Attitude Vs Perception!

Of late I have been hearing that I complain a lot. Well, I am neither Mrs.Perfect nor Aparichithuralu (Courtesy: Movie by name Aparichithudu). I know that I cannot go and improve the whole world and change it to be a sweet world to one and all. I always liked this one statement that my Intermediate physics sir had written in my autograph book - 'If you don't believe the life you live in, you should live the life you believe in'. Yes, it sounds so simple and nice. But not very easy to put into practice. In my opinion, things that went well are good. But you should think about the things that dint go well and start thinking about the ways and means to improve that unless you are doubtful about your confidence levels. You are right! The people who analyze such things are called 'critics'.

Each thing has a way in which it has to be handled. For instance, if you have to bring an awareness among the people around you, there is a way you motivate them by letting them know the demerits of what the current system is and telling them how things could have been made better. But, if you have to give a feedback about somebody's performance, you first tell them what they have done good and slowly let them know how they can make it better. If you notice me in one such conversations and mistake me to be complaining all the while, I would say that it is not my attitude problem, but rather your perception problem!

The inconvenient truth..

I remember very vividly.. each and every conversation I had with various people on this very interesting topic.. 'Girls do change after marriage'. I was always against this statement all this while.. mind you, i said I 'was' against it..! I don't know if I have to call it over confidence.. But I would like to refer to it as self confidence.. I always thought and still think that I can manage things quite well. Managing time for me has never been an issue so far.

Leaving all that I managed at college aside, during my tenure at Bangalore, extremely ambitious soul that I am, I had all the time to finish my work with complete commitment towards it and at the same time, I had heaps of time for my friends - friends for life, hobbies - Yes, I used to attend drawing classes after work, yoga - Again a big yes, I used to get up at 5AM in the winter season to go to yoga class before work. I had all the patience and energy to participate in GCC(Global Corporate Challenge - u may refer to http://www.gettheworldmoving.com/ for more details on this), wherein I used to walk atleast 10,000 steps a day.

The other day I had a chat with a good old friend of mine, who has always been a strong supporter of the interesting topic that I mentioned in the beginning of this blog. We had endless discussions on this topic and we never happened to even tilt towards the conclusion ever.. All he said was - 'Wait.. U will pass through that phase.. We can talk then'. Today when I gave myself enough time to leap back and look at the past few months, they just went by before even I realize that they passed by. Yes, time flew so fast.. So fast that I missed to wish a lot of my friends on their birthdays, a few of them on their anniversaries, another few of them on the occasions and festivals.. Why?? I have a list of e-mails to which I wanted to reply in detail..,but it never happened. Why?? I have quite a lot of people whom I always think about and want to ping by and check howz life rolling with them.. But that dint happen either.. Why??

There is only one answer to all the "Why??'s" and that is - 'I really dont know!'...This is why I call it the 'inconvenient truth', 'coz I still find it hard to accept that 'girls do change after marriage'! I dunno how much does it apply to a guy though!

APSRTC.in!!

There were days when I had to take my time out to hunt a nearby APSRTC counter to get a ticket booked. The guy out there at the counter always seems to be a resentful employee., showing cold shoulders to the customers most of the times, with his all time favorite answer being 'not available'. Amidst the tough competition of various private carriers offering very good customer service with their very good online reservation facilities, APSRTC finally came up with a website.

It did not take a long time after the initiative has been launched for the people to realize that nothing has changed at all! Now, the all time favorite response of the website is 'Server is busy. Please try after sometime...sorry for the inconvenience ( code: MxUXCD ).' To hell with his sorry.. Damn!I need service, not sorry!!

This is really very irritating, especially when you are in a hurry to check some information. For those of you wondering if I am being very impatient, let me explain myself. I gave the website a complete one year(Yes, that's correct. One complete year..) and still..today when I tried(Not once or twice, sixteen times over a span of 1 hour) to logon to the website, I get this ****ing response and I am really mad at them.

No wonder, our RTC is always running under loss. As a customer, what do u wish to choose? Ofcouse, a very good customer service. Its high time they re-look into their functioning and get some motivation from irctc.in(though it gives a server busy at times, we know its genuine..) or their competitors and be its own savior, lest no one can save it!!

Kittys they r named!!

This is my first blog, after my status changed from being 'single' to 'mingled' :D Yes, there is a huge gap between my last blog and this one.. Amidst so many changes, it happens u see :) I have to say that I tried to open this very dear page of mine to put it my running thoughts umpteen number of times. Well, needless to say I wasn't successful in that. However, I am back now... Lets see how I go about this time..

One of the major happening things that I see here in Vijayawada is 'kitty'. From an old man to a kid, everyone is part of one or the other kitty. Aww.. there are heaps of them! I never heard about them either in Hyderabad or in Bangalore. Not sure if its because, I dont have any of my friends or acquaintances who were part of them, or because they never existed in those places. Whatever it might be, these kittys here are categorical, i.e, Family kittys, gents only kittys and ladies only kittys. The get-togethers are normally held on sundays.

