Layoffs, Airlines etc

Having seen the drama created by the massive layoffs at Jet Airways and the subsequent reinstatement of the staff, I now understand why the IT companies in India behave the way they do when it comes to retrenchment. They never admit to layoffs, it is always described as “performance related separation”. Initially, I had thought that it is related to their stock price, but now I realize it is to avoid getting the politicians involved.

As for Jet, I fear that it may not be around in its present form for much longer. Though the immediate crisis has been averted, the conditions continue to be as difficult as before and they will continue to hemorrhage money. They have also cut down their schedule drastically for the coming months, so I wonder what all these people are going to do?

Speaking of airline schedules, I had to fly to Chennai earlier this week at very short notice. To my surprise, the agent just came up with a couple of options for flights in the morning. It did seem like the airlines have drastically cut down on the short haul flights. The rates were astronomical as well, Kingfisher was quoting over 10K, they finally got me on a Jet flight at 5K. The days when all 3 of us flew round trip from Bangalore to Goa for 10K, seem like a very distant memory.

The other observation I had was the security check at Bangalore airport. The queue was atleast 50 people and according to a Jet employee, this was an everyday occurrence due to the huge number of flights that take off in a very short time period. If that was the case, I wonder why they do not double the number of security personnel for that time period to make life easier for the passengers?

Mumbai Pune photos

We had gone away for a week to Mumbai and Pune for Nisha's vacations. Here are some photos from the trip

Google Android

I watched the live stream of the T-mobile G1 launch, the first Android phone yesterday. The event was almost amateurish, a simple stage, photographers bunching around like they were at an Indian politician rally and there appeared to have been no preparation for possible questions, quite often the various gentlemen were looking around clueless while they figured out a response. You'd definitely never see this happening at an Apple event.

I never had any great expectations from the phone itself. In any case, it is not going to be launched in India anytime soon, but what I am excited about is the platform and the promise it holds. It is only a matter of time before the other partners start bringing their products into the market, and this is going to bring smartphones prices way down. 

The real potential of the platform is the software and the apps. Apple seemed to have that momentum and mindshare but given the restrictions on their SDK and the god-like power they hold over which apps get sold, that could be waning pretty fast. Though WinMo and Symbian have a huge developer community and lots of apps, I predict that Android will eclipse them quite easily.

Capgemini offsite meet

We went away to Kumarakom for 3 days of serious fun (er work). Here are some photos from the trip

Scariest flight yet

We had our group's annual strategy meeting at Kumarakom earlier this week (I will write about that and the Poovar visit soon). We returned last night and it was one of the scariest flights I had ever been on. When we took off, it wasn't too bad. But once they served dinner, it started moving around a bit, enough that they had to suspend the service. Then we hit a giant air pocket and the plane fell what seemed like a few hundred feet. Everyone was thrown up, only the seatbelts kept them on their seats. The dinner wasn't as lucky and plates and spoons and food was all over the cabin. The rest of the flight was bad, but luckily we didn't hit any more air pockets. Everyone was counting the minutes till we landed. As the pilot announced the landing, we began to relax and from the window, i could see the airport surroundings as we descended. But, there was no sound of the landing gear deploying and sure enough, we started to gain height again and were in full take off mode. There was no word on why this happened for around 10 minutes and this only heightened our fear that there was something wrong with the plane. After some time, the pilot came on and said that the conditions were too bad for landing and put on some music to calm the passengers. We stayed in the air for around 30 minutes more. All this time, it was raining heavily and the plane was getting thrown all over the place. People were very tense, many of them closing their eyes and praying for a safe landing. Finally, at 10:50, almost 90 minutes after we took off, the plane came in for the final landing. This time, the landing gear deployed properly and we made it safely to the ground.

Trip to Poovar

We signed up for a Club Mahindra membership last year, this gives us a week’s stay at any of the Club Mahindra resorts every year for the next 25 years. As part of the joining incentive, we got a 5 day free stay at a Club Mahindra resort and a 2 week free stay at any international resort. We used the Club Mahindra offer for a week’s stay at their resort at Poovar Kerala, which is near Trivandrum. The plan was to leave Bangalore on the 14th and return on the 21st of August and in the process celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary there. It didn’t exactly go to plan…

We’d decided to travel by train for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Nisha has never really experienced train travel and we wanted her to go on a longer train trip. Also, the train ticket cost me around 6K, whereas the cheapest flight tickets were almost 30K. As the train timings were extremely convenient, we decided that we can put the extra money to better use, like buying a new smartphoneJ

We set out on 14th evening, armed with umbrellas and raincoats, as we expected heavy rain in Kerala. As it turned out, the only rain that we saw was in Bangalore as we were waiting to board the train. For dinner, we finished off the delicious aloo paranthas that I’d ordered from our neighbourhood Punjabi dhaba. We reached Trivandrum right on time, around 12:00 pm and took a taxi to the resort, which was around 30 km away.

