De healer

Caught up in you

Is all you could be

Since there's only so far

That you'd like to see. 

Who reads the stories

Of lives of you. 

You see only yours...

And then there's a few. 

Who heals the healer?

Who takes that pain?

Who'll rescue him

As he's going insane?

Clogging his head

Fated to stay

Everywhere else

But in the De. 

De thief

No sleep so deep

No comfy bed

No way to silence

Those voices in my head. 

No hues in blues

No way out

No way to silence

Those voices that shout. 

No gaze in haze

No life to do

No way to silence

Those voices of you. 

No lease in peace

No happy to dispel

No way to silence

The voice of me as well. 

No life in strife

No company to bore

No way to silence 

The voice of the world any more. 

De fruity freebie

You want one more reason to upgrade to Mavericks? How about you throw in iWorks for free? If that's reason enough, skip to the bottom of this article. Yep, I blab a lot sometimes. You should see some bullet points. That's where the procedure starts.

A friend informed me a few days ago (during the Apple event) that the fruit company was dropping the price of the iWork and iLife suites... to nothing. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened in the day of Steve Jobs. They more likely would have touted all the upgraded features, justified a massive increase in price and maybe even pulled a 'and we're not even increasing the price!'.

Frankly, I haven't heard too much about iWork. I didn't think of it as a contender in the ring with MS Office. I'd downloaded a trial for version 9 quite a while ago, but didn't bother to install it at all. Was I to be getting it for free now? This seemed like added incentive to install it to check it out. I jumped onto the app store and found... the exact same prices. At first I thought it might not have changed on the UK app store just yet. This feeling was echoed by my friend when I told her it hadn't changed. She sent me a couple of links and I followed them up with a few more, only to find that they were setting these suites free on any NEWLY PURCHASED product.

Hmmm... hey, I'm cheap. The only reason I got a Mac in the first place was to write some apps for the iPhone - nope... a year and a bit later that hasn't happened. I don't want to spend money on a bunch of apps that I'm probably not going to use. I've been more of a Windows person since... well since Windows 2 in the mid 80s when it was just something that looked flashy. I think MS Office is a little better than Wordperfect and VisiCalc with Aldus Pagemaker for slides. I don't have too much in way of expectations from Apple on the software side of things, so if it's not free, I'm not trying it.

Enter the app store. If you've got a program installed which is outdated, the app store will let you update it... generally for free. Trials for iWork (as far as I know) stopped after version 9.3 - which was uploaded to download.com a year and a day ago. I thought it logical that if I had it installed before checking for an update, apple would upgrade me to the latest version of the trial... only since there was no trial anymore, they would most likely upgrade it to the full version.

Having paid way too much (in my opinion) for the machine I'm using (the hardware is the only way I'd consider justifying the cost of this laptop), any freebie this fruit company wanted to throw in my direction was too much to pass up. I installed the trial version, ran each app, selected trial, shut the apps and started my upgrade to Mavericks.

When the machine booted after the upgrade, I was shown a list of all the apps that had upgrades available. Pages, Numbers and Keynote were included. I ran the apps to check to see if the 30 day trial was still on - it turns out it was. I then went ahead and updated all three apps. I ran them, and sure enough... since there is no trial version anymore I now have the full versions. This might have been possible without the upgrade to Mavericks, but frankly, I didn't check.

Here's the process:

• Download the iWorks trial from a reputed site.
• Install this on a pre-Mavericks machine - if you've already installed Mavericks it tells you it's an upgrade rather than a trial. I tried it on Mountain Lion, but it might work on earlier versions of OSX as well.
• Run each application (Pages, Numbers and Keynote), accept the license and select trial when you're prompted.
• Close the apps (at this point you can check to see if the update is available for free, but I went ahead with the steps below)
• Upgrade the machine to Mavericks.
• Run the apps - select trial again (this may not be necessary, but I did it in case there's anything that the app needs written under the new OS before checking for an update).
• Check for updates and update the three applications.
• You now have the latest version of iWorks.

I checked my account (one of the most irritating things about the iTunes store is that you have to go) through iTunes (you can't do this through just a browser, your mobile phone or a tablet - at least I couldn't find a way to do it) and it told me that I'd purchased these three apps individually for free.

Now I'm checking these apps out... and I'm not impressed. It might take a while to figure if there's anything I like about any of them - I haven't looked at keynote at all yet, but the other two seem really way back in time so far.

Some beautiful Des in my life

My Mother 's an angel who walks upon light.
She brightens your day.
She puts you to flight.
From one to the next
she changes her path.
And in matters of humanity
she's done all the math.

The beauty of giving is my Father right now.
That limp goes away.
That back takes a bow.
He's set in his ways.
He'll do great stuff.
You can try all you want.
But it's never enough.

The beautiful kid Sister who works really hard.
to do the good thing,
and is quite the bard.
She'll make your heart sing.
She'll smile through it all.
Everything's matter-of-fact.
You'll never feel small.

The beauty of life is my big Sister, Beans.
You learn courage from one,
who sails through all that seems.
She can have it all.
You could never fail.
With advice from this one.
your life's never pale.

Special mention of course,
to the stars of my world.
Three nephews and a niece
into this life who were furled.
I'll spoil them rotten with gifts!
The sky's no bar.
With energy like them,
my youth's never far.

And this lucky old De,
who loves them so much.
Has something to say.
His life is as such.
He thanks his stars,
for each single De.
Blessed with them AND great friends,
take life the best way.

Keepin (De)m dmb n apy...

In response to the news of the man behind the BBCs Hardtalk coming up with a program focusing on socio-political problems in India on Newslaundry.com and then my ramblings... I've been feeling a little more frustrated than I'm accustomed to with the system and need to vent a bit :)

Moderating? Are we talking about OUR politicians and bureaucrats appearing on this? The only way they can be 'moderated' is if they're cut off the way is done on our live debates, allowed to edit the recorded footage heavily enough for them to sound at least a lot more decent than they are, or handle 15 hours (patiently over possibly months) of footage that's heavily edited into a 10 minute package for mass consumption because they keep repeating the same irrelevant [argument/reason/explanation/excuse/allegation/agitation; take your pick], sometimes even creatively - in 15 different ways.

If he can pull this one off, it's going to be great. It might be hilarious, where all people sit and explain how great our system is and how we're better off than the failing Europe and the faltering oil suckers because our economy is still standing, it's now a question of 'for how long at the current burn rate?'. I figure it might be informative to a point, but I'm wondering what actual information any of these guys might have that would be interesting other than which scams they've been associated with and why.

Sure, money's come back from the Swiss banks in the form of foreign investments... they're eager to bring in FDI - which may be needed in any case, but not really just so they have an easier route to bring their money back. This money was incidentally made more than a little more valuable while the government watched the Rupee slide.

This article about the government supplying mobile phones to all Below Poverty Line (BPL) families on The Indian Express web site is one more possibility for a fresh scam. I'm just wondering whose relative started a company that's going to be one side of a 7000 crore partnership deal for supply of phones and services. Will due diligence happen this time?  Will common knowledge be announced in public at some point and shock us all? Is now the right time to push the diesel hike through to let the Rupee slide just a little more... FDI's not through yet... in the meantime, they've been busy arguing about things (the UPAs 'bastardisation' of the government), some which don't happen all that often like this minor disagreement - that are reminiscent of the divide and conquer tactic that's been used upon us repeatedly to rule us over time, and some which probably do (how long was that pornographic clip those politicians were watching on public time again?) in the house. I can completely understand why they haven't really gotten around to solving too many of that large stack of problems let alone getting around to prosecuting the corrupt or even introducing legislature that allows money KNOWN to be swindled from the public to be returned. No matter... they're VIPs and live by a different set of rules - at the expense of general public is not uncommon; you get stuck in a 3 hour traffic jam because the traffic police stop traffic so that said VIP has a clear route to work - this used to regularly happen on my way to Gurgaon from the south east of Delhi during the CWG fiasco. What is a VIP anyway? Someone we elected who needs the best of the police to protect them from... us??? Real leaders lead from the front and by example - and should not have to fear for their lives by stepping out among the masses without z-level security or whatever they get that allows happy-to-be-violent-ministers to justify kicking people who decide to protest by saying the complaint should be against the accusers for entering a high security zone (too close to their little prince was it?).

