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Thursday, September 30, 2004 Housing MarketIn a matter of 4-5 months, if a particular locality (just about 10 streets) adds more than 100 flats to its neighbourhood, all due to the replacement of Victorian houses by newly built apartments, would the house prices come down in that locality due to excess supply or would the market behave as before, i.e., keeping pace with the trend in rest of the country? Posted at 9/30/2004 03:16:23 PM Link Wednesday, September 29, 2004 OM
Posted at 9/29/2004 02:39:27 PM Link Tuesday, September 28, 2004 What are you now?Before finding a Girl... man is a Superman After finding a Girl... man is a Spiderman After getting engaged with a Girl... man is a Gentleman After Marrying a Girl... man is a Watchman Five Years after marriage... man is a Doberman No need to remind what I am & what I'll be. Check out yours. Posted at 9/28/2004 04:54:35 PM Link Monday, September 27, 2004 Fashion trends
Posted at 9/27/2004 11:59:02 AM Link Friday, September 24, 2004 Party ConferencesCurrently Liberal Democrats' party conference is going on at Bournemouth. In the last two years, all the three major political parties in UK (Labour, Conservatives & Lib Dems) have had their party conferences in this town. Unlike in India, where they would assemble truckloads of paid thugs fed with booze & grub, conferences here lack any such hoopla. The locals would get to know about the conferences only on listening to the news. While living in Trichy - India, I remember our college declaring holiday for 3-days as the campus turned into makeshift camp for the security men deployed for the ruling party conference. Last year, Tony Blair was here in the town for two days for Labour party annual conference at a venue stones throw from my office, we got to know about it only after he had left the place. Among other things, I am curious to know on what basis a venue is chosen and why Bournemouth appears to be a preferred one for these parties. Posted at 9/24/2004 04:01:31 PM Link Wednesday, September 22, 2004 Gopal Tooth PowderWhy do so many people search for the above phrase in my site? Do I look like a tooth powder salesman?? Posted at 9/22/2004 11:20:40 AM Link Tuesday, September 21, 2004 Letting down a Gold medallistA 23-year old Indian by name Devendra has won a gold medal in Athens 2004 Paralympic games. Yes, it is a GOLD medal in Men's Javelin throw (F44/46) event. With the kind of infrastructure we have for sportsmen, let alone disabled sports men, India owes a lot to Devendra for doing the nation proud. His achievement is really huge and Devendra deserves much bigger ovation than Rathore or Paes-Bhupathi or Anju George or Dhanraj Pillay or our Cricket XI. Sadly, none of the mainstream newspapers/sites thought that this is worth mentioning and I think we are going to let Devendra pass on without any celebration or a simple pat on the back. Isn't that shameful? Posted at 9/21/2004 02:38:05 PM Link Links Looking at the traffic logs of our company website, my colleague pointed out that about 30 people have reached there through my site last month. Not a great figure, but little did I know that people do read pages of the site other than this blog and am pleasantly surprised that they even bother to click the links. Posted at 9/21/2004 11:04:09 AM Link Monday, September 20, 2004 Airline miseryMore than a month back, I planned for a trip to India during Christmas holidays this year and booked my tickets. I got the tickets booked through Southall Travels to travel in Kuwait Airways flight scheduled to fly out from London Heathrow on 27th December with a 2 hour stop over at Kuwait enroute to Chennai. About a week back I got a call from the travel agent with the information that Kuwait Airways has re-scheduled/cancelled some of their flights and as a result, my stop over at Kuwait would be for 27 hours and asked me what I would like to do. She further informed me that the airline would NOT arrange for any accommodation at Kuwait during the transit and we would have to either remain in the terminal for 27 hours or arrange a hotel accommodation on our own. I rubbished the idea of waiting for 27 hours and said that I am ready to travel from as early as 24th December and asked her to look for tickets on a different date. In the meantime, I checked with the other travel agents about the availability of seats in any other airline during that period. Being the peak travelling season, none were available. I got in touch with Air Transport Users Council, which is the UK's consumer watchdog for the airline industry, explained the situation and asked about my rights as a passenger. They said that the airline is not obliged to arrange accommodation at Kuwait and if they do so it would be only out of good will. However, they said that if I am not happy with the revised schedule I can always entitled to full refund should I decide to cancel the ticket. BBC's Q&A on the subject also confirmed this. The travel agent got back again. She said that the seats are full on the day(s) I asked for and Kuwait Airways could only offer us seats on the flight flying out on December 28th. Further, should I decide to cancel the ticket, I would get it only after 40% deduction, which works out to £440. As for as I am concerned, if I decide to cancel and press for full refund, I might get it with the