The resort is located on a river island right at the place where the river meets the Arabian sea, which meant that we had to take a boat to get to the resort. As we reached the resort, we passed the estuary where the river meets the sea. We also saw a few local boys swimming in the river, though none were doing so around the estuary, which we learnt was quite dangerous.

We had reservations for a floating cottage, which are built on a hollow concrete base and tethered to the shoreline. However, as these cottages were shutdown in the weeks prior to our arrival due to high tides and wind, they were not ready for occupation when we arrived. They put us up in a regular room, with a hammock in the balcony for a couple of days before we shifted to the floating cottage. In hindsight, that was a good break, as I was not very impressed with the cottage, which had quite a shabby feel to it. In contrast, the rooms were extremely impressive, spacious and neat.

We visited Kovalam beach on Sunday. It was a big letdown, the erosion was so bad that there was barely 20 feet of beach left and in many places, it was even less. The water was also quite rough and the lifeguards prevented anyone from venturing more than 10-15 feet into the water. We were hoping to have some bhelpuri or chaat items, but all the establishments at Kovalam seem to cater to the foreign tourist, all we could get was sandwiches. I am sure it is a much better place to visit during the season, but based on what I saw, I don’t see why it should deserve the fame that it has as one of the best beaches in India.

Other than the trip to Kovalam, we did not move out of the resort during our entire stay. Our usual routine was

- get up and have coffee
- have a heavy buffet breakfast
- relax for a couple of hours on the hammock
- Nisha an I would then hit the swimming pool for a couple of hours, while Vidya spent time reading
- Eat a heavy lunch
- Sleep for 2-3 hours
- Laze around till dinner
- Dinner was a light affair, we would typically order some phulkas and dal in the room
- Watch TV

With food and rest being the mainstay, it was no wonder that I found all my trousers getting much tighter when I returned back to Bangalore. The food was the typical resort food, a huge spread with many salads, curries and desserts. It would have been a dream 20 years back when I had an unlimited appetite, but times have changed and we tired of it in a couple of days. On the last day, it was a relief when we found that there was no buffet due to low occupancy.

The one major disappointment was the activity centre. On our previous stay at Coorg, the activity centre was bussing through the day with lot of things for children to do. Here, it was the exact opposite; it was a small dingy place where you were left to yourself. Luckily, the weather was glorious throughout and we could use the pool, or else Nisha would have been bored to death. In total, we spent almost 10 hours in the pool. She became great friends with a 8 year old girl Trisha from Mumbai, who took it upon herself to teach her to swim. Some progress was made, but there is still a long way to go.

By Monday, we had completely unwound and were really beginning to enjoy ourselves. However, it was not destined to last. There was a strike called by the left parties on the 20th, which was the day when we had to leave for Bangalore. The resort informed us that there would be no taxi service after 6 am on that day. So, we had a choice of waking up at 3:00 am and getting dropped to the station by 5:00 am or moving to Trivandrum the previous day and checking into a hotel near the station. The thought of waiting 7 hours in a station during a bandh was not very appealing, so we went for the latter option. We checked into the Comfort Inn Grand, which was around 2 km from the railway station, right on MG Road on the 19th. We left most of the luggage in the cloak room, the plan was that even if we don’t get transport to the station, we could always walk if we don’t have much stuff to carry.

The next morning, we woke up to the news trains were being stopped all over the state. We were in a quandary, do we check out, go to the station and find that our train was stopped, thus having a lengthy wait. Or do we wait it out at the hotel, thus running the risk of missing the train in case they started running again? We decided that I would go alone to the station at 10:00 to get a real assessment and depending on the situation, we would take a call. In the worst case, we’d just stay put for another day and take a flight to Bangalore on the 21st. On the way, I found that MG Road, which was choc-a-block with traffic the previous evening was completely free. At the station, the person at the information desk informed me that our train was running on schedule and was slated to leave on time. I hurried back to the hotel, hoping that they would be able to organize a private vehicle for us to get to the station. Unfortunately, they had no vehicles available or did not want to take a chance. So, now our only option was to walk. If I had not gone earlier, I would have just not taken the chance, but having seen that the police were out in force throughout our route to the station gave us the confidence to go ahead. We reached the station without incident after a 20 minute walk. By this time, the trains were running normally and our train departed on schedule at 12:55. We reached Bangalore right on schedule on 21st morning and got ready for the regular grind.

Joke of the year : iphone India launch

As expected, greedy Apple and even greedier mobile operators Airtel and Vodafone have totally screwed up on the pricing of the iphone in India. At 31000 for the 8 GB version and 36100 for the 16 GB one, I doubt they will be selling more than a handful. Personally, I never intended to buy the iphone, but was hoping for competitive pricing that would force Nokia to cut prices on its other smartphones (like the N82). At this price, I doubt they would even bother.