How do they get away with all of this while they're showing off that they're better than us with the red lights on the white cars with the "भारत सर्कार" printed on the back in red, or with the fancy 'VIP plates' that you can now officially buy. For some it may just be a statement of your own chosen self worth in the eyes of the general public...

So y r v keepin (De)m dmb n apy?

This is what the corporates try to do to us more often than not when it comes to sales and marketing strategies. Whether it's the promise of many girls being magically, magnetically attracted to a plain looking guy or all the Rajni jokes, we're being pushed in the direction of the marketers choice... and politicians started up with them possibly before the corporates found these marketing geniuses.


I'm not really sure what to make out of the votes-for-phones scheme that was announced today. Have they done enough research to know that this is what will win the elections? Have the greater masses come to a point of knowledge (or lack of) where they can be bribed by cellular phones that would have to be designed to last for days on very little charge - seeing as electricity is a problem in many villages, towns, cities, metropolises and other areas across our nation? Don't worry though - the technology would be simple and cheap enough... we just need to hope that the company tasked with setting this up for all the poor people who can't afford food will let enough money trickle down for them to pay some amount of money after 200 minutes free - will the transparency on charges after this limit be kept high enough for these (Rs.32/day) families to not be held liable to pay large (completely unaffordable) bills after this allowance? Many people in the country are getting smarter - if they're kept in debt, the scope of them affording an education is lowered... then they might vote for the fools providing them with mobile phones or TVs without first providing basic food, shelter, infrastructure or electricity to power the phones they're distributing using 'small' quantities of our money. But hang on... if you can handle the logistics and cost to hand out mobile phones and monthly minutes to families who earn less than Rs.32/day, shouldn't you first see to it that they get something in terms of sustenance that actually reaches them? How about cleaning up some space for a medical facility or two?

They've systematically tried to erode any scope of education in the country by coming up with ridiculous plans, schemes, rules and laws. Politicians decide that cartoons that have been in text books for years should be removed as they're 'disrespectful' of 'leaders' (some of whom have expressed appreciation for the satirical value of these cartoons). Initially, I doubt any of the political folks had any ill intent as far as the growth of the country was concerned - as long as they were growing well, they'd do good by it. It's moved from there to 'I will do good by me even if it causes the country to slide straight to hell'. Some fool decides to waste court time on taking technology companies to court over pictures that have been posted because they're not in 'good taste'... meaning they mock political parties and/or the cartoons (leaders??) that form them.

Education is just one small part of how they're keeping them dumb. If you don't have time to learn anything because you're too busy walking for water or running away from floods, you're not really going to get much smarter. This was an incidental fallout from a suggestion made in the 50s - build a national water network - if designed properly it could have been high on the initial cost, but done at minimal energy cost. A water 'grid' so to speak... this way when one place floods, water can be routed to places that are seeing an acute water shortage. Needless to say, most of what we see right now in agriculture is crop failures because of flooding or drought for lack of balance in vision or process. Heck, if it had been built and was crumbling (much like our electrical network - the crumbling of which some people maintain was because of a coal scam, others think is part of an attempt to sabotage Anna's fast), it'd still be a massive improvement.

In the interest of destruction of our nation in favour of our 'sibalisation', our HRD minister decided to involve the school results in selection at the IITs (our premier engineering institutes which used to have complete autonomy on the entrance examinations). The 'cut-off' scores for most of Delhi university colleges were in the high 90s. Now, many of the folks who are trying to get into IIT will also try getting higher board scores - this is likely to drag the cut-off further up (hang on... where do you go from 100%?). The first list will be a bunch of folks who might not have managed to get into IIT, so will take a course in say physics from a good DU college for a year while they study for their next attempt at IIT. This will reduce the numbers of people who complete their degrees, increase the competition to get into any course at all, waste space in the few colleges we actually have in the country, increase the number of people who'd go to private universities (which usually have pretty heavy political backing and investment), which will make more money while the quality of education imparted to the people goes down again.

It gets worse though. They've gotten us to a point where most of the middle class have resigned themselves to their fates and are not patient enough to go through 4 days of processes when half an hour should have been enough. Bribing the small guys to do their jobs at an only slightly slower than standard pace has become an accepted norm. In their eyes, if you bribe, you're stupid for wasting so much time. If that little guy is helping you, you build a rapport with him... and you don't want him to move from there so that your work can be done through someone you 'know'. In other words, many of us would like to keep people from growth. One of our neighbours  had issues with how much we were paying someone to do some odd jobs for us - we were told that if we paid that much then they'd have to pay that much and the guy would get enough money and skill to move on to better work - and they'd have to find someone else to do their work for them. I find this attitude quite disturbing. As many folks in India do, we've had a maid working with us for a couple of decades now. We've helped her put her kids through school and college and they're able to help out now with the mounting household expenses. While it's a little sad that they've now got less respect for their mother's work than they had before, it's also good that they've been given the tools to carve out a better life for themselves. Isn't this what being human is about? Everyone should have the opportunity to grow and growth should be encouraged.

All these issues that have cropped up run so much deeper than the corruption that caused them. Still, I have hope for the future... if we start hitting the problems one by one, we might just get out of this rut, but in my opinion, we need to clean up the cause one person at a time first...

Yet another NoDe

No one to talk to
Nowhere to go.
uncork this mind
before I blow.

No point in asking

no ears to hear

No hands to wipe

that lonesome tear.

No words of encouragement

no words of praise.

No form of distinction

will guarantee a raise.

No food

yet no hunger.

No closure in sight.

A deathly dark calm replaces all light.

No pleasant taste

takes this feeling away.
No happy, no sad.
This is no De.

DeMotivation

I thought I'd come back
but I'm not going there
Time's not enough
just to sit and stare.

I've seen what I want
I'll get it yet.
There is nothing else.
My mind is set.

(The title's a twist. I'm on my way. I now have the energy to stay)

A De for the black

As I looked at the paper this morning, I couldn't help reading the headlines on the front page and feeling that cold, fuzzy feeling of... well... sadness. A few of the articles in question:

Rupee at all-time low of 52.15, to impact everyday life

Black money offenders may escape prosecution

Govt plans Rs.30,000cr bailout for Air India

Maha govt has spent Rs.16cr on Kasab so far

In the last decade, over 4 died in custody daily

How are these all linked? Well, it all starts with a question... how can I increase the amount and value of the black money I've got?

Before we begin, here's a little background.

A while ago, news reports told us that Sonia Gandhi went to the US for an operation. There's been no official statement (to my knowledge at least) as to what operation this was or what it was for. Most folks would rack this up to a personal privacy concern - which I would think of as the right thing to do. Illness in the family is hardly something you want splashed all over every form of media as 'breaking news', however, quoting from an article from Zee News:

Confirming the news, Congress spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi said, “Sonia Gandhi has been unwell for quite some time and the doctors attending her had advised her to undergo a surgery, for which she had flown to the United States recently.”
Briefing the press reporters on her health, Dwivedi said, “The abdominal surgery performed on her has been successful and she had been advised to take full rest.”

I've heard that her trip out of the country was to handle some 'money matters' - this could be related to the operation costs. I've been told that there were reports of Rahul stopping by in Switzerland on his way to the US to visit his mother after her surgery - this would seem a little cold. I'm off to visit my mom - she's just had an operation... heeeeey, wanna stop by in Switzerland on the way? When I tried searching for articles related to this, I only found articles suggesting that neither of them had gone to the US at all and were both in Switzerland. I haven't linked to any of these since they weren't mainstream media sites. Other subsequent reports say she's got some form of skin cancer or something. Maybe she should either tell the media to shut up or set them straight in reporting the truth.

Anyway, it's generally accepted in India that there are lots of people in the country with lots of black money. It's also accepted here that the people with the money are the ones in control. I read an article a while ago which suggested that the government would make it easier to bring back black money without having to pay anything in way of penalty. Just the regular tax would be deducted. It figures that people with large amounts of black money would want to go easy on people with large amounts of black money, and allow them to bring it back without prosecuting them for having that amount of undeclared money.

