the system but in not ready to make amends. South Africa, Malaysia, US, India are referred in the article. In US the new information for me was that reservations are ethnicity based and depend on university to university. In name of diversity companies are forced to appoint someone in C-suite roles who may not be fit based on capability. Imagine if I put a person to run operations of a company just because he is from particular ethnicity. If he not capable of managing the team or running the company, he will fail along with the company. Failed companies, failed economies and failed country – this is where the non-skill, caste based reservation will lead us to.

Caste based reservations which in euphemism way can be called affirmative action, in my mind, doesn’t solve the problem. If I start offering lunch and dinner to a beggar, will it improve his condition? Yes in short term he will get two meals a day. He will not try to earn his living and will continue to live on charity. He will have stomach full and nothing to do and so will be idle mind waiting to be wasted. He may end up getting pulled into unsocial activities and become menace to society. If on other hand he is asked to do some work and then earn the food, he will make contribution to economy and try to make his life better.

 

In competitive world, competition should always be fair. The under privileged may be offered help to prepare for competition. The offerings should begin from childhood. In school give the under privileged text books and may be after school coaching at community expense (through government funding but that’s really community money). For graduate courses if the selection is based on entrance, then let under-privileged get extra coaching again at community expense for preparing for entrance. Does anyone think every person can have same brain power or muscle power? If I am average in studies and made to join a class of over-achievers, I will develop insecurity and that will be a seed to ruin the life. If I show that I am in same category as over-achievers than I can survive in the class, no matter what my caste, religion or economic status is.

 

Are government offices efficient? No one not even government can claim that they run efficiently. Imagine a person who nearly failed in accounts, cannot understand assets and liabilities and is made to join government accounting department. I am pretty sure he will not be happy with the work and will spoil the office image. He may be happy to get perks for doing nothing but then in economic terms, its wastage of resource. It will be like feeding an elephant that is of no use to us.

 

If you give food to a man, you feed him once, if you teach him to earn food, you feed him for lifetime. Why can’t politicians whom we elect understand this? Are we electing the right people?

Zorbing - Roll and Bounce downhill

Woww - This was all I could say after our Zorb Ball halted at bottom of downhill.Zorbing seems to be a nice innovation by some crazy person who might have thought of rolling down the hill without hurting himself. A Zorb is a transparent inflatable sphere with an air cushion surrounding it.

A night before, we were playing teen patti till 3am in the morning. On day of Zorbing, we were supposed to get started by 11am and we barely managed to wake up at 11am. So you know how late were running. Amidst frantic call conferencing between PK, Swapnil, Rajnish and me, we decided to save time by fast tracking lunch. We searched for Pizza hut on the way and placed order online. It was in between our house in MIddletown and Zorbing place in Woodbury, CT. After having good pizza we reached the site location by 3:30pm :). On talking with the receptionist I managed to get a deal from her on summer tubing. I am sure she must have later thought that she gave double deal. There regular rate of summer tubing was $10 per person for 2 rides. She could have very well said that in same price take unlimited rides. But she gave double deal , 3 people free ride and unlimited ride. So this was good start.PK, Swapnil, Rajnish and I tried convinving the ladies to try Zorb. But united they stood and all declined as a group. Women power - rocks - we had to step down and agree with four of us doing Zorbing. When I was strapped in safety belts inside the Zorb, it gave a nice secure feeling. I was expecting simple rolling motion. But within few seconds of being release from the holding harness, we experienced a bouncing motion. Swapnil and I were being tossed up and down while the ball was going downhill. We were shouting partly in excitement and partly in fear. What if the ball jumps over the sides and rolls on the road? Finally the Zorb stopped and were elated to step out..PK cut another deal and got more rides for Zorb. PK and I went for second ride. This time it was more bouncy (may be PK's weight added more to it :)). One of the safety belt broke loose for PK and he shouted more while holding onto his hands. It's scary to imagine someone without any harness inside the Zorb and bouncing in wild way. Scary ...scary..friends make sure your safety belt is secured.

