Food and Delivery Bikes

Do you remember the gas man pedaling down the street delivering gas cylinders to every house down the road ? It takes about 10 minutes per house, he delivers them, checks them and takes back the empty cylinder. You sign and pay him with a tip and sometimes tea or coffee or a diwali bonus.

If you grew in South India, you would have heard this every morning when you woke up in the  native language of the place " thakkali, vengayam, ara keerai, mulai keerai..." a repeated poetic sound of the vegetable monger. So many other street vendors also do the same for fruits, candies, ice cream, and any more.. driven in a tri cycle or a four wheeled push cart or some workable version of it.

In the many cities of India you would have seen street carts filled with vendors selling pani puri, dosa, selective foods, fruits, juices and even cosmetics. These are also a modified push cart with 4 wheels. Most of them will be pushed back or driven back (if it is tricycle) home in the night and brought back to the same or different location in the morning for sales once again.

If you have not read the news here it is  NPR Food Bikes News

Reading the news, all of the above came to my mind and it occurred to me, a concept that was there forever in India and many other Asian countries seems to start flourishing in US now. And when it did they write a huge post analyzing the benefits. These carts and bicycles have been saving so much of energy and pollution all these years. They have made it possible for the vendors to door-deliver goods to their customers. Looks like Asia has been having a sophisticated life style by these standards :).

A Walk (on the Water) to Remember!

On a spring weekend I was driving past a lake right along the freeway. Pictures flashed in front of my eyes on how the lake looked a couple of weeks back. The unbelievable transformation surprised me and the memories of the day came rushing to me.

Past: It was a warm day (around 40 degree F) close to the end of winter. We were driving on the familiar freeway to get to the restaurant for lunch. Seeing the frozen lake and all those people who were fishing we got excited to have a closer look. So after lunch we took a detour and went to the lake. It was a small beautiful lake, 95% frozen with small puddle of water starting to show up and for the fish in that small patch hundreds of sea gulls were flying above. Some of the brave men were ice fishing on it.

After a few skeptical withholds, we let go of the fear and stepped on to the ice sheet. The imaginary ice movement scared us, but we walked forward. We reached a few hundred feet from the shore seeing holes in the ice, trying to judge the depth of the ice, noticing the pecked fish and capturing the sea gulls in the camera.

There we met one of the sporty fishermen. He was all so excited to see us and showed us the ice fishing tactics. Of course he ridiculed the unfit clothing and shoes we had on and warned us to get back to the shore before we freeze. After learning to make a ice fishing hole and sharing his strange adventures which included horror filled ice fishing stories we came back to the shore all safe!

Back to Present, those moments though one might consider as stupidity I still would call it one of my life time experiences. I would have never dared to walk on the water otherwise. Inspite of the sheet of ice that was holding me up I was worried deep in my heart what if it gave way :) Now, I drove past the lake that is brightly shining as a vast blue stretch!

To all you Mac Lovers there...

I am sorry if it upsets you in any way, but just could not stop myself from enjoying this nicely written story on the IPad. I already have one other person pour out his feelings in where's my slate. But this is really nice, it’s true and genuine. If you still have not bought it or thinking about buying it you might want to check out this post in msnbc first :)

Well my personal take on this, Jobs is pretty good with Marketing and Sales. He has carefully suppressed or avoided some features in the initial versions of his products and later introduced them as new versions of the same product, increasing the temptation for people to buy it. But in this case he released iPhone which even non-Mac fans loved & appreciated and then released a simpler, clumsier IPad which even Mac fans hate now. I am not a Mac lover, but I went and had a demo in one of the apple stores on this device. The obvious killers for me were

    1. Lack of proper Bluetooth - the one that is in the device does not support everything.
    2. Lack of inbuilt Camera - come on this is silly, the main use is for browsing and chatting, why would they make it without a camera?
    3. No media card readers - Like SD cards etc.,
    4. Too pricy  for what it offers.
In short I decided against buying it atleast for now, because I get most of the capabilities in my Nokia Smart Phone and HP laptop :), I might consider the next version of iPhone though.

Has the Technology really Advanced?

Today I was contemplating on this. With so much of scientific advancement and technology innovations still only a pocket of the business really uses them all. May be it is still expensive for most businesses or may be they are happy and accustomed to the old way of doing things. Sometimes it could just be the worry on ROI. The following incident is what made me think about it.

I called the customer service of UPS to hold a package. The Customer Service Representative (CSR) tells me that it’s done and someone from the location that holds the package will call me on the pick up timing with in the hour. After waiting for over an hour I called them back. This time a new CSR picks up, she reads out a note for this package "Unable to contact or leave a message to the pick up location". Then she tells me that she will try to leave a message and they will contact me again and I should be able to pick it up by that day. It was 8:00 pm, I got skeptical and asked her what is the closing time of the location, she tells me 7:00 pm (Ah!!! please commonsense people). After trying every possible way to make her understand that it is not humanly possible that I can pick it up that day because of the timings I gave up! I had to hang the phone and stop myself from screaming at her.