Which brings us to the first article I've mentioned in the post. Some news papers and channels have suggested that the government could have done something to control the sliding rupee before, but now it's going into freefall - and there's not much that can help prevent that. Heck, if I've got US Dollars and Euros, my cash is now worth 10% more than it was a couple of months ago. If I've got enough that I'm planning on bringing back to India anytime soon, I'd like it if the Rupee slid further. With all this talk about all the black money stashed abroad, if/when it DOES come back, there's a significant drop in the loss to the owner of this cash.

The next article is about how black money offenders may escape prosecution. The Income Tax department, which normally manages to worry even the most well connected people in the country would appear toothless when it comes to larger deviations from the rules. If they haven't paid tax on the money stashed abroad, they should at LEAST be made liable to have that tax deducted - freeze their local bank accounts if necessary. Any 'unexplained' assets should be made property of the country. The ED (Enforcement department) in our country is (to my understanding) only involved when it comes to prosecution. If the details can't be shared between the IT department and ED because of the Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty (DTAT), then handle the prosecution of these people once Germany gives clearance - the country would benefit, in the meantime, from infusion of a huge amount of cash. Our president went to Switzerland and Austria to talk about the issues of the DTAT, but so far the only mainstream media report I could find on this was this one, published before the trip. This would suggest that the trip didn't go well for the Indian public so details weren't published by the media. The BJP has jumped on this with the input that since the people on the list didn't EARN the money abroad, they aren't liable to pay taxes abroad - sounds straightforward enough. 

With all this behind-the-scenes activity, we, the people of the country have to be thrown a bone once every now and then - with all the reports of all the scams, it's getting hard to see what rules/laws/amendments the government is coming up with to protect themselves from prosecution. It's in the interest of most political parties to protect the corrupt. This dance would appear to be for the benefit of the Indian people so that when people finally DO get caught, they get a slap on the wrist, spend 6 months or so incarcerated in luxury, then get out to spend their ill-gotten gains - the rules still don't allow for recovery of any of the money stolen.

So what's up with our national carrier? How does that tie in? As far as I see, it's just one more set of scams. The airline industry in the country's not doing particularly well - and for all the rubbish people have been coming up with like 'they're badly/inefficiently managed', or 'Indigo is doing well', I have this to say to you - inefficiencies can make a difference, but not THIS much of a difference. Indigo (or rather Interglobe) is making profits FROM the other airlines rather than from it's airline service. I understand the owners were smart enough to book a large number of aircraft which are being delivered - and sold/leased out to other airlines since delivery schedules are in terms of years for aircraft manufacturers. The politicians have been known to use the national carrier (Indian) like their own personal charters - the Civil aviation ministers (and lots of other folks apparently) are guaranteed a lifetime of free tickets. Not that the rest of the government pays in any case. Now they're giving them a 30,000cr bailout rather than paying their dues. No wonder they didn't want to give it back to the Tatas to run - they'd have objected to letting so many folks fly everywhere for free.

Rs.16cr (Rs.160million) on Kasab. This has gone on food, drink, accommodation and security over the last 3 years. That's on average Rs.1.46L (Rs.146K) per day. I thought he was in jail! Okay, so lets assume he's got prime property in Bombay. Lets peg that at 14K/day on just space and electricity - there are much more expensive hotels, but hey, this guy doesn't get room service does he? Take a few (5 or 6) of the higher pay-scale cops and pay them a little more - that's another 14K/day. Food? What the hell - lets get him 5 star rates - that comes up to (with difficulty) 10K/day. One full rate return trip to Pakistan per month (which I'm sure he doesn't get) - including rental car and security detail - Rs.2L/month (averages at 7K/day). Where's the rest of this money? Court fee/lawyers? 100K/month? We've got pictures of the guy shooting folks up. We've got an admission of guilt. There are enough eye witnesses AND he's been found guilty already... I'm guessing the rest is something to do with someone making a lot of money on the side... like by providing him with food at the price of gold, while 4 people die in custody because they've been mistreated/manhandled/not been cared about enough.

The sad bit is that all this political 'VIP' nonsense is the root of all these headlines.

De multifold coverup

Take this scenario:

A large bunch of (not particularly intimate) criminals have evidence of each others crimes. They'd rather not be prosecuted at all, so in the interest of their own safety do not 'rat out' any of the others.

Now, lets thicken the plot a little - one of these criminals gets caught for one crime in which a few other folks are involved. He's going down... there's no escape for this guy at all... he's in a particularly bad mood because he gets the feeling that someone took him down and doesn't feel like he should take the rap alone. He rats out the other folks involved in this particular crime.

We now have a few folks going down - some of their enemies decide to kick-em-while-they're-down assuming that they don't have proof of any of their own crimes. Things start getting more complicated now because now all of them have started thinking along the lines of 'if I have to take a fall, I'm pulling everyone else in with me.'

Suddenly, there's chaos in parliament. All the thievery, murders, scams, embezzling, laundering, kickbacks and lies have started hitting everyone, but the politicians have started warring... none of the parties are covering their 'friends' let alone their enemies. Some of them think that by starting one more controversy they can lessen the scope of their own prosecution by diverting attention away from their own issue. In most cases, this next controversy involves more people. With any luck, most of them will kill each other (metaphorically if not literally) and we'll be left with the few misfits in our government with some form of ethical standard. I'm just hoping there's not going to be a truce call between the 'dons' before the bloodbath's finished. It's a little sad that the only time the Delhi police have averted a full on terrorist strike, the terrorists were planning on doing us a favour - destruction of the parliament building would have been upsetting, but the place could definitely use a good fumigation.

De Shopping Experience

With e-commerce set to jump out of the bag with the coming of actual broadband and 3G in India, you'd think it's safe to get out there and buy stuff online here...

WRONG!


It's neither safe, nor prudent to give any of these web sites too much of a chance till they start respecting privacy and/or up the security on the data that you have to give them. I've had some pretty sad experiences with spam happening from places I'd have least expected it to come.

The Setup
It all started with me getting so much spam on my old Hotmail account that I more or less stopped using it altogether. It had been relegated to that old account where I had a few subscriptions, or that I gave to any website that required registration... and my personal address? Well, that's personal... why let anyone see that at all?

Unfortunately, I found that I was getting more spam in my inbox than in my "Junk mail folder", and the spam management and amazing search functionality on Hotmail just didn't help at all (searching for the word "dentist" yielded no results despite the fact that bulk of my inbox was filled with mail with the same word in the subject). I needed another way to sort through that account - frankly, I only wanted to keep it since it's one of my first e-mail addresses and if anyone still uses it they should be able to (eventually) elicit a response from it, so once a month I check it.

I've found that the best (and easiest) way to track spam is to use your own domain with a mailbox there for every site you may have low trust issues with. It's quite convenient for companies (like amazon.co.uk@mydomain. com) so you remember the login details (since if you reached the website, you're bound to know what email address you've passed them). I've managed to take it to a level where it takes a matter of seconds to setup an account for someone, access it automatically with a password shared across accounts, and with limits only on the collective size of inbox, I've found I'm relatively sorted on this part. Once you're sure that they're not evil spammers, you can give them your proper e-mail address.

So there I was... I felt comfortable with this system of distributing email addresses. It confuses people and gets funny at times as well... I've been asked a few times if I work with Dell (while on the phone with support).

I'm guessing majority of the leaks start at customer care. We need to educate the call centre employees on privacy and ethics. Most of them wouldn't think twice about giving anyone their own addresses and phone numbers out and wouldn't think of it as a breach of agreement or even privacy. I don't think anyone would bother trying to hack into many of the customer databases... it's easier to hang out outside the call centre (I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to get the location/address through the phone) and offer someone a couple of hundred rupees for all the email addresses.

To help or not to help
It's really sad where all I get spam from. Oxfam India was responsible for my receipt of mail offering to "Make it stronger. Last a lot longer." It should be good enough that I contribute to their causes in cash - why would they sell my data?

