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Ten signs you’re losing your friend to the Internet
Today it’s not just parents complaining about their children spending too much time on the Internet. I also find myself complaining, over myself! While I consciously try ‘internet-insulating’ myself, here are a few warning signs I’ve come to realize. See if you can relate, add more if you’ve better ones. PS: Some characters or incidents mentioned are inspired by real individuals or happenings; so blame not, stop not your pointing fingers 
- Your friend forgets his bank account’s online log-in credentials and many times unknowingly keys in Facebook/Twitter credentials on just about any log-in screen
- He knows what his latest online friend and/or his pet had for dinner last night but doesn’t know that his next-door neighbour’s not been there at home for over a week
- He takes his own sweet time to reply to your mail but you get his mails/messages/tweets asking you to ‘like’ his blog page, join ‘x’ group, see his latest blog post etc.
- He tweets more frequently than he’d CTRL+C or Google search
- He is ‘now friends with’ some individual from the other side of the globe whose name is awfully similar to a new virus you read about yesterday (ok, maybe now your friend might learn, but no, you then see his tweet “thanks @virus-name for being my 1000th friend”!)
- He resorts to Facebook/Twitter to ask ‘friends’ out for a movie rather than simply call/walk up to and ask. Worse still it’s done over a public announcement: “I’m going for a movie, which one of you can I pull in”
- He wouldn’t be there for your gang’s lunch-out but you’d find many of his tweets saying “had a great time at yesterday’s tweet-up”
- Your soft-spoken, polite friend is suddenly using F and A words in status updates
- You know it’s crossing dangerous levels when your friend’s mom, whom you’ve never met, is requesting friendship in Facebook but she’s not Facebook friends with her child, your friend! (Mom’s probably investigating child’s online escapades)
- I like this last one because I see it everywhere: your friend’s suddenly a Subject Matter Expert sharing a dozen links a day on some complex topic. All without giving credits to the news source. And the best part, sharing links even without reading them
- Number eleven for my wifey Your husband’s knowing and writing ‘Subject Matter Experting’ points above while you’re working it out in the kitchen getting no help at all
Let’s meet more often offline.
It felt so great the last time I met my school friends. We chat and Facebook whenever we can but nothing beats the energy and excitement of a physical meeting. Put in a few drinks and fried chicken and you are set, not to ever look at your watch but instead be reminded that you are needed somewhere else by some suddenly very intruding (hey that’s your mom!) phone call. Tweet-ups are cool but let’s just first meet-up old friends please.
Take care.
Congrats Premchand!
Finally, two Go-Daddy debit notification SMSes did it. Enough guilt summoned to put down my first blog post in 2010! Hope we’re all having a great year so far. It’s been very good for me especially towards the end of 2009 – wife and I spending a splendid weekend at Pondicherry, my brother visiting from the US, the family getting ready for little cus’ wedding, and the knocker of them all, a record year-end at work.
Another catalyst for today’s post is happiness over a good friend’s new status – fatherhood! It seems so yesterday when we went for his wedding, how time flies. Congratulations Premchand, may your son bring you new luck and happiness. Hoping my first post in 2010, on your son’s birthday, is auspicious for me too! I end with a promise for better time management and more frequent blogging.
marooned, n lovin it!
It’s been a week since the rain’s started in Chennai and I’m sure some of us have already used up our quota of swearing allotted for monsoon 2009. But personally I’m happy for the rain bringing down the temperatures and bringing out the smiles and joy out off em kids. No matter the brown water, or the dead floating roach, or the damp smell – let’s have a ball!
Tata Nano suppliers’ performance in the stock markets
Last year (Jan 16th, 2008) I had predicted a good show in the stock markets for the Tata Nano part suppliers, over a 1-2 year horizon. I checked up on these stocks and I was surprised, mostly negative, with the results. Taken as a basket of stocks, the group fell 28% as compared to the Sensex’s fall of 18% as on 23rd October 2009.
Exide Industries (+30%)
Lumax Industries (-51.59%)
Sona Group (-46.3%)
Rico Auto (-42.43%)
Sekurit Saint-Gobain (-49.52%)
MICO Bosch (-9.58%)
One of the reasons is definitely the delayed release of the Nano. The first Nano was handed to a customer on July 17th, 2009, almost a year later than the once-officially announced availability. So it does warrant another year’s time before one thinks of selling off these stocks. Remember CRISIL did report that the Nano has the potential of increasing the Indian car market by 65%. And how did Tata Motors perform at the stocks? Compared to Jan 16 2008, a fall of 24.41%. Obviously hurt by the Singur plant delay and shut-down, the delayed release, increasing raw material costs and the recession.