Next it was tubing. Who might have thought that a sport done in winter on snow can be done during peak summer in scorching heat. All of had multiple rounds of tubing on slow and fast track. Fast track had steep fall towards the beginning which made everyone scream. Best was Ridit and Ishi also sat along with Monica and Reema and had their first experience of Tubing. When they grow old, I am going to tell them that their first tubing was organised by me :). 

The group - Left to Right - Ridit, Swapnil, PK, Rajnish and me

Ishi, Monica, Reema, Sushmita and Meri Biwi :)

We did summer tubing and Zorbing at http://www.woodburyskiarea.com/summer/summertubing.htm

Rickets Glen national Park

The destination, Rickets Glen National park, was 200 miles from our place. When it dawned on Garima and me that labor day weekend is here, it was already Friday before weekend! So we called Amrisha and Monica and then the conference call began. Within few minutes the ladies finalized the plan to go out in wild. Swapnil, Abhishek and I were simply informed that next day we have to start by 9am and have to do shopping in evening.

We reached Adams fall and saw national park sign board. We assumed that we reached the right spot and waited for Abhishek and family to reach the spot. Monica called Amrisha's cell. No response. She left a voice message and meanwhile we chatted, roamed to see the surroundings while waiting for the return call. Time check. 30 minutes since we last called and yet no response from the party in other car. Both Swapnil and Monica made calls to Amrisha and Abhishek's cell and both were able to reach there voice system alone. We were wondering what route they took? Why they are taking so long. After 1 hr we decided to see Adams fall. Swapnil and I took our swimming costume and towels and headed towards the fall. Its neither magnificent fall nor very scenic. But the fall ends in a gourge which is around 12-15 ft deep and so is a place to jump and swim. Garima, Monica and Litle Ridit also walked down with us. Swapnil and I changed into swimming costume and went down to feel the water. Water was slightly cold but refreshing. After few minutes wait, we took a plunge and were swimming in water. Meanwhile we saw few courageous people jumping from the cliff down into water. This is what we wanted to do. Swapnil went up first while I waited down with Garima and Monica cheering him. He would have stood on top for 2 minutes plus gathering energy to jump. A stranger friend who had done multiple jumps till now impressing his girlfriend, showed the water spot to jump to Swapnil. We cheered from below and would have counted 1...2...3 atleast 10 times :). Stranger friend jumped to give demo to Swapnil. Finally Swapnil took the leap of faith and chapaak....was in water. Hurraaay...he was shouting aloud on the brave thing he just did :). Now it was my turn. Sitting down, I felt I will do it soon. But when I went up and saw below, it was high. I spoke to the stranger friend and tried to gather courage. Both the stranger and his girlfriend said, go ahead you can do it. Garima was cheering first from below.
After about a minute or so she changed tone and starting shouting to jump fast. At one moment I thought to walk down. But then I said...lets jump. And there I took jump off the cliff. I don't know when I closed my nose to save myself. Splash. I touched water and went slightly inside. Even inside water I felt like...woww I did it. I swam up and hurray I was sitting next to Garima and Monica watching my own video.

Now that the tough jump was over we swam a bit. Both Swapnil and I tried to reach the bottom of the fall by swimming against the water current. Funny thing was that when we reached close to the place where water fall was creating surf, we were swimming at the same spot. We tried hard to swim against the force but didn't succeed. The second we stopped trying, water pushed us down the flow and we were back in somewhat silent water. At this moment we didn't realize that this effort will pain the next day. But in hindsight I know today that my arms are paining because of the heavy swimming we tried in cold water.

We came out of water, dried ourselves and changed the clothes. We were still not able to get connected with Abhishek. There was no reply to the emails we sent earlier hoping they will reply to email when they come in coverage. Both Garima and Monica starting fearing about bad things and became anxious. Swapnil made 911 call and tried to get some information from them. But 911 group was clear that they are not going to look into where the car could be or where the cellphone could be. They cited privacy rule and said that 2 hrs is very less time to do anything. Hoping for all good, we headed towards the lake which Garima had read about online. There in parking lot 2 when we were entering we saw Abhishek and Amrisha heading out. Ufffff. What a relief. We saw our lost friends (lost for 2 hrs :)) and then saw beautiful lake in front of us. We all decided to grill near this lake, eat well and then do anything else. Barbeque, swimming in placid lake, playing with kids and the day went by. All's well that ends well.