Travel issues
You want to book flight, train or bus tickets or a hotel room from/in India online? Yatra delivers quite a good experience on the actual business side... on the side business, I've received spam from LIC (which IMHO is just about acceptable seeing as it's a respected Insurance company - just the source of the email address and the option to opt out should be included in the mail). One thing I DIDN'T expect from them was to get a Facebook invite from Shalini Ahuja - you're thinking this would possibly be a bot or a very lonely person? The invite said :

Lowest Fares on www . EaseMyTrip . com Just Compare Fares Once Before Issuing Tickets Online.... Also Earn Upto Rs.50,000/Month or More by Joining EMT Franchise Network !!

Sounds like a competitor to me... does this mean all Yatra customers were sent FB invites from EaseMyTrip?

A company that wanted to sell projectors and services related to projectors has contacted me on my Yatra account. This information also seems to have reached an "offers" website, who have offered me "Resort homes" in India.

Does this mean that Yatra sells user data? Probably not - one rogue employee or someone may have given this data out. I don't get too much spam through them... a total of 4 emails that I've managed to track - it's a little bit of work. In fact, I'd spoken with some pretty senior people (at Yatra) about this and haven't received any more spam on that address.

Khojguru has managed to get my Dominos pizza email address and send me mail about it. They even included a link to allow me to unsubscribe from their list - I didn't want to click on it since this would confirm that it's an active address and allow the spammer (Khojguru) to validate this as a "good lead". The next mail I got on this address (some insurance comparison site) actually said that it was being sent from kgurumail.com, so at least when Khojguru sends my mail address on to more spammers, they keep me in the loop.

An online auction site sent me spam at my book my show address, and were nice enough to include a coupon just above the (unused) unsubscription link.

There's an email provider here who (apparently) pays you back for using their email service and in the spam they've sent to my Dominos account (again via Khojguru), they've even mentioned a donation they've made to charity, aside from offering me great deals.

Dominos gets the prize for versatility though... from email that pays you to use it to "Compete in yacht size? Nowadays it is of no use - boost your bed energy!"

The Bad
Okay, so now the story gets a bit murky... an internet provider (Spectranet) sent my Ferns and Petals account a flyer about affordable long distance calling... heck, if an internet provider buys/obtains this data illegally, who's stopping them from sharing their customers data or even spying on the actual data that's being exchanged by users online?

My Ferns and petals account also received junk from The Economist offering me a subscription - hey at least they're keeping it classy! Or maybe not... IndusLadies sent me a newsletter, and offered to take feedback/unsubscription requests which lead to a "sendfnpemail.com" url, but then ALL links do... it's almost like they're running campaigns for people who want publicity and using their customers mail addresses to send all of this crap out. Bad, bad FnP! No Froyo for you!

All of these so far are just standard sites or organisations that are either too stupid/enethical to hold my data with a degree of respect. They're not really very big on the online shopping front.

I've had so much spam at my Ngpay address it's not funny. Ngpay is a service which partners with online retailers, travel sites, gift sites, movie sites... it's an aggregator of sorts, but it's mobile! It delivers a near seamless experience (or had in the past when I used to use it), but since they have to pass on your contact details to their partners, someone or the other (read: fnp.in) would start sending you spam. I don't hold this against them, but would like them to try it the Google way... not pass the actual email address, but a time limited alias which could be deactivated on confirmation from the customer.

The Ugly
Shop Your World... this one actually deserves a separate post, but hey, I'm not here very often :)

I got a flyer from one of my banks telling me I could now shop on Amazon.com or bestbuy.com in Indian Rupees, have the product shipped to India, and get to see the complete cost (delivery to my doorstep) upfront... they'll handle purchase, shipping, customs duty and delivery, and I get what I bought at the US price plus a bit on shipping and tax. It winds up a lot more cost effective for me to buy this way... it also winds up a lot more convenient - at one point, if you bought something from a US store and had them ship it here, they'd give you a call when it reached customs and you'd have to go pay and get it out.

Great concept! Ebay.in has a similar concept, but they only handle particular suppliers from the US and ONLY ebay listings. Now I can get stuff from the US or UK at a reasonable price (Services here are cheap and involve cut-throat competition, but many products are generally much more expensive here), and I don't need to have an address abroad or have anyone pick it up, or have anyone bring it down... it reaches my door for a few rupees more.

A serious shopping site is the LAST place I'd expect to get spam from... one that my BANK recommends? I registered, left my mobile number, email address, house address, "spam" mobile number; a freely distributed number, and a phone in the shopping cart. I got spam from MTV. The spam was addressed to "Dear Sunil", so they hadn't just sold the address... the name was specified as well. I managed to catch an online agent to chat with and asked if they sold information. When I was told that this was against policy (as I'd already seen on their website), I persisted and was told that they didn't. If they're not selling or distributing my data and someone else has it, there's only one other natural assumption that springs to mind... they're low on security and/or have been hacked into, and data stolen. I don't really think I want to use an e-commerce site that's been hacked into, especially with the response I got from the agent... I had the transcript emailed to me. So far no one has gotten back to me - heck, maybe they lost my data :-D

The transcript of the conversation:

info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with 'Aditya'
info: Your Issue ID for this chat is LTK166010377008X
Aditya: Welcome to Shop Your World
Aditya: How may I help?
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: Hi Aditya, I'd registered on your site and had considered buying some things from there. I created a specific email address for your site
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I received spam on this email address yesterday
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I would like to know if you are distributing/selling my data
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: because this goes against the privacy policy mentioned on your website
Aditya: We do not share our Customer's Database with any other Company
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: then your system has been hacked into
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: which is even more of a concern
Aditya: I will pass this Information to the IT team
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: the only place this email address has ever been typed is on shopyourworld.com
Aditya: Ok
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: not good enough
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I'd like you to have your management team contact me as this is a rather serious issue
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I'm just glad I didn't buy anything from you or my credit card details might have been floating around the internet as well
Aditya: Like I said, I will share this Information with the IT Team to look into the matter and check if there are any gates open for the hackers to peep into our database.
Aditya: As of now we haven't received such Complaints, but considering this is the first, we would like to do something about it and avoid such complaints in future
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: if I don't get a revert from your management team in the next three days I'll blog this.
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I don't think you're getting how serious this issue is
Aditya: The Credit Card Details are not stored in our database any which way as we use a 3D secure payment gateway
Aditya: You will have to go through VISA or Mastercard verified gateway for every transaction
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I'm not going to waste any more time chatting with you. Please make sure someone contacts me about this in the next three days
Aditya: So security of your Card details shouldn't be a concern at all
info: Your chat transcript will be sent to shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com at the end of your chat.
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: selling the data would be enough of an issue - I got spam from rishik85@gmail.com with the subject MTV GANG NEXT 2.0 Auditions, which would suggest you've sold my information to an MTV affiliate.
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: the mail was sent from a Tata Teleservices internet account
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: 114.143.128.162 was the IP
Aditya: We will have this checked
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: please have whoever contacts me at the given mail address provide a contact number
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: I will call back
Aditya: I have passed on the Information to the concern team
Aditya: We have your contact details registered with this Email ID
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: now you're getting my point - I've given you more details than I'd typically give to an untrusted site. So you can have them call me on my mobile.
Aditya: Sure
Aditya: You should get a call within 24 - 48 hours
shopyourworld.com@mydomain. com: thanks
Aditya: Cheers!

It's been a week and a day... should have been enough time for them to get back to me... they haven't. Maybe HDFC (and ICICI) should consider security of their partner sites - the sites themselves don't seem to care too much.

De genius without

The inspiration for this came partially from a TED talk which I'd encourage you to watch before reading:

De genius without

and paranoia rears its head

and lays it on the comfy bed

the sounds of silence scream and whine,

the experience was all mine.

The genius with me, writing down 

the words bombarding me, which begin to frown 

I did it all! He says, you see,

it wasn't you, it was only me! 

The writer then, put the pen down

and turned to the genius, who began to frown 

So tell me this, who brought the path?

I took the turns, and faced the wrath! 

Creativity is a form of life
which doesn't take this kind of strife.
The writer and the genius
without each other are not quite us.

Pushing of De Tao

So I'm sitting on the plane, thinking about what a great time I had over the weekend in Hyderabad and decide to write something. Life came to mind, so I thought I may as well write about that.

