Thought Garage

Got some last minute shopping ( literally its not last minute yet, but let’s say last weekend before I leave) to do.  Some digital cameras, a portable DVD Player and a Digital Photo Frame are the once left. In stead of running to Best Buy or Frys, I looked up on Amazon and got great prices. But one issue, how soon I can get them from Amazon, without hitting the wallet hard. Amazon Prime trial membership came to the rescue. If you sign up for Amazon Prime, a $79 per year service, Amazon will ship most products to you door with a 2 day shipping or 1 day shipping for an additional $3.99 per piece. Amazon is running a trial offer, where we can try Amazon Prime for a month for free. Yahoooo ! Signed up for the Trial membership and ordered all I needed. Wonderful. Update : Happy with the service, I ordered some more in the next two days, all expected to be delivered in time.

Whenever people go on vacation, they leave an Auto Responder Email that starts the day vacation begins.  So on one fine day, you want some important information from a colleague and send an email. Boom. You get an auto responder that reveals the vacation plan. Then you have to scramble for an alternative, dig for yourself or follow the escalation route. So, I thought, I will act little sensible and help my team plan better. At my work, on a daily basis I work with colleagues from multiple global locations; India, China and France (no more teams in Russia now). I thought it would be lot more helpful to inform about my Vacation at least a week ahead so that we all can plan work around me. So I set my Auto Responder, exactly one week ahead , informing I will be out of office from next week and contact so and so in my absence. I have no clue that my advance notice, with intent to plan better, would create such a stir. Got swamped with a bunch of emails quickly asking for ‘kind’ of an expla...

Its no longer a news that News Papers worldwide are struggling for survival. Though Internet is still a luxury for most in India, Indian news papers are struggling, thanks to the onslaught of budding news channels, to stay relevant and make money while doing so. No wonder, they are selling more ad space than ever. Inspired by web?

Its Diwali now..., in fact whenever you want if you are in India. No restrictions. No need for special permissions. No proof of special occasions. Enjoy whenever you want. Pictures taken from the first generation iPhone.

No Fun. No Physical activity. No extra-curricular activities. About a 17 hour busy schedule. Every day. For a second Grader? Its ridiculous, to say the least, that a typical day in the life of a “Second Grader” lasts 17 hours and is no different than a busy professional. Why in the world, a second grader has to work so hard ? My brother’s son is a second grader, so I looked at his typical day but I suspect every other kid out there in India has a similar hectic schedule (may save a little on commute on residential schools, but compensated by 3 additional additional extra hours for better grades). Wake up at 6 AM Daily Chores + Breakfast + Get ready for school by 7.00AM Take School Bus at 7.00AM and reach by 9AM to school 9AM – 12AM School 12 to 1PM  Lunch Hour 1PM to 4PM School 4PM to 5.30PM Extra Study Hours for advancing (???????) Grades  5.30PM to 7.30PM In the bus back home Chores and Dinner by 8.30PM Finish Home Work by 9.30PM ...

Thanks to ‘the way’ everything works in India and grandeur vision and strategies of us, the people and our leaders, this is that time of the year to reap some special benefits. Yes, I am talking about so called ‘scheduled’ power outages. Technically they are scheduled as we all know there must be outages, though the schedules change everyday and will be revealed only on the following day. On 1st of March, we had a 14 hour power cut , first day of this year to mark the record. We thought we were quite well prepared this time, with installing an inverter and batteries enough to supply essentials for about 6 hours in a stretch. But, we were wrong. Power cuts are happening in such a haphazard frequency that these systems could barely charge and bailing out with crying beeps within a couple of hours. We thought 14 hours will be our worst day and things would improve. But defying our naive optimism, we had a 17 hour power cut on 2nd of March. Now, we officially lost all hope that inverte...

Yesterday was quite an eventful day as I came to know Lufthansa Pilots were going on strike for 4 days and 800 flights a day have been cancelled that included my flight towards Frankfurt. After a little scrambling, I got my tickets rebooked for the next day on 26th Feb, 2010. But, news stories that Pilots may extend their strike if their demands are not met are still in back of my mind and were little troubling. It is all a Happy news finally. Pilots suspended their strike, and Lufthansa will resume its flights and get back to normal by 26th Feb, 2010. I will stick with my once altered schedule of 26th itself. The New York Times : Striking Lufthansa Pilots Agree to Suspend Walkout

Just when I thought, everything is going on as planned and was browsing happily, one headline caught me by surprise: Germany braces for Lufthansa Strike by The New York Times. I was literally shocked to read that Pilots of Lufthansa are going on strike for four days starting from 22nd Feb to 25th Feb (4 days) and about 800 flights a day will be cancelled. What was more shocking than the news itself,  I have received absolutely no communication from either my Travel agent or Lufthansa about this cancellation. Here is the screenshot of that news Article that I accessed through Google News on Sunday 21st February 2010 around 8AM in the morning. The New York Times: Germany braces for Lufthansa Strike So, I browsed more stories on the web, went to Lufthansa website. They left a note on their website and included a list of flights they will be operating in these 4 days. I checked the listing, and my flight wasn’t included. So its now official that my flight got cancelled too....