News or Gossip?

In this press conference held for Ra.One movie by Youtube & ShahRukh Khan, someone from the media asked SRK, "With one month left for the movie release, you are not getting enough sleep because of all the promotional activities. When there is just 2-3 days left for the movie release, would you also leave eating & drinking" - I have to translate into Hindi now, for the effect: फिल्म की रिलीज़ के लिए अभी एक महिना बाकी है और आप कह रहे हैं की आप ठीक से सो भी नहीं पा रहे हैं, जब फिल्म की रिलीज़ को सिर्फ तीन-चार दिन रह जायेंगे, तोह क्या आप खाना पीना भी छोड़ देंगे?
And it followed by 'stupid' questions like these all through. Poor SRK can't get away from answering these questions. I open up the leading daily in the morning & the headline on the first page is usually something that is the most recent happening - Anna Hazare's campaign, a massive earthquake, thankfully something around sluggish auto season...anything.

Come to the next piece of news - to the right of the headlines & sometimes if there is more recent happenings, just towards the end of the first half of the paper, and these start off:
- girl kidnapped by the servant
- wife plans murder of her husband
- students shot dead in ragging
- 15-yr old kid in coma after a disastrous accident...

And 2nd page, 3rd page, 4th page...and many more snippets in almost all the pages - is only this! What are our journalists & news reporters up to? Are they out on as they say, their hectic schedules only to report these issues? These parts of the pages in the newspapers - can't they be filled with some meaningful pieces of news? I would want to know if there is a murder at the toll plaza because it is something that would be an information that I have to know, but I am not at all interested to know if a wife has planned her husband's murder along with her boyfriend - even if she was my next door neighbour forget about she being in NCR!

Does media needs intelligent people? Is there a dearth of sensible people getting into media these days? Or is it that these news pieces are easy to capture, happening all around & so to fill the space or may be to meet their targets (not sure if they have to report so many news pieces a day/week/month? I am sure it is definitely like this with many doctors these days: मैडम आपने इस महीने किसी मरीज़ को नहीं भेजा टेस्ट के लिए, इस हफ्ते तो भेजना होगा मैडम कम से कम २ लोगों को! doctors: ". )
Well, if the mass wants only gossip & no news, then well, be it the leading daily!

Ooo La La La..La Le e O!

I love short flight travels about 2 hours or so - it gives a chance to be with yourself, those 2 hours feel quite productive with a power nap, many blog ideas, some reading, good food, hot cup of tea etc.

And when it is Kingfisher, it is a boon to me making those 2 hours truly a complete experience. From the staff at & near the counter, to the crew in the flight, everybody seems to be happy & ready to genuinely serve. One doesn't feel they are serving because they have to, it is clear that they think & feel that it is their duty as a company to serve & they seem to be thoroughly enjoying serving their customers. Staff & crew of some airlines seem they are obliging us by serving us, those of some other airlines seem very tensed or worked out, some others do the operations in their best possible manner but nothing more than that. Those few hours of a traveller's experience are quite critical & as an airline services company, one should be committed to making the travel experience as worth it as possible.

Elements that make a service company:
- Motivation to serve, very apparent & not forcibly
- Remembering that customers come to them always for more than just the service (more than just a meal at the restaurant, more than just a room at the hotel, more than just the flight with the airlines etc.) & this is where the importance of 'human' element along with the 'operations' element comes into play
- Intangibles matter more than the tangibles (one might be perfect in operations but miss that 'extra' which are always the intangibles)

All put together, a service organization's motive has to be 'we care'. One can understand how difficult it can be for such an organization to see that all the employees collectively have the same attitude of 'we care' all the time & monitoring that such attitude isn't diluting from time to time. From the body language, to communication, to patience, to understanding & what not :-)

Long live Kingfisher!!! - every time I fly the airlines, I see the same attitude of 'we care' across the staff & the crew. The entire experience is much more than just the travel & simply getting from say the Indira Gandhi International Airport to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. Mr. Vijay Mallya, people say he is personally involved in the recruitment of his employees, I don't know if that is true, in fact this time I actually wanted to ask one of the crew members if that was true - may be I will ask next time. And I also wanted to ask the secret of their being so very dedicated to serve! Just one complaint that I heard & personally had too till the last time I flew (because of which I refrained myself from writing this blogpost) was of the food, but this time thankfully, the food was very good & fresh (and here is the blogpost :)) and I am sure it would just become better from now.

Sometime back I remember, my husband wrote a letter to chairman@flykingfisher.com about the flight from Delhi to Kulu being so expensive, & we actually received a reply from the chairman & further, the fare was reduced to almost half too. Well, I sincerely wish the airlines all the luck & wish they continue 'caring'.