By the way, the only stock I invested in back then was Exide Industries , never mind how many. An increase of 30% while all the other stocks including the Sensex are in negative! Exide industries will continue to do well(it doubled net profits this quarter!). The others should climb once the Nano catches up and the various versions come out.
Happy Onam!
The Pillais celebrated a wonderful Onam in Chennai and we wish you a very happy and prosperous Onam
Been long, been very happy.
Wow!.. It’s been such a long time I blogged.. And unlike the usual guilt overflow, I’m happy! It was last year Aug 9th that I met the woman of my life, Lekshmi, we took our time getting to know each other, got engaged on Dec 7th and plunged into marital bliss on Feb the 1st, 2009. What a ride it was, time flies.
I got into Twitter recently, chanced upon a friend’s blog and remembered mine Just an announcement – Sreelesh is back.
Cheers!
Thirst for Education
The best part about learning at work is -
- you learn by yourself and
- you find answer for the killer question above so easily.
To create that “thirst for Education”, let’s show some water.
Happy Independence Day India!!
Today’s Hindu newspaper is certainly worth a good read and keep. Almost every write-up gives one the feeling that India is one huge torpedo moving faster and faster to the ‘developed country’ status. There were many articles highlighting the gender bias, poverty, poor infrastructure state and corruption in India too. Personally, I feel India could not be in better hands than those of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram.
Amid all the celebrations I can’t help feeling sad that those who experienced the power struggle and saw the birth of India may not be living among us in another 20-30 years. I miss my grandad and his stories and wish my grandmoms would live forever. I was very disturbed by this article on how Laxmi Panda who joined the Army in her teens has not been given her Freedom Fighter recognition and benefits. My prayers to her and the journalist Paresh Rath who gave her a place to stay and brought her story to light.
On this special day I salute all Indians for making India the power she is today.
“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history” – Mahatma Gandhi.
Customer Care Execs, please read.
Hate to reminisce on my ‘ordeal’ in getting a new connection, but there are a few things which I felt I had to put down in the hope that some Customer Care executive would read n make sense/use of:
- speak to a customer keeping his/her problem history on top of your mind..
This lady I talked to, I let her know my displeasure(a very mild word!) at waiting 9 days to get the pre-paid SIM activated. I ask her to abandon efforts in pre-paid activation(since nothing seems to be happening) and to get it activated in post-paid ASAP (all documentss perfectly submitted previous day) and she tells me “Sir, it will take a maximum of 7 days”! Here I am giving her another chance at keeping a customer in the network and she goes on to tell me the worst-case scenario for activation!
- ‘server down’ is never an excuse..prioritize customer requests!
I worked for Reliance Communications and yes, there are lots of times when the server blanks and you can do nothing about it. But we made sure we were there when the servers were up, in the meanwhile we would prioritize the customer requests and make sure we got the serious SLA violations cleared first. In my Airtel ‘ordeal’, either people did not bother to wait for the server, did not bother to acknowledge my request or there were a whole load of chicken execs who did not know how to get my problem solved!
– Follow-up..
I interacted with 7 Customer Care Execs and I believe there was only one Jensy who understood the gravity and solution to the problem. She followed up(with me, the Mobile Store and the execs who came to my company) on the problem for the whole day and no matter what/who/where the block was, at the end of the day I had my activation. She updated me with the progress and I felt there was someone taking care of the problem and somehow I had this feeling my activation was going to be working soon.
All is well that ends well? The ending was not all that brilliant.. My given plan was not the one I opted for! I hate myself for adding to the general Indian attitude of ‘hotha hain, chalthe hain bhai’!
Edited : I did get the plan I opted for – the delayed “Welcome Call” explained it all well.
GOT new connection!
After 12 days of amazement(anxiety & enthusiasm can’t hold for that long a time), I finally got activated my new Airtel connection!!
I’m in not much of a mood to type now – I got to make all the calls that I had to catch up with from Friendship day! Thanks to my parents, my brother and all my friends for bearing with my old, faulty phone.
Will write on my experiences(Airtel – Express Yourself!) sometime later.
Have a very Nice Day!
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- Onam – Facebook is where to advertise. September 11, 2011
- Biz Manager to Chief Strategist June 12, 2011
- Mohanlal – golden star January 2, 2011
- Ten signs you’re losing your friend to the Internet November 16, 2010
- SLAs – for differentiation & positioning July 31, 2010
- You have to be the First-Announcer in the Internet age March 1, 2010
- Congrats Premchand! February 18, 2010
- Implementing IPv6 November 30, 2009
- marooned, n lovin it! November 10, 2009