Pune is better than Chandigarh in another way

I went shopping yesterday and found myself in a bookstore. My eyes
were drawn to a bunch of books including the latest Malcolm Gladwell
and the sequel to Freakonomics. I was going to purchase both of them
but they were a little too expensive at those prices. Immediately I
thought back to my time in Pune, about how I almost never bought any
new books from the stores. As soon as a book hit the store, a pirated
copy of that would show up on the streets.

Now here's what is impressive in retrospect. The books that were
pirated weren't just the most popular and "easy reading" stuff like
you get everywhere - your John Grishams, DaVinci Code, etc. You'd get
the slightly offbeat books as well. And not just that, the vendors
were usually aware of the worth of most of these books and basically
you couldn't hope to "score a good deal" from them. (It always threw
me off to watch these guys, wearing these shabby clothes, talking
about how this particular Malcolm Gladwell book isn't as good as his
previous one. It's entirely possible that he's just repeating what he
heard from another customer, but still, very impressive.) More
importantly, what this means is that the customers these stores got
were well-read people who asked for (and got) the rarer books pirated.
(At this point I'd like to ask that we just leave out the entire
discussion on ethics and legality of pirating books for now.) It's
very impressive when you think about how the supply/demand forces
manifest themselves here and give you an insight into the population
of the city.

Of course in Chandigarh, outside of a bookstore, I'll be lucky to get
a conversation with anyone about any book. I'll even settle for a
discussion about why Chetan Bhagat sucks. Any takers?

Lessons corporations should learn from a juice vendor

There's an orange juice vendor at my "bus stop". (I saw "bus stop"
because it's not a bus that picks me up but a company car, that too
unofficially.) Very recently I started drinking a glass of freshly
squeezed orange juice from him while waiting for my pick up. Just once
in a while. Because of the rather unhygienic practices these street
vendors use while cleaning their glasses/soup bowls, I try not to
frequent them, and when I do, I try to arrive early before ... well
let me not describe the cleaning process because it's something I'm in
denial about. Anyway, today morning I showed up and asked him to make
me a glass of orange juice. He peeled 5 oranges and put them in the
juicer (squeezer) and squeezed out the juice. When he was done, the
glass was 90% full. I fully expected him just hand over the glass to
me, and I wouldn't even have complained. But he silently peeled
another orange and squeezed out enough to top off the glass! I was
really impressed.

Now, this is the proverbial "little guy", whose profit margin was
significantly cut into by that extra orange he had to peel. Let's
compare it with the "big guy" - the Subway that's in the food court
near our office. This is already in a food court in a mall, so the
prices are already jacked up. This Subway (for that matter any Subway
I've visited in India) NEVER fills up the soda/pop/cool drink
container to the brim. A few times I've popped the top and showed the
empty space in the container but they make some or the excuse not to
top it off. There's an Ovenfresh in the same mall that has the same
disgusting practice of not topping off the container.

It's shameful and pathetic that these corporations behave like this.
I'm sure it's because it's in India and some marketing a**hole did a
study to determine that Indians in these places don't complain about
losing out on a little bit of soda because they don't want to look
cheap by complaining, and it is now corporate policy to cheat the
customers. Another way in which the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer in India.

Breaking the news to the boss

The time had finally come for me to leave my company, atleast this office. I told my boss about my plans to go to the US. He said that he was expecting this and wasn't too upset. He requested that I stay till end of Feb if possible so that the new employee can come in and take over. Meanwhile he said that he'd talk to my local manager and inform him of the details. He also said he'd talk to the HR himself and advise me later, on when I should submit my resignation.

 

Man, it was super nerve-racking and I got all anxious before I walked in. My heart was beating so loud that I thought I would faint. I am trying to think of all the times I have felt this jittery/anxious before and a few interviews come to mind, and the time I met my girlfriend (now wife) in person the morning after having our first big heart-to-heart talk over the phone. But I don't think I ever had to psyche myself up to the level I had to today. Once I started though it was smooth and fact that he was sort of expecting this made it a little easier. It would have been perfect if he had assured me of a job over there but still, I suppose there is a limit to how many things can work in your favor in a given year.

One weird call!

I got a call from a local number today. When I picked up, it was from my bank. "Sir, I am from XXXXXX bank. You have an account with us, don't you? Well, is everything alright? I sit at the cash desk and I wanted to check that everything was alright, and to ask if you had any issues with our service." I was impressed and told her that I was quite happy with the service and I thanked her for checking. Then she said that since I was happy with the service, if I could recommend any new customers. I said that I would try.