While I was writing, I was listening to music on shuffle and ironically a song I haven't heard in a while played. Ironically, because it's called 'Wasted years', so the pome sounds a little sad at times, but ends on a positive note.

I think I've realised I need to push now, but despite spending most of the last 15 years attempting to embrace change, it still psyches the hell out of me.

This 'Pome' is my way of explaining to myself that second chances exist. There is always hope, but planning in life is what I've missed doing in my endless quest to live in the De. I now plan to be the oldest kid alive :-)

For DD & Jo

My eyes are open.
I am awake.
I thank you both
for the gentle shake.

Pushing Tao
------------------
The brook flowed on
He went with the flow
The rush of life
The best way to go

His life was full
His vision strong
The way it flowed
His time would be long

In his state of bliss
He flowed with Tao
Laugh lines on his face
Ran over his brow

The world was youth
Those lines set in
Laughter and joy
Friend and kin

The stream flowed on
Cutting paths through time
Life was the joy
Of song and of rhyme

Childhood came
With the people less grown
The time was ripe
He yearned for his own

The forks in the stream
He never noticed
They must have existed
But they were all missed

The river flowed on
Cutting ox bow lakes
Comprehension crept in...
He'd made his mistakes.

The flow of the river
Began to slow down
The delta was nigh
He longed to see ground

He had no choice
And into the ocean was thrust
A new beginning
This time Tao will be pushed.

De return of Des

So I've had writers block for almost two years now. I used to love writing, and think I still do, and even though I've had enough material to write (with all the stuff that's been happening over the last couple of years), I just haven't gotten around to writing it.

Bad excuse. I got on a reduced work week, so for four months in the past (and a few months in the future, depending on how busy work gets over the next few months) I've been putting in four days a week instead of five.

What would you do with the spare time? The one day a week on a weekday that you've got to yourself? Home improvement? Extra work? Consulting? Setting up a business? Getting on the stock market?

So what I've done so far is think about setting up a solar panel fabrication plant (small scale, low efficiency, lower cost solar panels). I thought this would be a good way to do something interesting while helping people (would be ideally suited to rural areas where electricity transmission isn't really upto reasonable levels), while keeping me busy and employing a few people to get the work done. It's also a very green thing to do. I did a little research on it and found that it would be cost effective, but I've been just too lazy to execute. The excuse I've been using was the lack of funding. Getting space anywhere near home would involve pots of money that I just don't have, which brought on the next plan...

The fact that I'm on a four day work week helps out in that for one weekday, I've got time to get on the markets and see how they're swinging... and they're swinging... I'd get addicted and wind up losing most of the money I have (and probably some I don't) if I didn't put a cap on what I'm putting into the markets, so I decided that if I have money that I can afford to throw, I'll throw it in and see if I can make some more... if I lose it all, I won't feel too bad about it since it was "extra" cash. Enter the 1 lakh cap.

During my purely experimental stage, I managed to pump in the entire amount on stocks that dropped... and they dropped pretty far down. I was left with roughly 70% of the value that I'd put in... in such a situation (where you're sure they're going to go back up), you normally wait. But hang on... this was investing where I wanted to trade! So I decided to up the ante a bit and put in another 100K, only this time, I'd try day trading... managed small profits, went on a holiday to Turkey and saw my "investment" shares pick up like mad. Cashed out as soon as I could (on hindsight, this was probably a mistake since they went up by quite a bit more after that). I was left with 250K and a holiday (mostly) paid for by the markets. I decided then to up the total to 250K on investments and 100K on trading recently - after I realised that annualised, my profits stood at 98%. I don't expect anything like this if I trade one day a week on a regular basis, but a little extra cash never hurt anyone... much...

Okay, so I got carried away. I always do. I lost sight of the goal. I wanted to make a bit of money on the side so I could carry out the plan. But then land is expensive, and this money; although it's not exactly small, is nowhere near enough to cut it. I refuse to gamble more money on a market that goes up and down more on emotion than facts, so what next?

How about using the day off to do what I enjoy the most? Enjoyment? I'm now the sort of person who's not truly happy unless I'm partying as many nights as possible - and a few days as well. I decided to overdo it a bit and wound up pulling late nights every night of the month for a few months now. I've taken 4 days off in the last couple of months or so when I wasn't out drinking at night, and at a friends wedding recently, drinking in the day time wasn't set aside either.

I do enjoy a drink or six, but then I'm not getting the sort of exercise I should be getting. Podgy isn't a word I'd like to be associated with, but at this rate, that's where I'm going to be in a couple of months.

So this one day a week I'm thinking I'll start using for the markets (for a couple of hours) and exercise, to compensate for the wilder portions of my hedonistic lifestyle. It would probably also be a good idea to get my room setup. Having thrown most of the furiture out of here, I think it's time I get off my beanbag and paint my wall or something.

Come to think of it, maybe I should start using the time to get some writing done :-)

De great infinity

I've been here long enough. There's lots to do, but that will to do it has dropped dramatically over the years (as it invariably does).

I always start new things with a vengeance... then the intensity begins to drop as I realise I can complete it. This applies to just about everything I've ever done (and possibly to everything I'll ever do). Let me give you an example or three. I switched schools relatively regularly in the early part of life; trying to get three kids in the same school at the same time in Delhi couldn't have been very easy for my mom. Every time I shifted schools, I'd be one of the class superstars. Things were new and interesting so I had the thrill of change to spur me on. The same thing happened at college where I started out with the seemingly effortless ability to do well. The marks started tapering off almost immediately because I realised that the subject material was all stuff that I'd learned; exceptions were handled erm... well... exceptionally.



I'd grown up thinking of everything as simple. Getting a machine to do what you wanted (no matter what you wanted it to do) was easy. At some point early in my experience with computers (in the early 80s) I came accross an article on Elisa - the first NLP program. Getting a machine to pretend it was human seemed to me to be the next step, so I started (a few years later - was always really lazy) working on an NLP program, only to realise that I had no idea how humans would react to situations and questions.



A 16 or 17 year old kid standing back and looking at his life and realising that he'd spent so much time understanding machines that he'd neglected one of the more important things in life. Life itself. This scared the living daylights out of me. I wasn't a machine, yet I could write a program to "emulate" me. I was at the time a relatively anal guy (yep... that's the word I'd use now). I had no problems with lending people stuff in college as long as they put them back... in the same place they found them... in EXACTLY the same place that they found them. I'd optimised my life to the extent that if anything was out of place it hurt because it was sub-optimal. At the time I was also neat to the point of OCD.



Then things began to rapidly change. While I was breezing through college, I took time off from talking to machines to actually interact with the scariness of people. I made it a point to get out and meet as many different types of people possible to get an insight into how they work. What they would do given a certain situation, how they'd react to external forces. I tried to change myself in the meantime into something less predictable. Someone yet. I discovered life. I moved over to chaos and (I didn't know the name at the time) the chinese concept of Tao - going with the flow. My neat and tidy room became, in second year, the place that it is now. Clothes thrown in what appears to be a haphazzard manner.

So here I am... drifting through life, allowing all earth shattering decisions to take care of themselves. Every now and then, there's a little push I put in, but life seems to be most enjoyable when you run with it. I'd turned what was an introverted technogeek to an extroverted philosopher. It's sometimes really difficult to get me started on a conversation, but it's usually very difficult to get me to shut up once I start. A mass of confusion topped with rigourous planning of my social calendar.

This story's far from complete... it just keeps going... it's life after all, so I'll publish now and consider part II sometime later... it's been over a month since I started on this post.

Lazy life...

De Ferns’n Petals Fiasco

Here's a really innovative way of conning people. Start an online flower delivery service which caters to remote locations. If someone sends you flowers, how often do you call them up and thank them (mentioning exactly what the order received was)? Do you think anyone would really complain that they've received an order of flowers from you with a poor quality gift? They'd sit there saying "How considerate... what lovely flowers..."

Okay, so here's the deal. Place an order for some flowers (with maybe a gift attached to it). Pay a premium on the delivery (since it's timed so well). When the wrong arrangement arrives (with slightly wilted flowers), you, the orderer, would never really find out as they'd be masked through the "niceties" of society.