Long version of the video showing my 2.30 minutes of wait on top
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UuZcZHiOBk

2011- Only 2.77% Indians pay income tax

Below article in Times of India made me think.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Only-2-77-Indians-pay-income-tax/articleshow/9816887.cms

What information does the percentage figure give us?

The statement by minister of State for finance says that only 2.77% of Indians paid personal income tax in 2010.

We should be able to answer following questions to put things in right perspective
1. What percentage of population is in working category (18 – 60) I guess.
2. Filing tax forms should be mandatory even when your income is less than 1 lakh per annum. Basically I am trying to get answer to the question – How many people actually earned some money by working. This number should be subset of previous question
3. How many people actually paid taxes after applying all tax benefits. I believe this 2.77%
4. I was reading elsewhere that agriculturalists are not accounted in this. In my opinion, this figure should include all individuals irrespective of class or job.

I was trying to gather information for US and was able to pull data from official website
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=134951,00.html

They clearly report on all income bracket people (includes below $5000 which is below poverty line). We need such sample data report for Indian population as well. It seems in US 45% people are in working class and around 20% actually pay positive income tax.

If someone knows how to pull such information for Indian population, let us know by commenting. I cannot believe that more data is not provided around 2.77% income tax payer.

Vonage mis-advertising

No unlimited calls on Vonage

Vonage has managed to pull together another marketing gimmick with customers. It claims “unlimited” international calls for personal usage which is totally incorrect. In terms of service section, Vonage very brilliantly says that the usage should not exceed normal customer behavior. Then it says that 95% of customers use 3000 minutes or less. I doubt that the statistics is true but we cannot argue on that. So in short a customer is allowed 3000 minutes of international calls for a monthly bill of $35. This is after all the promotional offers which normally get over by first 3 months.

I mainly call India and did calculation of all international calls to India. It comes to 1.2 cents per minute for first 3000 minutes. This price is still cheaper than 1.75 cents that is charged by reliancecall and other services. But at least those services don’t claim service to be free for unlimited calls.

I am not saying service is bad or costing very high. But surely the marketing material is misleading customer i.e. us.

Cable companies have started offering international calls now. Time warner, FiOS and Optimum are few ISP providers that I know offer international calls. Time Warner I believe cancels the service when the usage exceeds certain limit. FiOS claims it is literally unlimited. If you have some experience with these cable companies, kindly comment below.

Channeling Information and collaboration - is admirable

We are living in a world of information flood. Reducing information overload on team members is very close to me as I strongly believe that at bottom level someone should focus and work on one task at a time. I can ask a developer to code two programs but he will code one at a time, focusing on one and then taking up another. Similarly if I ask someone to analyze item 1, I cannot assume he can analyze item 2 at the same time and share the results simultaneously.

Email is dominating my life. Every 5 mins my outlook refreshes itself and I get emails sent to me or to many distribution lists which I am part of. I don’t realize it is costing me a lot of time and is switching my focus away from what I am working on.

I am proponent of the idea that as middle level managers in delivery teams we should channel the information. I may gather 10 tasks from different teams or groups and want to assign it to my team. I can gather all infomation and send it to them as a summary email. With regards to onsite-offshore communication, peer level communication should happen. Team level meetings can happen for sharing extra information with all. Including everyone instead of peers alone in all emails may cause information flood.

Few may argue on information loss because of filtering and I agree with their viewpoint. Classic example of information loss is requirement gathering which is notorious for losing client’s requirements in a product. So the concept promotes that everyone in the team should have access to all information. This way one person’s judgment alone is not responsible for propagating information to the next level and it at least provides the option that someone will find that team is taking wrong direction.