help of ATUC, but I would be left stranded as all the tickets in the other airlines have been booked. So, though not very happy with the idea of starting a day late, I don't have any other choice. It hasn't affected my plans badly, but why, despite being charged so heavily, the rules of the game are so unfavourable to the air passengers? What if someone had something important planned and the airline reschedules or cancels the flight as they fancy. It is understandable in case of causes beyond their control like weather, but this is plain BS. While the watchdogs and donkeys of other sectors have got all powers, why doesn't the ATUC not been given enough teeth to bite? Posted at 9/20/2004 03:34:51 PM Link Friday, September 17, 2004 ProfessionalismAfter months of requests, chase-ups, yelling, abuse and what not, finally Citibank decided to add my wife's name to my Bank accounts. I still do not understand why they complicated the whole process and kept repeating silly excuses and finger pointing among them, but they really got on my nerve. Even my 3-page long complaint letter and my threat to take the issue with Financial Ombudsman didn't have the desired effect. I had almost given up and decided to move to some other bank, when I thought that another try would do no harm. I spoke to one of the call centre operators at Chennai as before and went straight into yelling mode. I do not know whether my aggressiveness worked or it is some other factor, the girl I spoke to really got the work done in a matter of two days and called up twice in between to update me of the status. During one of the calls she said, "I was afraid that I should call you before you call us sir, as I understand that you have been made to wait for more than 6 months on this". At least, she acknowledged it. I have written to Citibank about my experience and also made it a point to appreciate that call centre girl's professionalism (Well, when our work gets done, we term it as professionalism and other superior adjectives, don't we?). Posted at 9/17/2004 02:55:20 PM Link Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Miserable FailureSearch for "miserable failure" in Google and see what you get! ;-) Posted at 9/15/2004 02:01:37 PM Link Tuesday, September 14, 2004 In The Weakest Link programme some time last week.Q: What is one followed by two zeroes? A: One thousand two hundred! Posted at 9/14/2004 09:40:53 AM Link Friday, September 10, 2004 I hate all the bloody 'end users'. TGIF!Posted at 9/10/2004 02:26:31 PM Link Tuesday, September 07, 2004 Credit cardsThough I had as many as five credit cards until recently, I make sure that the banks don't benefit a penny by having me as a customer. With 100% payment well before the due date, I very well know that I am making a mockery of the credit card system. In fact, one time in the past, in order to avoid being penalised for late payment as I was going on a long holiday, I paid an approximate figure that happened to be more than my balance there by lending some money to the bank for a short while. Despite not taking the 'credit' part of the credit cards very seriously, I have often wondered about the criteria that banks use to approve credit cards & determine credit levels. Although I have been maintaining clean credit history - decent balance, no default payments or anything of that kind, I have often been surprised that at times I have been denied a credit card or been given one with ridiculously low credit level while at times I have been approved cards with a good credit level. Not that I am bothered too much for I apply for a card mainly because I have seen it somewhere looking good & shiny or they might be giving a free camera or a M&S voucher. Posted at 9/7/2004 02:28:57 PM Link Monday, September 06, 2004 Frustrated customerClick here with your headphones on to listen to the conversation between an irate customer and a poor call centre person at Mobilink, Pakistan. Wish someone forwards this to the call centre guys at Chennai handling the accounts of Citibank, UK. Posted at 9/6/2004 02:21:05 PM Link Friday, September 03, 2004 ChocolateyAs soon as I bit the chocolate offered by my colleague last evening, I knew that there is something wrong about it as it tasted foul. Further, I felt an unbearable stench within my mouth at that time that I immediately spit it out. I noticed only later on that the awful piece was a Rum coated chocolate. While a piece of chocolate coated with that stuff is enough to drive me crazy, I wonder how guys drink that terrible liquid? btw, can't I call myself a 'teetotaller' anymore? Have I sinned? ;) Posted at 9/3/2004 01:35:19 PM Link Thursday, September 02, 2004 Everyone seems to be busy!Whenever I walk past any of the numerous aisles in our office, I get a feeling that everyone in our office is busy. Either they run around with a serious look carrying a bunch of paper or look at the monitor displaying a big Excel sheet in tiny fonts with each column in a different colour or gather around the table with a notepad and pen under the pretext of ‘meeting’. Whatever be the way, they appear busy and it gives me an awkward feeling that I am the only person who spends time checking & commenting on blogs. Either I am deceived by their smart act or I am really wasting my time. Posted at 9/2/2004 04:29:38 PM Link | ||||
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