I happened to attend a family kitty called 'Walkers kitty' which was held in Haailand, on the Vijayawada-Guntur highway. My MIL, FIL, Vijay and myself went to the venue. Haailand is a water world, with a few games to play around, junk to eat over, shopping place to get looted with unreasonable prices and heaps of trees-all made of plastic for the people to suffocate and sweat all through. Four of us had a look around the place and reached the conference room, which thankfully was centralized AC, where the kitty will shortly commence.

The huge hall was divided into two sets. One set was for the women to sit and another set was for men. Oh yes, I went to a so called family kitty where the family was separated into men and women!! The kitty was very very disorganized. There were games being conducted for the people and no one seemed to pay any attention to the mike. Tell u what? It was worse than a very boring annual meeting addressed by some big shot. I am not sure if a kitty is just supposed to be very informal.. or very chaotic. To sum it up, the first kitty I attended here was a disaster as far as I am concerned and I dint like it at all...

Tirupati trip, yet again

This is the third time I walked up the hill from Tirupati to Tirumala. This trip however secured a very special place for itself in the list of my memories. We covered it in the shortest time of 4.5 hours. Surprisingly it seemed less tiring comparatively. Not sure whether the reason is due to the fact that I am pretty much acquainted with the hill or the vibrant energy of complacency in walking hand in hand with my life partner did the magic.

Being considerate to all the walking pilgrims, they gave a direct darshan ticket, which promises a 'very quick' darshan. Hold on to your curiosity till I tell u what this quick practically means. Tirumala, such a sacred place it is. I don't know if the way people and the crowd are being managed is the best that could be done, considering the huge numbers of pilgrims who visit the temple every day or if there are better ways of managing. There were two queues there at the vaikuntam entrance - one for the sheeghra (Rs.300/-) and one for the pilgrims who walked up the hill. Both the queues were not moving by the time we reached there. The in-charge, when asked about the timings when the queues will be released said that the former will be opened at 9PM whereas the later would be opened at 8PM and will take very less time for the darshan and will be quick and direct. Thanks to him, the rest of our relatives deferred the darshan to the following day. Vijay and I joined the direct darshan line at 8PM since both of us had the quick darshan tickets.

The sheeghra darshan queue was opened at 8:15PM and the other line where both of us queued up was released only at 8:45PM. Not sure if this was a sudden change or the in-charge who gave us the information misguided us either deliberately or unknowingly. No announcements what so ever happen there. The people are always left behind with various question marks on their faces, and the rumors spreading like a grape-yard. I don't know if the management really wants it this way or would it cost too much to set up the infrastructure for an announcement system that it is not affordable.

Isn't temple supposed to be unbiased and impartial and treat all the people - the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterates, the class and the mass in the same way? If an VIP is visiting the temple, he or she is doing it for his or her own interest. Hence, this is considered as his personal work. How ethical is it for him to stop the entire crowd (atleast a few thousands) for almost half an hour for his own personal interest of visiting the God at peace all alone?? Atleast, if there is a set time which says, from so and so time to so and so time(could span for half an hour to one hour) all the lines will be held, if there is a VIP visiting the temple then, which is announced and documented and known to the public that is understandable. But, its truely irksome if the whole line has to just wait at which ever time whoever comes with a VIP tag.

Amidst all this, there was a group of around 10 people who spoke in a native accent of Kannada, who came with the sole aim of pushing the people ahead of them forward and drive a few kids to cry out of suffocation and disturb the peace of the entire line. I tried out my Kannada skills to tell them not to rush and that they wont gain anything more than10 minutes by thrashing all the people around. Instead, they can cooperate and all of us can have a peaceful time. All my efforts proved futile. Not sure if my Kannada was that bad or their determination was that strong. Thanks to the management for making only 10 percent of the fans hanging there functional. Not sure if the rest of them are really non functional due to some issue or were not switched on with any definite intention. Vijay tried to tell a few guys out there to turn the fans on at the very least and that will be a big favor to all of us. They listened to him patiently and left on their way with zero action towards the petition. The only thing that I don't like about Tirumala temple is the fact that there is absolutely NO transparency what so ever. Is there any one at all who can question the management and the way things are being handled? If yes, are they really doing it? or should we wake them up and remind them of their duty?

We somehow managed through and got across being pushed from all the sides. There are a few people from TTD staff standing right in front of the Lord, who are trained for dragging people and throwing them aside without even bothering whether they have fallen down and broken any of their parts or have balanced and intact. If the crowd is peaceful, they cannot digest that fact. They have to create a havoc by taking charge of pushing people aside and creating a chaotic atmosphere., without which their day becomes incomplete. By God's grace, we had a decently good darshan at about 11:55PM. Well, that was a quick darshan with great regards and concerns to the pilgrims who walked up the hill for all of you who dint know what a quick darshan meant(4 complete hours).