To achieve a balance between information flooding and information loss we all need to think creatively and fine some solution using current generation technology. Technological solution calls for collaborative tools. We should start thinking beyond emails. Collaborative team communication tools should be customized and made primary mode of communication. Assigning or addressing content to a particular person should be allowed on this tool. The tool can add acknowledgment once the individual reads the content. Project level collaborative tools will have all communication between all team members on public domain. I as an individual can focus on content assigned to me and if I have time I can read other items. I can access additional information if I feel I don’t have everything with me and that information should be on collaborative tool. This way project information can remain in project teams’ domain as far as possible.

Someone may suggest that team collaboration can be achieved by sharing all team emails with each member. Team members can ignore email if it’s not addressed to them. Individual developers are maybe smart to create and apply filters to move emails to another place when not addressed to them. Although there are gaps in using filtering process but for arguments’ sake lets say individuals do this. At each new email notification most people want to see if it’s not addressed to them. It breaks the thought process they may be into before getting distracted.

In information age “Effects of interruption” is a hot topic of research. The negative effect of an interruption on productivity is much more than the time spent handling the interruption. Nielsen J notes: “… even a one minute interruption can easily cost a knowledge worker 10 to 15 minutes of lost productivity due to the time needed to reestablish mental context and re-enter the flow state.” Picard concurs, “We take a major productivity hits with each interruption.”

I admire channeling of information and keeping it at common place for everyone to read.

RakshaBhandhan 2010

Indian festivals give a reason to meet with family and friends. Unlike once a year event like Thanks giving in US, Indian festivals come frequently and target different relatives. Being far our from India has reduced festivity to making phone calls and celebrating the function all alone at home.

But nevertheless, I still love them. My Rashmi Didi had sent Rakhi like every other year. She had sent bandhani for Garima. Garima and I religiously took a bath in morning and did pooja and wore the Rakhi

My Rakhi was sweet and stylish as you can see from the picture
Garima had also made Mehandi design on her hand a night before.

In office my indian colleagues were surprised to see Rakhi reaching on time to me and me wearing it. Coincidently no non Indian asked me about it. Last year my client had asked me about it and I had explained about the Rakhi festival and how it adds respect for sister in mind of brothers.

Love the indian festivals and miss celebrating them.

Software product's contract set to change

Software product based companies, especially software giants, have been setting high price tag to gaps in their product. Software updates, bug fixes and new funcationality adds come with a yearly price tag for businesses. Gartner is trying to standardise IT maintenance contract by IT maintenance bill of rights.

Some of the key clauses in Gartner recommedation are following
-- a right to "regular, appropriate, predictable updates to software products";
Why can't businesses buying the software demand it from vendors. Being in software industry I can surely say that bug fixes cannot be predictable but they can have cycles of bug fixes planned and delivered to clients for small minimal fee. Bug fixes should be seen as gap in product and provided to clients.

-- response times and support levels "based on application criticality and other business factors";
Support levels surely play important role for a product. Third party support should also be considered by businesses buying the software. A product company may decide not to invest too many resources on support but then they should allow third party to provide good level of services. In recent past Oracle seem to have sued TomorrowNow system and trend may increase. So clients should make sure what is the stand vendor is taking on providing a support. Keeping the support the option open to all makes it competetive and may provide more options to clients buying the software.

-- fair percentage ranges for annual maintenance fee hikes or reductions, and long-term caps on increases;
This should be controlled by monopoly law.

-- the ability to stop or alter support at any time for unused products;
product based companies cannot be forced to continue support for products they want to discontinue. But this should open the door for third party vendors. I am assuming that the product doesn't need bug fixes.

-- predictable and reasonable support levels for the entirety of a product or contract's life cycle;
I agree that this should be spelled out in contracts.

-- clearly spelled-out support time lines for older systems; and
Do we hold the builder responsible for a constrcution that is 10 years older? No. We contract we new people to maintain the building. Same should apply to software.