I want to say & I like to say - Ooo La La La..La Le e O!!!

Did you do anything today?

I go for my music class every Thursday, I am learning violin (I had learnt it as a school kid, but never enjoyed it because it was not taught to be enjoyed - it was Carnatic music & I never liked the way my teacher used to make it so God-ly a thing & hence impose too many restrictions), western classical - 40 minutes of practical followed by 40 minutes of theory. Entire week, I look forward for the class. I religiously close my work at 5PM on Thursdays & set my mind completely for the class. I like playing violin. I realized creative visualization helps learn the best - when I see a new piece of notes & start playing, I often stumble over. But I sit for a while without the instrument, I see the notes carefully & I visualize the instrument & play in mind. <I hope you are able to understand what I mean>. I play really well when after that I take the instrument & start playing the notes actually. I am a very big fan of this concept called Creative Visualization.

Well...this Thursday, as usual, after a tiresome day at work, I went to the music class, I completed the practical class & went to the theory class. For the past few classes, I have not been able to understand certain notes because theory is mostly based on piano & violin is different - sharp notes, tonic triads etc. aren't so relevant. So, the 'sharp' & hence the 'major' & 'minor' scales were becoming very difficult for me to understand. I was actually stuck at this lesson & was unable to do anything on the worksheet I was supposed to do. This time I had learnt sharps on violin, but was still finding very difficult to relate to the major scales and so on.

5 minutes before the class ended, I had actually not done anything again on the worksheet. The teacher came and asked, "Did you do anything today?" - I understood this question was based on her observations about me for the past few classes too. I smiled to myself, (Ha! Ha! Ha! I wanted to laugh aloud actually) and remembered those days when I used to teach. I had asked this question to a couple of my students too. I won't name them here though I know they would read. <While reading this, you people are smiling - I know!>

I smiled further and remembered instances of the classroom, the time I spent with my dear students in the class. I would want to write those sweet memories down & send to them some day.

To all my dear students, big thanks for all those memorable moments.

What A Life!

What is so striking about India, as a country is that there are very strong pros & cons in everything. Just about anything can become an opportunity as well as a misfortune, almost anything can have its own benefits and in anything to everything, there are hidden advantages for some life. There is a "latent" demand existing for each and everything that one can think of and which is why there is no dearth of opportunities possibilities, solutions, answers for some, as much as there is dearth of the same for others!

I was going around for a walk with Bruno, my 3-year old beagle when I was not liking the grass grown beyond limits, all around stinking due to rains and the roads literally cut in many different shapes making it absolutely impossible to drive without the fear of a puncture in the tyres.

I hate putting this picture on this blog as much as I love pondering over it :-)

While I was walking with this feeling sinking into me to a lot of depth and while my analytical brain starting to think of any possible solutions and the judge in me trying to curse the government and the authorities, I found a pig sleeping in this mud water (the water must have been there for about a week now!). It was in the most sound sleep, feeling like heaven, enjoying the sleep to the fullest!  Now that's what I call boon for someone whereas a curse for someone else!

It was a pleasure watching that creature having so much of pleasure & enjoying its own little world to the fullest! The population of pigs have multiplied to 4 times in the past 1 year around our residential area and so is the dirt around - the unwanted trees grown up beyond limits, the rainy season bringing in a lot of unhygienic air around and what not!

It is these amazing trade-offs that we live with, in our country, at every stage and that's what probably makes us more flexible, tough to hold on to any situation, versatile to think beyond a structured approach & processes, adaptable to any situation around us, being self-dependent to find out solutions for any problems that we face and so on... and so forth!

Was the world awaiting 'Google+'?

Google+... Yes, it is there, all over - again!

As I keep reading the reviews, I somehow get a feeling that the entire world was just awaiting for Google to launch something like this. [There was (or is) Orkut, I myself would put it 'dogs' in the BCG Growth-Share Matrix.]

Honestly, I have a lot of respect for the company & I would want to always see it remain the internet giant on all platforms possible - so why lose out on one platform? I never liked when I seeing the failure of orkut. I wasn't convinced that it wasn't capable, or as some comments say 'social networking is not what Google can do', but I was always wondering why wasn't it trying to improve orkut. May be it didn't want to. Well, now I know there was a purpose in not running behind orkut or just out of the blue launching a social networking product.

I see the purpose behind Google+ is not just to get into social networking too, but a much higher strategic initiative to benefit the users, again! I somehow see a deep breath taken by the entire world in seeing this initiative - they know they are going to be benefitted, in many ways which may not be thinkable as of now. 'Why can't Google launch just this one thing?', was probably the question the entire world was asking the internet giant for long now, and here is the answer by the company that puts users first and yet another initiative to 'to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'.

Again I want to say - What A Company!