Then she said, "Sir, then could you do us a favor? What is your average balance in your account. Basically at the end of each month, we need more money in the bank. Could you please deposit more money in the bank at the end of each month?" I was shocked at this request. I said, "No." "No? Why not?" she asked. Though I should have hung up at that point I decided to be polite and explained to her that I couldn't deposit more money at the end of each month because I get paid only once a month. "Sir we need more funds in the bank at the end of each month. So could you please consider putting in money?"

After I hung up I began to get extremely worried. This isn't some podunk small bank. But at the same time, I don't want to suddenly find out that I can't withdraw my money in an emergency. I am seriously worried.

I think this is a little too much

Remember I wrote a while ago about how there's a certain manager in my office that insists on hiring only pretty girls for his team? Well a month ago he decided to "promote" one of our two receptionists by giving her a job in his office. We have two receptionists and while both are good at their jobs, one of them is prettier, or atleast more glamorous than the other. Guess which one got "promoted"? Still, it was OK, no harm no foul. To replace this girl now, they have been having interviews. And all of a sudden today we were told that the other receptionist is being let go. This came as quite a shock to us since it's like a small family out here and anyone leaving is quite sad. The official version is that the girl was making a lot of mistakes. The unofficial version is that the two newer receptionists are prettier and the girl was let go to accommodate these two. Wow.

How cold it is out here

I'm sure I've written in the past about how hot it gets here during the summers. Apparently winter weather took offense and decided to show me who the dominant season is. It's terrible. I had a chance to get some perspective when I visited Hyderabad and the lowest temperature there was the highest temperature in C'garh. My parents kept talking each day about how it was "getting colder" and I kept saying, "If you say so," while sitting around in shorts. Here, when I come home from work, I quickly change into my nightwear and sit on the bed, covered with a thick blanket.

As I've told many people before, it's so cold INSIDE my room that my breath fogs up. One night I went to bed wearing a regular woolen cap on top of a "monkey cap", two pairs of socks on my feet, two layers of clothing and two blankets on top of each other. In the mornings, I have to heat my water for about 45 mins before I can shower with it. Normally I overheat the water so I can bring the temperature down to the exact temperature I want with a few mugs of colder tap water. Now the tap water is so cold that even boiling water cools down fast with just a couple of mugs. I have to be check the temperature of the water between half-mugs to make sure it doesn't get too cold. After showering I have to dry up myself really fast and rush into my clothes because otherwise any moisture on my skin starts evaporating in the dry air and that completely negates all the effects of the hot shower. On the days that I have to wash my hair it's worse because I have to then worry about drying my hair thoroughly or risk my head freezing up. Normally I shave after my bath. But now I can't stand there wet while shaving or I'll just freeze standing there. So shaving is a special occasion that I need to plan for in advance - TWO buckets of heated water so that I can shower, shave and then shower a little more to counter the freezing I had to endure while shaving.

This is mostly due to the poor insulation here. The walls do a very poor job of blocking the cold or keeping in the heat. I finally got my hands on a room heater with an inbuilt blower. The guy who gave it to me told me that running this thing for an hour is enough to heat up the room. Yeah right! I ran it all night long and I still had to bundle up under the blankets. But atleast it was comfortable this time. The last two nights I kept waking up every two hours from the cold. Luckily this week the work load is non-existent so it hasn't hurt me too bad. And who knows, next week by this time the warming might have already started.

"... you know how it is in government jobs ..."

After a well-deserved break in Hyderabad for Christmas and New Years', I traveled back to C'garh. On my train from Delhi to Chandigarh, I sat next to a nice chatty lady who works in C'garh. She works in a govt. office here and lives in Delhi, so she commutes each weekend back to Delhi to visit her family. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned about her was her schedule. Apparently she usually prefers to travel by bus when she goes back to C'garh and this train trip was the exception. Usually she takes the bus on Monday mornings. Now, I asked her, wouldn't that bus come into Chandigarh pretty late? "Well", she replied, "I make it to work by about 1pm or so, and you know how it is in government jobs, as long as I make it before the end of the day no one complains."

I'm obviously aware of the notorious levels of slackitude in government offices in India but this was clearly a new low. Not only does she talk about getting in to work late, she does that every week. And later she mentioned that she left work early on Fridays to get back home (to Delhi) in time. This means that in an average 40-hour week, she's working only 34-hours. That's 15%, or almost an entire day. I suppose if money is not an issue, a government job IS the best thing to do.