-- the right to "explicit statement and approval of support details at the line-item level"
I agree that this should be spelled out in contracts.

Software contracts will take centre stage when CIO will try to keep IT expense under control. Predictability of expenses of owning a software will be key in decision making and these recommedations seem to help make it more predictable.

Relaunch of mile sur mera tumhara

The launch of 'Phir mile sur mera tumhara' made me nostalgic. But I couldn't help comparing the new video with older version. It may be because of childhood memories or first liking, I like the original one



Original one seems to more melodious and has continuity in the music. I would have listened to it million times on DD and youtube.

New version is more grand and better in terms of cinematography. Celebrity selection is also good. But the tone and tune of new version seems to break at times. The geographic diversity of India was more evident in older version. Sonu Nigam, Amir Khan, Aish, Dipika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Shilpa Shetty and others seem to be singing in their own tunes. If composer wanted to show that same feelings in different tunes then he succeeded.

May be the I am getting into older generation and starting to reminiscence in old memories saying - in our days things were better :)

Evony and market place

These days I got hooked up to my laptop again and reason for that is not a new laptop but new online game. www.evony.com offers new civilisation and strategy game. Its fun to be part of the game. Although the game server keeps ticking when I am offline, yet I end up spending 2-3 hrs continuosly trying to figure how I can progress faster.

The game is like age of empires where one has to build cottages, farms, people, townhall etc. But it is much more than that. It offers reason to login each day and check your progress. The concepts of amulet and market place is good. The site offers unique way of quest to offer help in guiding what to build. I am currently in 7 day protection period where no one can attack me and I am getting ready to defend myself and attack others.

The best part which I want to talk about is the market place. I am into financial market in real world but I do commodity trading in virtual evony world. I actually made a spreadsheet to track if the offer and bid prices are high or low. I made 120% profit in stone trading by buying it when it was at low price and then offering it at high price. While I was sleeping the demand for the stone increased and people bought stone at higher price. I made good amount of gold from it.I have to make manual entries into it and you can have a peek into it at "Google Evony trading sheet". Gold can be gathered either my levying taxes on my people or buy selling item. I cannot tax my town man a lot so I resorted to building stones and trading them. I guess everyone in the game will have some strategy and mine is to make use of market place.

If I was a programmer I would have thought of making a ticker for evony world and offered my stock exchange. Who knows in coming days this is what will happen. May be its already built and I just have to advance in my civilisation.

I am waiting to reach level 9, level 10 in each building and see what is next for me. Its like thinking what is nirvana. What is next when you have achieved everything. In real life I may not have the answer or I may not be satisfied thinking I have got everything I wanted. But I hope in virtual world it will be done in short time and the feeling will help me find the answer - What next?

Garima's birthday

The most wonderful gift that I could give after working for 10-12hrs a day is full week at home. From July-11 I was at home with Garima. It added more challenges to me as I couldn't plan for her birthday. We two went to all places togather and I had no choice of buying or selecting a birthday gift for her. I managed to buy small cake and wine and a big soft toy. I had plans of a surprise party which I could manage with Kapil's , Saurabhs and Rupa's help. They arranged for dinner buffet, arranged for big cake and party items. Our friends - PK, Sush, Rajnish, Reema, Aahana ( Rajnish's little one), Bharat, Varsha, Hansika (Bhartats sweet little daughter), Arijit, Arshad, Kapil, Saurabh, Rupa and John Anthony made for the surprise party. The video below doesn't capture all the moments but here wishing to my wify - Happy birthday again.

May you be host of such wonderful parties and gathering all your life!!!

Health care debates of 2009 in US - Its hot again!!

Debates on healthcare reforms in US heated up after President Obama made speech in Green bay, WI "http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1151437220090611".

President is not pushing for any specific plan of his but is asking congress and everyone to think on reforms and finalize the plan to cover all 50 million uninsured American's. I wonder if it’s the way healthcare developed in US which is causing increase in the medical cost. They are discussing public plan sponsored and funded by Government (like Medicare and Medicaid) and co-operative plans. Co-operative plans, as I see, is private plan (co-operative of few members who can gather the Money) and stamped by Fed.