Let's give you an example of this. I'd ordered the Exotic Life Size Arrangement from fnp.in. The description?

Mind blowing arrangement of 100 Seasonal and Exotic Flowers..3 to 4 ft high…for someone very special in your life..

This was supposed to be sent to my mother (who coincidentally lives in the same house as I do at the moment), so when the delivery arrived I was at home to receive it.

Okay, so now you're thinking "So what actually got delivered?"

The order note said Life Size Arrangement (which is 25% cheaper incidentally) and is described as:

Your feelings reach new heights with this expression of Love….An arrangement of over 100 Red n Yellow Roses of around 4 feets high.

What actually arrived was however quite a few (definitely more than 70) pink roses about as tall as my dogs (how does 2½ ft strike you?). It was quite nice in a few ways, but nowhere near what I'd ordered.

The order process itself was difficult enough. Yatra.com advertises a partnership with a discount of 25%. They even give you a promo code to enter on the fnp.in site to avail of this discount. When I tried using the promo code I got a "Sorry!! Try again" repeatedly. I thought it may be a problem with the code I was given, so called up Yatra (where a customer service person asked for my user names and passwords on both Yatra.com and fnp.in – I even provided them in the interest of getting this worked out). They acknowledged that there was a problem with the fnp site.

I tried using an alternate promotion (for ICICI bank account customers) which gave me the same error, so called the fnp customer care and was asked to "please try again in half an hour as there may be a technical issue". Strange that 22 hours later it's still not working with ICICI.

I got a little fed up with speaking with the person on the phone so left a comment on the website about the it not working properly and was surprised (quite pleasantly) by a call from Ashish the webmaster who informed me that he could help me with my order if I could order it on my ICICI card (and get a 20% discount instead of 25%) as they'd stopped the promotion with Yatra for Diwali (but still hadn't contacted Yatra with this information).

I mailed him the order details (along with my ICICI bank debit card details – I was wondering how he'd get the payment through with this info, but he'd asked me for it so I sent it). I got a call back a few minutes after sending the mail saying he wanted a credit card rather than debit card. I don't have an ICICI bank credit card, so gave him my HDFC credit card information for him to use, which he said would be okay.

I'm still sitting here waiting for the correct order to be delivered. The instructions for delivery at 9am sort of went down the tubes when the incorrect order arrived at 10, followed closely by a phone call from the "head office" which I passed on to the delivery man. I'll possibly update this if the correct order arrives.

It's arrived... and just as I was getting on the phone with the company again. They've added a top to the original one they sent, not quite what I'd ordered, but it' still nice.

I don't think I'd have written this entry if this was the first time I'd had such problems with them, but then I didn't get to see the last order they'd dispatched and assumed it was a one-off mistake. Hope they're not doing the same thing with you.

Ode to De living

My life is a lie...
DON'T TOUCH THAT KEY!
Behind that door
is the truth you see!

I am who I am
but I won't tell you
Who knows what you'd think
or indeed what you'd do.

The pain of knowing
just what I've become
may unravel those lies
till they're completely undone.

Where would that leave me?
At the beginning I guess.
So just let me be
in this wretched mess.

I'll wallow in misery
I'll live in doubt
I'll try what I want
but you'll never find out.

On my judgment day
you'll look at me
You'll likely be shocked
by what you will see.

My life is a lie
but you'll never know.
I'll keep it from you
till the day I go.

This one's dedicated to the one who knows.

Your life is yours
and yours alone
Let nothing sway you
(not even this "pome")

Stand tall, stand high
like a might oak.
spend those lies
till your conscience is broke.

Tough as it may be
people want to know YOU.
In this huge web of lies
this much is true.

No ill intent is meant by this pome. It's inspired by the hypocrisy of our culture symbolised by the most open societies, which went to war to hide the openness.

De-pression before in-De-pendence.

I started this article on the 15th August 2007 (our 60th anniversary of independence) and didn't have the energy to complete it.

Most people (for some reason) don't realise how much I love my country. India is a place filled with people with completely different outlooks, backgrounds, concepts, religious beleifs, sensitivities, intellectual abilities, blah... you're probably sitting there thinking "all countries would have this". There's diversity in geographic topology. There are so many different types of places with so many interesting things to see, but the thing that really builds this place is the people.

Heck if that's not enough of a sales pitch, how about this one:

India is home.

I have the option to live and work abroad (it'd be somewhat easier for me since I don't need a visa/work permit to get a job in the UK since I've got "Right to abode" there). India has spoiled me. I'm lazy. There's a maid who comes in the morning, cooks, cleans, washes the clothes, irons them, answers the phone when there's no one around, handles the house by the day so to speak. Then there's the odd job guy who washes the car, walks and feeds the dogs, takes care of the garden, repairs stuff around the house, cleans the outside area of the house.

Essentially, there's someone to do anything you don't want to and it's usually not too much of a problem to get the stuff done because labour is cheap here. Does this make me a hypocrite though? How independent could I be if all the stuff I've got to get done get done by other people? Am I dependent on them? I'll put it this way. I know the "how's" of getting most things done, but don't ever need to actually implement anything myself as long as they're around. When they go on leave, I don't exactly shrivel up and die, but I DO have a bit more to get done.

That having been said, let me ask this. How can I afford this luxury? Having two people spend quite an amount of time getting my work done for me should be an expensive deal right? The truth is that these people work on a monthly basis for a combined amount that I'd make in a few days. And no - I'm not earning a particularly large amount of money. These are the gaps.

This divide isn't terribly healthy. The people who work in junior positions in government jobs - the paper pushers or gate keepers (depending on what your work in that department is) get salaries that would allow them to buy a small TV in a month if they didn't spend anything on anything else. Add a wife and a couple of kids to that equation and you get a materialistically challenged family who look around and see all these rich kids in their designer clothes, driving flashy cars discussing how much they spent last night at that nightclub.

What do these guys do then? How about making life a little miserable for all these rich kids. If he comes here to get some work done, let me pull all stops to irritate him to even things out just a little bit. And what's the response? Rich kid pulls out a few notes and passes them to the guy to "smoothen" things out a little. (newly) Corrupt government man decides this isn't a bad way to make a little extra money, so winds up hassling anyone who comes through the door expecting money and when he doesn't get any starts demanding it.

A cousin is registering his company here. He'd given our house address as his correspondence address, so when his registration letter arrived by registered post (recorded delivery), the post man came home to deliver it. Registered post requires a signature, so it wasn't just dropped in the post box. The maid didn't know my cousins name or the name of his company, but offered to sign for it. The postman gave her a phone number and left with the letter. My mother called in the afternoon and offered to pick up the letter, but was told that my cousin would have to make a personal visit to the post office as it must be some paise ka mamla (money matter). My cousin was in town the next day for a few hours, so had planned on picking up the letter in the morning, running to interview someone and leaving. At 10 am when we called the post office, we were told gyarah baje tak aajao (come by 11 o'clock). It was 10 so Ma offered to reach there in 5 mintues and was told nahin gyarah tak aajao (no come by 11). I'm not sure why, but this went up and down a few times before Ma finally said "We'll be there at 11" and put the phone down. At 11 we went to the post office, expecting to pick up the letter, feel a little happy and leave. We were called into the office where one man took the letter, held onto it and sat down at a table telling us (I couldn't continue writing after this, so I took a short 9 month break) that he needed to see the letter of registration of the company before he could give us the letter (which incidentally was the tax registration letter a requirement for registration of the company).

An hour before my cousin had to catch a flight we were slightly pressed for time so my cousin pulled him to the side and asked him exactly why he was doing this, to which the blatant response was "300 rupees". There are two options at this point. Pay and get it done with or leave, let the process get delayed by another few weeks and pray that you have the contacts to squash this bug - who'll land up in another post office and do exactly the same thing there.

Look at it this way. You have a company to register where the registration process gets stopped at a few thousand different places where each person demands x amount of money - all the amounts are individually very small, but they sort of add up when there are so many people to "handle". What solutions have been devised to get around this?

Enter the tout! You can actually HIRE people to do the running around (read bribery) for you. They will give you a "99% assurance" that all your work will get done for an amount that would be a little higher than the amount you'd have to bribe people with. Why is it only a little higher? Because it's like a nexus. The tout would be running a "revenue-share" concept with the officials (and their office boys) he's dealing with.

