Tech tales

Hi,

Yesterday in Bombay the Airtel connections were down due to some reason and i noticed people spent more than 4 hours just calling up the customer care to check when the network will be up. The quintessential cell phone has taken up the most important place in our lives. Its unbearable to live without it.

Nobody prefers to walk up to their colleagues sitting 5 feet away to inform/share something – they put it in mail or use a communicator! When the internet connection is down for a few minutes, thats the only time people actually look away from the screens of their computers and notice there are humans around. All for the sake of technology which is just distancing us away from each other. I wonder “is technology for us or are we for technology”

At a seminar i recently attended, i noticed participants were more interested in mails coming into their blackberry’s and pda’s than what the speaker had to share, or which city or country the other participants were from. Lunch was another excuse to catch up on all missed calls (most of them they would realise would have been from bank agents tryin to sell their newly launched credit card- hehe) and provide instructions to office. The laptops seemed to be the only ones to enjoy undivided attention in the hall. Some participants were polite enough to lower down their laptop screens when spoken to directly (modern day etiquetty i guess).

At parks i notice couples walking – each talking on his/her respective cell phone – wats the point of spending time together? When we need opinion on something we (instead of walking up to the friendly neighbour) prefer to look up on the internet. We have no time to meet childhood friends from the neighbourhood, but have enough time to add unknown faces as friends on the orkut account. We go out for dinner and stay home for a movie – strange times we are in.

I think its time we started celebrating ” no phone/laptop day” just to remind ourselves that we still are very human.

-

Saba

Humouring the uniform :)

Hi,

I work as a consultant (gyan giver/someone who snatches away your wristwatch, asks you the time and charges you in return to tell the correct time) at one of the world’s top four consulting firms at their Mumbai office. Our main role is to develop and sell solutions on strategy and operations (which might or might not work..!). Like that of doctors – to diagnose a problem and provide solutions, but mainly what we do can be called similar to what wellness clinics do, make you feel you need a better life and then sell you somestuff exhorbitantly priced that might not work. Although not entirely similar consulting also has its share of lighter moments, one such is given below –   

 A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, ‘If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?’

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, ‘Sure, Why not?’

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany . Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-Tech Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.’
‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,’ says Bud.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the Bud says to the young man, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?’ The young man thinks about it for a second and then says,  ’Okay, why not?’ ‘You’re an Consultant’, says Bud. ‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the yuppie, ‘but how did you guess that?’ ‘No guessing required.’ answered the cowboy. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows…this is a herd of sheep. . . Now give me back my dog.

Saba

Mumbaikar – Endurance unlimited?!

Hi there,

I live in the business capital of India..Mumbai “the city that never sleeps” previously and widely known as Bombay. Mumbai lies on the western coast of India. It was a group of seven islands in the Arabian Sea which lies off the northern Konkan coast on the west of Maharashtra state in India. These seven islands which were once separated by creeks and channels were filled and bridged over the years by the inhabitants and has now taken shape as the city of dreams “Mumbai” (i call it Fool’s Paradise).The south-west monsoon winds have been kind enough but you will still sweat a lot in the humid weather.

This is a city which gives you money, fame, name and prestige – but no time to live. No time to smell the flowers on your journey. Every day people are struggling to live here, this city takes away your appetite for life by making it so difficult that you start surviving .

Mumbai locals..you cant live without them..

Any world class research on space dynamics can be proved incorrect in a packed mumbai local. No genuies of a scientist can prove how the hell so many people fit into that space! This is how a day in the life of an average mumbaikar (me) begins. Rushing through honking traffic and 4 letter words from all unknown to reach the very badly maintained (or absolutely not!) railway stations. There i have to don the avatar of Razia Sultan or you wont get into any train at all. through a 4 feet wide door there are around 100 people trying to get out and at the same time another 50 are trying to get in – and the train stops for 30 secs only! So unless i push and shove and keep shouting “sarka re” (mumbaiya for :move aside people),let the others fall or get hurt you are not going anywhere. I get in (phew) only to find in one square feet area there are around 10 people stamping on each others feet, and i feel i will suffocate and die and this is the time left for me to call up my loved ones to let them know i really loved them, but how do i get my phone, i am frozen in ice. Now i know what “moving a muscle” means .

 The huge herd of (i dont want to say anything here as i am part of it too) get out at the same time at the halt of the train and well…the best part is i dont have to do anything, i am pushed automatically out of the door.But then again i have arrived on yet another railway station, and so have thousands of others. That is the beginning of the morning walk, a 15 min walk to get out of the station among many other shoves and pushes from people who are running against time to reach their respective destinations. (They make me feel: I dont want to running so fast that forget where i want to go). The famous mumbai black and yellow cab story starts now..the cab drivers follow discipline and you have to wait in a line (of around 100 people or more at any time) for the cab to arrive, at a time only 4 people get in – Thats a shared service model of the cab business. If you are very lucky and all your stars are in a favourable position you might just get a non-shared cab but thats a rarity. And then its another 30-45 min ride in a cab whose every single part is making a different noise.These noises combined with the noise from the traffic and hawkers can make metallica go mad . And your day has not even begun.

But this is what makes the mumaikar very high on endurance, travel can make you tolerant but only living in Mumbai can make you resistant to any hardship in life. This city has taught me life like never before.

Cheers!

Saba

Welcome to Chronicles of the morning breeze

Hi,

The refreshing morning breeze flowing from the east which welcomes you to a bright new day – thats what i am..Saba…its an arabic name meaning “subah ki hava”..morning breeze. And this is my blog. Here you will know about my everyday life, my musings, contemplations, my ideals, and all other regular crap ..happy reading

 

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