If I think from practitioners, hospitals or providers in general, the rising cost can be explained by multiple factors. They need insurance to cover from law-suits (I think law suits are biggest trouble). They are entrapped in a whirlpool where they need to keep receptionist, claim filing person and other office staff. They have to track multiple transactions to ensure they are paid for past treatments done to patients. They need software to help track them. Improvement in medical techniques and sophisticated surgeries surely increase the cost of peculiar illness. The gap between offering the service and getting paid completely for it is in weeks and may prompt providers to further increase the price to cover for current expenses.

But I wonder won't it be better if all practitioners were employed by Government and paid nice salary, benefits and other comforts. Then a lot of IT cost of payment tracking will be taken away. A patient would visit a doctor, get treated nicely and come back home in good health. There will still be need of quality checks on practitioners but they can get rid of lot of office overheads and staff. Government or some other agency will have to monitor few parameters - quality of practices followed by doctor, patient to doctor ratio in the area and wait time for patients.

It’s surprising to see that general care of also a lot costly in US. Being from India I can surely say that general medical facilities are far better than what is present in US. In US even emergency person have to wait for hours to get Doctors attention. Getting treated for general ailments like high fever, severe stomach ache also cost more than hundred dollars. If one has insurance then yes you just have to pay co-pay but still it’s ridiculous to see that doctor charges huge fee for treating general ailments.

Like everyone, I am keeping an eye on how the reforms take place (if at all!!)

People become more reckless when they feel safe.

I was reading a nice article on how more safe feeling can be cause of more trouble. Its humane to be less vigilant when we feel its all secure.

Lets study road safety. We remain less focused on road when you feel its safe. People tend to divert attention to cellphones, music, ipods while driving and check traffic less frequently. This can cause major accidents. On the other hand if you are through narrow roads or heavy traffic you pay more attention to raod and become vigilant.

Next lets take traffic lights. We all take traffic signals for granted and assume they will work properly. Studies have shown that when traffic lights are converted to stop sign drivers pay more attention to the road. Traditional square intersection with lights are considered less safe then roundabout circular intersection. Driver talk to other drivers by hand and eye contacts more on such circular intersections. It has added bonus of no traffic lights and no maintenace of lights.

With auto insurance and home insurances in market, people tend to accept greater risk.

Financial markets have shown similar tendency. With insurance on losses, market fall, credits financial institution have shown tendency to invest money in high risk areas and seem to have lost.

Painting exhibition

Life partner movie dekhne ke baad I thought of publishing this. This is the only painting exhibition that I could orgaise for my wife. Waise usne bhi MS paint mein painting kari hai toh I can very well limit it to online world.
Interpret this

Kindly focus on the animals - you may find the animal inside you portrayed in it :)

People's habit

There are some so many things which we tend to follow without thinking or logic.

Most of you would have stood in elevator ( Lift apni bhasa mein). Have you noticed that everyone stands facing towards the door. If the elevator has floor numbers, most people will try watching them. Some may say that it is to get ready to get out of elevator. But who asked us to be ready and get out of elevator quickly? Try standing reverse in elevator and you will see all eyes staring at you.

I have noticed many times while car driving that when I cross another car I tend to see the driver in other car. Same thing is done by the other car driver and for split second we exchange glances. I wonder why we tend to do this. This is not only to check the girl in other car. This is general reaction I guess. Could it be that I want to check how safe the other driver might me?

Jodha Jalal - Love and Beliefs

The storyline selected for launch on Valentine day was good. Whether its true or not is immaterial but the budding of romance after marriage between Jodha and Akbar was handled nicely. But everything else was unnecessary and ridiculous.

All action sequence deserves below average rating. Panipat and all fights had bad cinematogrpahy and made one laugh.We get inspired by hollywood so much but i wonder why he missed movies like 300 and troy. They have nerve chilling fight sequences. Fight of Jalal(Hrithik) and elephant was laughable and did not show any strength on raja. The fight towards end between Hrithik and his brother-in-law has left too much room for improvement.

