To FLIPKART or NOT

Today is one such day where in, whatever book I went searching for in Jayanagar 4th block was missing. I went to Book Paradise 2 times and then to Sapna Book House 2 times.

At the end after roaming for 45 mins, between one and the other book store, I ended up sore loser, except that something interesting happened, the second time when I went to Sapna Book House.

Well, when my search for some technical books in 4th block jayanagar, at the 2 most popular book stores left me high and dry (because of unavailability) I felt like kicking myself. I was gutted that, here I am roaming in the sunlight with nothing to get. Also when I referred sapnaonline.com for the book I wanted, I could see the search returning an entry saying; there was something which was available. But when I went there they told me, the book was neither there in this branch nor any branch across Bangalore.

They told me, they had sent the book back to the publisher, since no one was purchasing the book. Then HOW COME the website search ended up with a book result. Looks like something is out of sync.

I was so angry that, I thought never I shall come in search of such books, rather get it done via FLIPKART. And believe me, to my surprise, at SAPNA book HOUSE, the second time when I went, I bumped into one guy who was carrying a bag with a FLIPKART name embedded on to it. He was depositiing his helmet over the baggage deposit counter. On close examination, I could see his FLIPKART, ID card.

So I asked him,  " are you supplying books for Sapna book house as well ( rather a pretty pretty dumb question I guess. ) "

He told me " I have a procurement list, and I am trying to get those books over here in Sapna book house. " VOILA... ( i thought it was the other way round, how dumb I am ).

Ok never mind. Now I asked him,

" I am looking for some books which are unavailable even at Sapna Book House and thought of getting it from FLIPKART, but now since you too come here, I guess, I wont get it in FLIPKART as well "

to which he replied

" We procure books from different places, if not this, someone / somwhere else "  or they might ask Sapna Book Stall to get the book from the publisher and get it delivered at our place.

But where does the word PROFIT come in this scenario. Never mind, its their business model. I have lots of things to worry about, apart from trying to figure out whose making profit over here and one thing for sure is I would think 100 times before venturing into any book stall in search of a programming book..

So now its time for FLIPKARTING..

Cheers

UPDATE:: Just did a search on flip-kart website about one of the books which I was looking for.
It was listed for Rs 699, on the catalogue of the publishers at Book Paradise (+ 15% discount given by these guys ), the same thing costs a whopping, Rs 1700 at yours truly flip-kart. [IMPORTED VERSION]. The low cost book has not LANDED in India I guess.. :D

Just called up book paradise and told them to get me a copy from the publisher. I do not want an import by any means, costing me almost 3 times the money. [Imported version you see..]

UPDATE 2:: Neither did I go to the book stall, nor ordered the same on FLIPKART. Found the same on the internet. You guys know how ( If not leave a comment ..I will tell you). Now its time to get print outs of the selected chapters at office. So all in all its a free exercise.. Cheers

New post using my brand new keyboard

This post is dedicated to my new Logitech Keyboard, praying for its longer durability. I do not want to get one in anytime soon. Also my intention of writing 100 posts for the year comes alive once again.

I know 100 is a difficult number considering we are in the middle of November, but will try to write something atleast in the meantime.

Cheers

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Part 2 - Interaction with END USERS

This one is my favourite. I simply love LEANER AND FITTER team structures. So let me start with my abroad work experience.

While working in Singapore the team structure was very simple, I had a manager, who in turn had his manager and then there was the END USER or client who uses what we develop. I was lucky to be involved in meetings with end users several times [I learnt a lot out of it]. So now you can understand what is a leaner and fitter structure.

But over here in India its totally different.

There are so many people involved in the project that at the end of the day

1. we actually forget do we really have a client or are we developing prototypes or side projects.

2. the client gives requirement X and we end up implementing 1/X [inverse of  X] courtesy a phenomenon called CHINESE WHISPER .[rather, because of the number of stake holders, you see too many cooks spoil the broth. quote suits aptly].

There are so many people involved in one simple implementation, I would love to sum them all, like
a. program manager.
b. project manager.
c. technical manager.
d. group manager.
e. resource manager.
f.  project lead.
g. delivery manager.

I can actually see all these people involved in a small project, and mark my word, NONE AMONGST THESE ACTUALLY WRITE CODE, nor have any idea about TECHNOLOGY.

And by the way, correct me if I am wrong, these guys dont even take responsibility, if something goes wrong blame the developer and sit in a meeting room and spend the entire day doing ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS [ yeh I guess these guys are SIX SIGMA CERTIFIED, or rather PMP] while the poor developer [scapegoat] has to debug the issue all by himself and find a solution. The RCA done by these guys is of no use because the developer fixes something and something else breaks, so the cycle continues... I mean time to do RCA again.

They just crap crap crap, all the time and spend so much of time in meeting rooms and eat up a major chunk of the project bill or funding that the poor developer will have to COMPLETE the assignment in HALF the time. Believe me when these guys sit for a meeting all by themselves, their time goes unaccounted for, not a single time, I have seen any MINUTES OF MEETING from them.

PHEW..

too much to think about whether to continue in technical line or not or whether to continue in this stream or not.

Cheers,

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Part 1 - Time utilization

Disclaimer - I have no rights to use the word 'WE'. If anyone of you feel offended, please let me know, I shall change it to singular form.

Cheers, this is my first post about my work experience in India versus abroad. Its about time utilization.
I will try to write a few lines about how I end up spending my time while working in India while how I spent it while working in Singapore.