So now you're sitting there with the concept of the services industry and corruption being tightly linked, the plot gets thicker...

It's possible here (and on many occasions necessary) to have someone NOT hassle you for a fee. There are a massive number of cabs operating between Delhi, NOIDA and Gurgaon.
A friend struck up a conversation with a cab owner and got the dope on why they drive as badly as they do (that's not exactly how the guy put it, but it's quite evidently the reason).

For each cab owned by the cab company plying on a regular route, the company has to pay the DELHI POLICE a particular amount per intersection to "look the other way" for all traffic offenses. Most cabs tend to jump red lights, stop in the middle of the road to pick up and drop passengers, jump lanes at will (is there a car in that lane? Too bad... he's going to have to move away), tamper with the speed governors (they're supposed to be limited to 50KMPH) and generally increase the chaos on the already chaotic roads. They've got amnesty. They'll do what they want, but when they start killing people I'm almost certain the price goes up... price? PRICE? There have been instances where actors/influential people/wealthy individuals and/or their children/relatives have been involved in well publicised manslaughter/homicide (driving, shooting, blah...). They've been all over the national papers (gossip rags). They've gone to court. They've come back out of court. They're resting at home happy to be free having (possibly by mistake, but never the less) killed someone.

Is this independence?

As long as people HAVE to pay someone to get basic work done we're not free.
As long as the government votes itself to power (by buying polling booths and peoples identities) we're not free.
As long as the people responsible for removal of corruption are the ones ASKING for bribes WE ARE NOT FREE!

De Cleanup Job

I live in Delhi. A place I've always thought of as home, but also a massive mess. There's the standard attitude of "I'll mess it up - the people paid to clean should do their jobs properly". I still remember a while ago (when the BJP came to power) seeing this strange man sweeping the road in front of our house. My mother asked him a few questions and found that this man had been responsible for sweeping the road outside our house for a few years now - only now he was actually doing his job. The city cleaned up quite a bit with all the people who'd been employed to do their jobs for years actually starting to do them.





At some point of time, the government got smart - there's only one way to make sure the job gets done properly (and continuously) without having someone sit on all the cleaners heads...





OUTSOURCE!





Hey, if I give you assurance that irrespective of whether your job gets done or not, I'm not going to fire you/cut your pay/irritate you at all in any way and you're a slacker, you're not going to get your job done. On the other hand, if I call a contractor and tell them to clean the place up, then as soon as they screw up, I jump on them and tell em I'm not going to pay them - I become king... yay! Plus, I get to pay them less by putting out bids for the job of cleaning the place.





So there you have it. I drive to work every day - occasionally see a very hip looking cleaning truck trundling along the side of the road whipping up all the dust, dirt, plastic, excrement, blah into it's large belly. The roads? They're squeaky clean in Delhi now.





But back the truck up just a minute (pun intended). Where do these trucks empty their guts?

Well, it would seem to me that they dump the stuff quite a distance from where they pick it up - a few inches perhaps? This is a picture I took yesterday when I was heading back home from Nehru Place (a sprawling commercial complex in Delhi) just accross the road from the famous Kalka Mandir.

Hang on... lets get a little closer...

So THESE are the guys cleaning up the roads. Yesterday after I saw (and photographed) this, I thought of two things - going to the Kalkaji police station (about 100m away) and telling them (I actually went, but was in a bit of a rush to get home, so thought I'd just blog it and send it to the papers). The second was that I hadn't really looked at the sides of the roads for quite a while - they're dirtier than ever before - I guess now I know why. Maybe these contractors are planning on asking for a contract to clean the sides of the roads as well.

I drove up to the truck and motioned for the driver to push back his window - he motioned for me to drive round to the other side of the truck which I did. His "co-pilot" gave me a big grin while he pushed his window open. I asked one question "is this the rubbish dump?" to which his immediate reply was "yes".

I'm thinking I should send this around a bit more than just to the papers. Lets see what happens.

De forté of Airtel... customer service???

If you've ever wanted something done that you can't do yourself, what's the first thing you do?

Find someone who can get the job done right?

What happens when it's your job to do it? Picture a customer care person who's being asked a question on the phone. Now picture the question as being the metaphorical equivalent of the question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

You sit some poor kid who's fresh out of school following which they're given diction and voice training for a while and a crash course in how to read scripts from a screen at one end of the line and erm... a customer asking a few questions beyond the scope of the script at the other end. The result is either a very frustrated kid or customer.

I'd rather spare most of these guys from such ordeals... I've heard them squeak "we'll have to get back to you on that" before asking me if there'll be anything else I can maim them with. Airtel (conveniently) provides a mail address where you can write to them if you have any queries, so I thought since there's no real time exchange of information, no one has to be embarrassed by their knowledge (or lack of). Also, in case they don't know the answers they can either look them up or ask someone who might know.

I thought wrong.

This is my mail exchange with customer care in Bangalore (I've got a roaming number from there while I'm sitting in Delhi - Delhi customer care maintains that they can't give me any information since I'm a Bangalore customer and I need to contact them directly).

Me:

Hi,
My number is 9xxxxxxxxxx.
I'd found information on your page which says I can get EDGE services on my Airtel mobile for Rs. 299/month. The link to this page is at
http://www.airtel.in/Postpaid_otherservice.aspx?path=1/6/7/9&cid=4
I have the following queries:
1. What is the monthly download limit on this?
2. Are there any other charges?
3. Will I have to pay extra while roaming in Delhi on Airtel's network for EGDE access?
4. What sorts of speeds could I expect assuming I use an EDGE enabled device?
5. Are any IPs/domains or ports blocked?
Regards,
Sunil

Airtel:

Dear Mr. Sunil,
You have inquired regarding the EDGE services for your Airtel number 9xxxxxxxxx,
We would like inform you this will achieve the delivery of advanced mobile services such as the downloading of video and music clips, streaming, full multimedia messaging, high-speed Internet access and e-mail on the move, multiplayer games etc.
EDGE provides three times the data capacity of GPRS. Using EDGE, operators can handle three times more subscribers than GPRS; triple their data rate per subscriber, or add extra capacity to their voice communications. EDGE uses the same TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) frame structure, logic channel and 200k Hz carrier bandwidth as today's GSM networks, which allows existing cell plans to remain intact.
It will be possible to view live TV streaming on an EDGE enabled phone ? the Nokia 6230. It will not be possible to view it on any other phone, as there is no other EDGE enabled phone that supports streaming today in India.
? The service can be subscribed and accessed from the Airtel Live portal, and can be seen under ?Live TV? on the wap portal
http://live.airtelworld.com/
? Service will be chargeable per channel per month.
? To begin with, CNBC News channel will be offered, subsequently Aaj Tak, Sports and other entertainment channel will be added as we continue to strike agreements with other TV channels.
? The CNBC channel will be offered free of cost for the time being
To access live TV, a user must have subscribed to Airtel Live portal. If not, then he needs to be provisioned for Airtel Live portal before he can access live streaming.
The settings will also be made available over the website. In a nutshell, the APN is??airtelfun.com, proxy is disabled, and the UDP port range is from 1024 ? 65535.
Currently Nokia 6230 is the only phone which supports video streaming on EDGE. Please note that by using this setting, you will not be able to access the Airtel live portal (to down load rich content like Games. Wall Papers ring tones etc) He needs to alternate between the settings as he normally does between Airtel Live (earlier called Airtel Masala) and Airtel Online.
Alternatively, you could also contact our 24 Hours customer care service by dialing 121(toll free) for same.
Regards,
Renuka Devi
Customer Support Service
Airtel

erm.... Okay Renuka... whatever you say. Not a terrible advertisement for the Nokia 6230, but you could have used a little targeting on that one.
Me:

Dear Renuka,
Thanks so much for the detailed response. I would however like responses to the questions I've asked which were:
1. What is the monthly download limit on this?
2. Are there any other charges?
3. Will I have to pay extra while roaming in Delhi on Airtel's network for EGDE access?
4. What sorts of speeds could I expect assuming I use an EDGE enabled device?
5. Are any IPs/domains or ports blocked?
Please assume I do not have a Nokia 6230, do not want to stream TV on my phone and do not want to download any content from Airtel's portal - I just want to surf the internet on my phones - one Nokia N91 and one O2 XDA Atom Life.
Thanks again,
Sunil