Its really high time some one took the initiative of waking up all the people who have the authority of questioning things and thus helping a great deal with a few small amendments which can mean a lot to the people.

Almost died!

Have u ever had this experience of very narrowly escaping death??? I had it on 4th June 2010 with the grace of the captain in Singapore airlines from Singapore to Bangalore. It was a huge aircraft with lots of people in it. The takeoff at Singapore was pretty smooth. I was enjoying the ride while watching their latest collection of movies - Karthik calling Karthik and Alice in the wonderland., till the captain announced that we would be landing in the next 20 mins and asked the cabin crew to prepare for the landing, which included snatching away all our headphones.

While the total attention was on the flight and its landing, there was a free fall of the flight for a few seconds(I guess a few seconds.. dont even remember how long it was for). The people in the flight started shouting in their native languages. I heard someone shouting in telugu - 'Ayyo.. Padipothundhi flight. awww... ', which means 'Oops.. the flight lost it balance and is falling down.. awww...'. Then the balance was maintained and before even people could come out of the shock, there was another free fall within a few secconds.. This time, I also shouted. My heart was almost in my hand. I dont even know what was the pulse rate. It was beating very rapidly. I just dint know what to do? I am going to die miserably with a free fall from atleast a thousand metres. How do I react? I was looking for someone from the cabin crew. None of them were around. Was wondering if I should pull out my life jacket from under the seat and jump out of the emergency door. My mind was blank. All I could utter was - 'Om Namo Narayanaya'. The flight had so many people - it had kids, young people like me and old people. If I got so scared, I dont have to tell you about the rest of the categories.

With all this havoc, the pilot continued the flight without even bothering to announce whether we will all land in single pieces on this mother Earth, still in a position to breathe its air... or if we are in danger. He dint give a damn about all the chaos and fear of the crowd. If you are flying 5 mins behind the schedule, that makes an announcement. If you are taking off 2 mins late due to a lot of aircrafts waiting for take off before you, that becomes another announcement. If there is turbulence in the atm, there will be yet another disturbance when you are watching a movie due to their announcement. When such things which really wont make a difference or which wont mean much are being announced, its really strange that people are left to die with fear and no one made a mention of such a situation.. If this is the case with Singapore airlines, dont even ask me about the rest of the airlines.

Now, I still dont know whether he was practising for some aircraft games on the sky with all of us in it, or whether it was really unavoidable and he had to take a free fall twice due to whatever conditions. The landing was too bad. It was so rash. But we were all glad that we had indeed landed with all parts intact. With the increasing number of planes and the airlines, is the quality proportionately decreasing? With the flight accidents and misfortunes going up rapidly, are enough measures being taken to prevent them or are the lessons just limited as grass for the media to feed on and people to talk about for a few days???

Red bus: Epitome of pathetic customer service!

With deep regrets I write this blog today.. for the simple fact that Red bus was a start up by BITSians. As a BITSian, its quite natural to be a bit partial to your own college.. I had a very bad customer service from them, this not being the first one, but the one that made me reach the yield point/breaking point. Below is the mail that I had sent to their customer service.. I honestly dont know if this means anything to them.. or if they even care about this. But, I want it give it my best shot to let them know that they were bad and they do need improvement. If they already knew it and decided not to bother about it, well, God save them.. because they will be left with no more customers on one fine day. Its high time they realize the fact - ' If you dont take care of the customers, someone else will'

To whoever it may concern,

I know that red bus has been started by BITSians. As a BITSian, I expect atleast some standards to be maintained. The customer service is worst than poor.

I last called the redbus in Bangalore to get 3 tickets booked(1 for forward journey and 2 for return). Inspite of repeatedly confirming the return date, I received a message on my mobile mentioning the confirmation of the ticket for a wrong date. I had to call back again and wait endlessly for someone to answer my call for something which is the fault of the red bus service person, who ever booked the ticket. Its a shear time waste to me. Instead of going into the website of the private bus company, say kesinesi directly and booking the ticket, the only reason why I go through red bus is to save some time in entering all the details over their website. However, my purpose is not solved and my time was even wasted.

After booking the ticket, I told very specifically that I need the ticket delived on the same day, because I was flying to Indonesia the next day, which is a sunday and is holiday for red bus. I had booked my tickets on a saturday morning and given a whole lead time of 1 day. I dint get the tickets delivered. I was promised that the soft copy of the tickets will be delivered after the hard copy is handed over. I organized one of my friends to pay the money and collect the tickets. I dint receive any soft copy of the tickets. My friend again called up and requested them to send across my tickets to my email ID. They still dint! I dont understand what kind of a customer service this is? If you cannot deliver, please admit in advance so that I will look for alternatives.

I really don’t know if this email means anything to you guys.. But I just want to let u know that u lost your good will… Definitely, I will never book with red bus again after all this inconvenience caused not only to me, but my friend at India who has been following up for me and wasting his time. I will communicate this experience with all my friends in the corporate world and make sure that they dont face similar experience by choosing red bus.. and waste their valuable time..