Well, here in India, we do enter time-sheet for say 9 hrs including 1 hr lunch, the question whether we work for so much time really has been around since I have started working (around 6 years back). I had always questioned do we end up working for 8 hrs (doing nothing personal work during this time). Well sorry to say the answer is a BIG NO NO...

Its sad to admit, we do all sorts of CRAPOLA in the allotted time.

Here is a list of things that stops  us from putting 8 hours flat out towards work.

1. Travelling to office is more like a pain in the ass.
     How can you expect us to start working as soon as we reach office, when we have spent so much of time traveling, people tend to relax for a while after reaching office, so there goes some time out of your hours work. [ Not all people travel long distances to work, but there are people who travel long distances and one among them is me.]

Working abroad - Will update shortly..

2. Reaching office late due to traffic -
        Well all of them if not everyday, someday atleast would encounter some traffic snarls while coming to office. I do encounter it everyday, even though its 7 30 am in the morning. This in turn upsets our mood at workplace and it takes time to set it right. So there goes some time out of your 8 hours.

Working abroad - Will update shortly..

3. Making weekend plans.
       Weekend starts on Friday evening But unfortunately whilst working in India, I have always felt, we start planning for weekend on Thursday only. Hence you can take for granted that some Fridays of the year are rest assured an UTTER WASTE. ZERO productivity. We end up wasting Thursday as well.

Working abroad - Well, while working abroad I would have been engrossed so much work that, there is no time to even think of weekend. I enjoyed work so much that, weekend takes a back seat. So there is less chances of taking time out to plan for a weekend .

4. Coffee breaks.
     Coffee breaks are the so called reasons to bond with your team members. But unfortunately we end up not only bonding with team mates talking about work related issues we are facing, but also end up talking so much about personal stuffs that we lose a pretty huge amount of time.

   While working in Singapore, I tried so many times to take a longer break, but honestly speaking everytime I failed, either due to
1. lack of friends.
2. loads of deliverables.
3. miscellaneous reasons.

I ended up with coffee breaks less than 10 minutes. So losing out on time due to coffee breaks was the last on the list while working abroad.

5. Meetings.
       One more brilliant way to waste productive time in a LEGAL way, no one can question you about the meeting, nor ANYONE has the GUTS to ask MINUTES OF MEETING. So anyone and everyone is free to attend a meeting or jump into a meeting room to do some discussion to pass time, knowing very well that there wont be any OUTCOME of this meeting.

While working abroad, I did work as a consultant and by the way meetings were so hard to come by, All interactions were work related and result oriented, there is no question of BEATING AROUND THE BUSH, trying to waste time as we end up doing here.
 

Cheers,

Working in India versus Working in Singapore - Introductory Part

Disclaimer - All the content in this post are out my personal experience. I had the privilege of working in Singapore for a while, which I absolutely loved, hence I am trying to jot down my experiences about working in India and working in Singapore or abroad for that matter.  Any resemblance to any characters or for that matter anything is merely coincidental. I am not trying to bring any sort of dispute between the two forms of things which I am comparing over here, its just my personal opinion. 

Here's me finding some time to write again. I wanted to write a series of posts on my work related thing, comparing what I did in India versus what I did in Singapore in a post or like a table comparing the both in an excel sheet.

But I do not know how to infuse an excel sheet into a blog post (nor want to edit HTML code trying to insert a table via HTML), hence thought of writing it as a series of points. Then I felt I can do this by writing it as a series of posts. Well, I do not know if I can write 100 posts for this year, but sure will try considering another couple of months left.

I wanted to write these posts while I was watching the movie Buddha Hoga Tera Baap, but unfortunately was engrossed in the movie so much that, could not write anything for 2 hours. Now that the movie is finished I can write my introductory post.

Post #1 - Time utilization while working in India versus overseas.


Cheers,

Not writing much these days.. why?

these days I am not writing much. The reasons are a plenty.

First excuse being, The PC where I hook up to the internet has its shift keys disfunctional. This means I cannot type in Capital letters. [ So where am I typing this from ?]. As a result, everytime I have to use my laptop. Considering the fact that I do not have a wireless router, you can imagine the pain of connecting the modem here and there again and again.

Secondly I am not finding much time to write. I do travel a lot during weekdays for work and weekends I do a lot of time pass.

Thirdly, I need to write a lot of posts which indirectly somehow is slowing me down. everytime I think of writing something or about some topic, another topic starts bothering me and I end up not writing anything.

I need to jot down all the posts which I am planning to write and then start to blog again before I lose track of them forever.

Cheers,

Back from a 1050 kms long drive

It has been a good month and a half for me now. I am able to do few things which I have always loved to do. Travel is one of them. At workfront, I have been able to code some complicated or not so easy stuffs which have really won some favor for me, considering the fact that I work as a consultant at an organization and not as a full time employee.

Regarding my travel, I made a recent trip to Hubli Dharwad and above all Yellamagudda, the temple of Lord Yellamma, our house Goddess. Then I visited the village where my mother grew up and stayed for 15 years. Also saw the ancient home where my mother grew up. All in all it was a fun experience coupled with a drive for about 1050 kms, first of its kind since I have owned my car.

I would like to thank God for making it happen. Apart from this, I also made short trips to Melkote, Ramanagaram, Big banyan tree. So a productive month for me both in professional and personal terms.

Cheers,