Airtel:

Dear Mr. Sunil,
You had inquires about the EDGE facility on your Airtel number 9xxxxxxxxx.
What kind of speeds will be available?
2 dedicated time slots will be available for EDGE. Depending on the air interface, the quality of coverage, other people in the cell area, speeds will vary between 40kbps-200 kbps. The bandwidth will get shared among as many users as present, who are using GPRS/ EDGE in that cell at that particular instant.
Live TV: (available on both Post and pre paid)
Live TV streaming is still a new concept in most countries (in the few networks where it has been deployed), the experience depends on the bandwidth available. Equally important is the RF tuning and optimization done at the BTS level, which can perceptibly change the user experience.
Typically, streaming is done at 5-10 frames per second (a TV shows 30 frames per second), so it is important to have the right expectation even before you start to view a live TV stream on a phone.
? It will be possible to view live TV streaming on an EDGE enabled phone ? the Nokia 6230. It will not be possible to view it on any other phone, as there is no other EDGE enabled phone that supports streaming today in India.
? The service can be subscribed and accessed from the Airtel Live portal, and can be seen under ?Live TV? on the wap portal
http://live.airtelworld.com/
? Service will be chargeable per channel per month.
? To begin with, CNBC News channel will be offered, subsequently Aaj Tak, Sports and other entertainment channel will be added as we continue to strike agreements with other TV channels.
? The CNBC channel will be offered free of cost for the time being
? The service will be available to both pre paid and post paid customers.
To access live TV, a user must have subscribed to Airtel Live portal. If not, then he needs to be provisioned for Airtel Live portal before he can access live streaming.
The settings will have to be given to the customer over a telephone call, and will also be made available over the website. In a nutshell, the APN is airtelfun.com, proxy is disabled, and the UDP port range is from 1024 ? 65535.
On a Nokia 6230, the detailed steps for providing the settings are as follows:
1. Click ?Menu?
2. Go to ?Media? and press ?Select?
3. Scroll down to Media Player and press ?Select?
4. Scroll down to ?Streaming Sett? and press ?Select?
5. Select ?Active Connection Settings? and press ?Activate?
6. Now Scroll down to ?Edit Active Connection Settings? and press ?Select?
7. Enter Connection Name as ?Streaming? and press Ok
8. Scroll down to ?UDP Port Range? and enter 01024 ? 65535. Click Ok
9. Scroll down to ?Connection Settings? and press ?Select?
10. Scroll down to ?Proxies? and press ?Select?
11. Scroll down to ?Disable? and press ?Select?
12. Scroll Down to ?Data Bearer? and set it to GPRS (default)
13. Scroll Down to Bearer Settings and press ?Select?
14. Select ?GPRS access point?, enter Airtelfun.com and press Ok
15. Set Authentication Type to Normal (default)
16. Set Login Type to Automatic (default)
17. Leave ?User Name? and ?Password? blank (default)
18. Go to Standby Screen, and access the Airtel Live portal now.
19. Click on Live TV link on portal, and select the channel you have subscribed to.
20. After this, you will receive a SMS with the link to view Live TV.
21. Save this link as a bookmark (by entering it manually in ?New Bookmark?)
22. Once this bookmark is saved, select it to connect to the TV streaming server.
Regards,
Yuvaraj B
Customer Support Service
Airtel

Hmmm... are we getting a little better now? Yuvaraj could have left the info on speed and skipped the spiel (sic) on the 6230 and Live TV though.

Me:

Hi Yuvraj,
Again, I would like to ask for responses to my queries rather than hear the sales pitch on Live TV. I have received a response only to the 4th point.
The queries were and still are:
For Edge services @Rs.299 /month as mentioned at
http://www.airtel.in/Postpaid_otherservice.aspx?path=1/6/7/9&cid=4:
1. What is the monthly download limit on this?
2. Are there any other charges?
3. Will I have to pay extra while roaming in Delhi on Airtel's network for EGDE access?
4. What sorts of speeds could I expect assuming I use an EDGE enabled device?
5. Are any IPs/domains or ports blocked?
Regards,
Sunil

Airtel:

Dear Mr. Sunil,
Regarding your mobile number 9xxxxxxxxx
You had inquired about the EDGE phone for your Airtel mobile number 9xxxxxxxxx.
We would like to inform you that there is no limit for downloading in the EDGE phone and charges as per the downloading items.
The games will be chargeable on a per download basis, and will be priced at Rs. 99 per game. The game will expire after 6 months.
Further, we would like to inform you that 2 dedicated time slots will be available for EDGE. Depending on the air interface, the quality of coverage, other people in the cell area, speeds will vary between 40kbps-200 kbps. The bandwidth will get shared among as many users as present, who are using GPRS/ EDGE in that cell at that particular instant.
To access live TV, a user must have subscribed to Airtel Live portal. If not, then he needs to be provisioned for Airtel Live portal before he can access live streaming.
The settings will have to be given to the customer over a telephone call, and will also be made available over the website. In a nutshell, the APN is airtelfun.com, proxy is disabled, and the UDP port range is from 1024? 65535.
Further, any clarification you can contact our customer care center 121(toll free) for the same.
Regards,
Karthik
Customer Support Service
Airtel

Okay, I forgot to tell Karthik that I wanted to use this facility to connect to the internet - I was slightly bugged with this entire conversation by now though - the series of mail was going back and forth for quite a while by this time (yep - I made sure the entire series went back each time).

Me:

Okay... one LAST time before I post this hilarious conversation on my blog.
You DID respond to one question on the first mail and two on the second.
How about trying for the remaining two this time?
The queries were and still are:
For Edge services @Rs.299 /month as mentioned at
http://www.airtel.in/Postpaid_otherservice.aspx?path=1/6/7/9&cid=4:
1. What is the monthly download limit on this? (answered - no limit)
2. Are there any other charges? (answered - charges are only for downloading games etc from Airtels site)
3. Will I have to pay extra while roaming in Delhi on Airtel's network for EDGE access?
4. What sorts of speeds could I expect assuming I use an EDGE enabled device? (answered - low speed or high speed dependent on network availability and usage at the time)
5. Are there any IPs/domains or ports blocked?
Please note : I'm still NOT interested in hearing about Live TV.

Regards,
Sunil

Airtel didn't respond to this mail at all for 8 days, so I sent them this reminder.

Me:

Any update on this? It's been quite some time since I wrote to you asking for this information.
Regards,
Sunil

Lokesh (the person who finally responded the next day) didn't really feel like getting chatty like the other customer service people did, so sent this mail.

Airtel:

Dear Mr. Sunil,
You had expressed concern on Live TV for your Airtel number 9xxxxxxxxx.
We request you to kindly contact 7070 (toll free) from black berry hand sets for all the quiries about the Live Streaming.
Regards,
Lokesh
Customer Support Service
Airtel

There comes that Live TV thingy again, but a Blackberry???? What's the story on that one?

This guy really didn't want me to get any info, so pushes me off to the Blackberry and email tech support people at Airtel specifically telling me to call from "black berry hand sets". Damn... maybe he read the series and figured since I'd shelled out so much money on the two phones I've got that I wouldn't be able to get my hands on "black berry hand sets" and wouldn't call. Problem customer that I am, I tried anyway, and was instructed by the IVR to dial 121 - back to the old drawing board.

I fail to understand from all this why they would offer a service and not tell any of their customer support folks about it. I checked the link and the content of the page and it still says the same thing. One customer support person even assured me (on the phone) that there were no other charges for this service - at Rs. 299/month I would have high speed internet and would only have to pay for downloads from the Airtel portal. I'd feel a lot safer if I got this in writing in a mail or something since I've been burned in the past (and the only unlimited data card plan is 899/month for corporate customers).

Anyway, I'm sending a link to this entry to some folks at Airtel in hopes that I'll get some response (possibly even a comment) to my queries (if you'd care to check, my last reference number was 92083120782).

Later,
De.