The next day I decided to stick the info notice to my door and on my way to work gave them a call around 8:30 am. Again a new CSR picks up and after listening to the situation for 2 mins she agrees to remove the hold and have it delivered, but tells me it will be delivered only the following day. I was like "What the heck?” Surprisingly she tells me there is no way she could directly contact the location or can give me a phone number and has to leave a message. Also she says in this case they will take one day to process at the minimum. I was like "WOW!!!” no use just told her the whole process totally sucks and she says "Have a nice day!" and hangs up. Would I? Now I have to go to this location and pick up anyways.

This is when I started wondering. UPS is one of the established companies in US, but even they do not communicate properly and do not use the technology in any useful way. So what could have been done... 

1. The CSR who handled it first could have called me back (ofcourse I gave the number) and explained the situation and removed the hold.  
2. The communication between the CSRs and the Location that handles the packages could have been much better - using e-mails, internal messages, even a phone would have worked.
3. More options like canceling the hold would make the package go back into the delivery queue immediately etc.,
4. Each time a new CSR picks up its hard to explain the whole thing again, wouldn't it be easier if the previous person leaves a note? 

Ironically, in my case a company that delivers posts (also a form of communication) has a bad communication network within. Hope they realize it before diminishing in the competitive market!

Spring Romance

It was a beautiful spring evening and I was going down the local streets of my town for some grocery shopping. It was a breezy day and the sun was sinking down into the horizon. In a nearby tree I noticed a small bird hopping close to another one. For a minute there I was perplexed. I was witnessing the mating ritual of one of the bird species which some scientists would be so eager to capture. As nature has it, these things are little weird in human perception.

The male bird was taking cautious steps pecking her, then on the bark, and then heading closer. The female finally noticed him and edged for a beak peck. After a few she moved back. He pursued. She hopped on to the nearest branch, he proceeded as well. After showing a few more signs of rejection she flew of from the tree. Poor guy he pecked the bark a few times and then headed his own way... The whole drama would not have lasted for more than 2 minutes, but it unfolded a romantic story with a twist. Such a wonderful event to see.

Is Partial Truth a Lie?

Have you ever wondered on this simple thing? Let me start by explaining what I mean here as partial truth. It’s more like omitting part of the truth or let’s says misstating the truth with the twist of words. Here is an example.

Girl: "Hey why you are not at the stadium with your friends, isn't your favorite team playing today?"

Guy: "Yes, they are. But I would rather be with the girl of my dreams." (Fact: I did not get tickets!!)

It might sound romantic in this context, so where is it bad? Mmm... lets analyze further. The public rely on media to get the news around the world, which includes everything happening on earth from science & technology to business & politics (yes they pair!). Big businesses also depend on the media for their advertisement and marketing.

Now the Media as we expect should act as a good liaison and bring us the quality information, but then the media itself needs to propagate its sales. Now comes the act of the tricky devil - media exaggerates, modifies, twists and omits the truth based on its likes for and cash flows from the "party" involved creating hot news and a selling point for them. Party could be political, company, business establishment or even an individual. Everyone knows this on the back of their minds but have you ever wondered how much of an effect it has on the society? How many things are decided just because the papers said so? How many companies lost their share values on this? The more we analyze the more unethical it sounds. Of course it is!! When we were kids we were taught Truth is just Truth any other form of it is plain cold lie. But when it comes to the business world, somehow they succumb to the market politics and deep played economics and alter the definition of Truth itself to suit their needs.

What I have seen happen around the globe is that the media slowly become a marketing portal for the firms that they support (indirectly supported by the firm - is this highly skilled version of symbiosis). It is now Mardi gras season for the media world, chewing in the quarter results, promotion and pay hike announcements from many companies. Use caution and try to get the first hand information when you read these instead of believing what you see in papers. Like Valluvar says:

“Whatever your hear from whomever,To analyze the truth is wisdom’s fair”

“Knowledge is to find the truth of things, Of whatever nature and kind it may be”

When you want to go Left,

the World seems to like Right. What this means here is...

• When you are waiting for 25G in the bus stop you keep seeing it go in the opposite direction and on your side only M49s are showing up.
• When you are waiting to catch a Taxi in New York City, every one of them has a passenger already, and when you decided to take a walk then you see empty ones zooming past :P  
• Also just when you are late for the meeting and driving fast, you are stopped at every traffic light with a RED, and when you want RED so much so that you can turn and grab that water bottle from the back seat its all bright GREEN.  
• When you call a whole gang for dinner at a wonderful restaurant they make you wait for ever or the food is unpalatable.
• Just when you are so bored and finally beat your laziness and get off the couch and make it to the DVD shop with 2 movies in mind both will be out (!$*!).
• Or may be when you want to eat your most favorite dish and go to the only restaurant that sells it, it is closed for renovation and you decide to try another one at home instead and drive back to find that the main ingredient needed is over. 
• Even better, when you are hungry and late for a 1:00 pm meeting and hurry down to get lunch at 12:55 pm and when you try to get back all the 6 elevators are going in the opposite direction (what are the odds!!!)

Though some of these might sound implausible, only people who have experienced it would know how it feels...like the world is trying to pull a prank on you, Murphy chose you to be his toy for the day... But then there would also be days you get on to 25G with no wait, catch the NYC Taxi with one hand wave, pass through all green lights and make it to the meeting, enjoy a delicious dinner with friends, watch just that movie you want, eat what you craved to your heart's fill, infact make it to the 1:00 pm in the elevator :) and even wonder if Murphy is out sick ;)

Have you faced any of these or similar ones ever? I have.