Without friends being aroung, it would have been tough to spend 3.2 hrs in cinema hall. Jodha's father takes marriage proposal to akbar (jalal) as some political settlement....humne awaaz lagaui...photo ho toh dikhayo...chatting kar sakte hain kya :)

The scenes between Jodha and Akbar do leave a good impression. Jodha cooks vegeterian food for her husband. She is humiliated in front of entire rajshaba when she is asked to taste the food to ensure its not poisoned. I was wondering what will happen next and then came the punch line by script writer - Akbar saying that he will eat from same vessel that was used by Jodha.


Sword fight between Hrithik and Aish were able to capture the emotion nicely. The importance of scene was to showcase culminating love between two. This came out nicely. If one tries to see the sword fight critically they will find that Aish was not able to make nice moves.

Songs did not make one stick to the seat. Infact I feel many songs could have made background chores allowing the movie to move forward. Jodha's brothers character was important in the story and could have been made to look more strong.

Overall the movie is not recommended looking at the complete package. Remove the fights and songs and watch scenes between lover boy and lover girl!! I wish the theme of movie could have been twisted to inter-religion marriage and giving message Love Rulz!!

Tabora - Cargo ship tour

This blog is not about Kaho na pyar hai's 'Pyar ki kasti mein' or Kheva re Kheva re Naiya Kheva. This is about a cargo Ship named Tabora which was carrying bitumen and crude oil to be unloaded on different ports of US.

Jan 2008 started on nice note. I met with Sunil and Umesh after many months. Both of them came to my home and we had fun within Connecticut on Saturday, Jan 5 2008. The next day was well planned by Sunil. His Dad had come on Tabora cargo ship to Providence, Rhode Island. This place is two hours drive from my place.

We reached harbor at noon time on Jan 6. This was first time I was planning to go aboard a ship of this size. I came to know about lot of new procedures around cargo shipping. The crew members couldn't alight because they had custom check remaining. So we spent few hours on New port coast. It was cold outside but still nice. Finally we came back to harbor and were aboard ship at 5pm. I was surprised to know that only 23 people were there to run the entire ship. On expressing this surprise Sunils dad explained that only Naval ships will have lots of people. For cargo ships this crew size is normal. We met with captain, chief officers and all. Most of them were in 30s or lesser than that. All but one crew members were India.

After exchanging few words with most crew members we went to uncles room. The corridors looked like cramped space. But again the room had laptop, fan, bathroom,bed and sofa. The ship was more than 25 years old hence the furtinure and interiors were kind of old. But yet it was good. I don't know how the feeling inside the room would be on moving ship as we were on harbored ship.

We had dinner at 8pm on the ship. All crew members were friendly and made us feel home. We had nice indian food prepared by the cook on ship. After dinner we took a tour to see entertainment room which had TV, magazines and TT table. The best surprising part is yet to come

Seeing the world below deck is what threw me off board. It was like a complete factory. The engines were 6 floor tall and there were 7 running in parallel. Hot water, cold water, drinking water and more such units were running continuously to meet daily needs of crew members. Floor of the ship was obviously under water but when told by Uncle that we are actually standing under water was awesome. Engine control room had all monitoring system for different units. Captain remains in direct contact with the engineers in engine control room. Being IT persons we 3 were discussing alerts and all system must be tested thoroughly before they can be deployed on running ships. We saw the food storage area where meat, fish, milk and vegetables were maintained at different temperatures.

The length of ship from bow to stern was close to half a mile. Under the deck I could count 8 floors of structures. We were tired after walking for 2.5 hours which we took to tour the ship. The next destination was above the deck which was observation deck. It had all GPS units and controls to communicate with external world. Over all I was in awe after seeing the mans wonder of running a huge factory on sea.

This was standing ship, sometime I will experience being on deck on ship making its way through the sea. May be 'pyar ki kasti mein' song on some cruise liner.