Yes, I Ran Alone

Today I participated in Chennai Marathon Celebration Run - I came to know this event only a week before so my preparation was hardly for a week which was nothing for this kind of event. So chose to run 7KM celebration run.

The arrangements could have been better - having run twice in Bangalore marathon, I can say Chennai has a long way to go to organize such big-events. Two things that I didn't like - 1) the celebration run route was having pathetic and unclean roads; 2) though myself know the place I found the place confusing i.e. there was no proper signboards and direction to run from start to end.

The ministerial celebrities like Kanimozhi, Moidheen Khan were present. Sivamani drums event was a good one but I didn't really stay up to listen - hope it was good till the end.

Finally all I can say is - I definitely missed my good Bangalore friends who have been inspirational and been enthusiastic about Marathon. Since this being non-cricket and non-cinema event in Chennai, yes, for Chennai Marathon, I ran alone without my colleagues/friends as they didn't show any interest... well for me the spirit of running has to go! I felt so nice after running! It was a good day indeed!

The next big offshoring wave I see!

I feel carrying positive hope for life today is a great challenge considering the fact eah day starting with some horror news such as job loss, slowdown economy, fights, war, and what not.

However I somehow feel, again there is one big opportunity for India to capitalize which I believe is not very far after AR Rahman winning Golden Globe Awards. Yes, like IT offshoring, Diamond cutting offshoring, expect cinema making to be offshored soon. In simple the back-office production work such as editing, music, animation, and etc can soon be expected to be offshored. The reason is very simple - cost cutting in Cinema making. Today there are several Hollywood movies which are not taking off due to the slowdown economy. However the cinema industry will not be willing to stop in view of the slowdown. So my strong belief is those big production companies will slowly move some back-office production work to India. May be already some companies could be cashing it, but not that I'm aware of.

Having said this, there will be lots of import that brings in high and advanced technologies necesary for the making of cinema. Now since AR Rahman has made a very positive impact in Hollywood via 'Slumdog Millionaire' movie.

Wait to see the days when Diploma in Film Technology (DFT) courses will be pursued more seriously with a job-oriented approach. Similalry there could be some private institutes which will also teach cinema back-office production work.

In essence there will be a renewed professional industy evolving due to the current economic condition in India. My assumption is the current manpower has to be doubled to handle this business as the demand will shoot-up overnight. So I believe the next big wave in India would be Cinema making offshoring!

What to expect in (gloomy) 2009?

Due to the current economic situation, I foresee companies will adapt one or most of the things that I could think to ensure the sustenance and continuity of their business even during such tough times!
1. Time to revamp - companies will try to capitalize the moment to strenghten their internal processes such as tools, automation, structural issues and so on. Impact: Good utilization of resources to build skills, processes, tools and etc.
2. Consolidation of surplus or spare resources - be it hardware, human resources, office space or anything for that matter. Impact: job layoffs, companies moving to cost-effective remote locations, abondoning high-cost resources.
3. Cut on Travel cost - High usage of Video conferencing can be seen as travel on business meetings will be cut. Impact: Travel industries (Air, hotel, car) will see decline in business. Positively companies will buy high-end technologies to improve infrastructure such as video conferencing.
4. Highest ever attention to details - starting from working hours, power usage, supplies usage, parties/gatherings will be watched and optimized wherever necessary. Indirect Impact: companies may ensure employees applying leaves even for 2-3 hours late arrival. Less fun more work!

Some News to Bite

A good story about Mumbai International Airport http://www.hyperconnectivity.com/en/customer-story-mial.html

Follow-on: Smart ways to save gas! http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/19/autos/gas_wasting_habits/index.htm?postversion=2008052210

10 Smart ways to save some gas!

1. If your work has flexible timings, avoid going to office at peak hours. This would eliminate the chances of getting caught in traffic and also exhausting gas unncessarily by frequent breaking.
2. Similarly if work from home option is available, try to capitalize the option and cut down the frequency of going to office. (1) and (2) suggestions also help cut down your travel time to office.
3. Consolidate all the purchases/shopping to be done once or twice a month.
4. Choose the shopping places to be closer to the best possible, so that the need for using car to each shopping center is avoided or kept at minimum.
5. To refill fuel, better choose to do it mid-of-the-week as the fuel prices are relatively lesser during those days if compared to weekends.
6. Keep the vehicle serviced regularly, pressure checked to have efficient gas performance.
7. Some super markets like Costco, Sam's club offer low gas prices (atleast 10cents lower to market price) for its members - so it may be a good idea to take their membership and fill gas.
8. If you are going to a new place, make sure you have the full map on hand or use a GPS to avoid missing routes and exhausting gas.
9. Only make sure the necessary people are traveling in the car. More load to car, more fuel is used, so cut down on overall load to car. Check the trunk to clean unwanted things.
10. Try to use Highways as much as possible as the fuel/time saved is better if compared to country roads.

These ideas needs little discipline to get it to practice. Try yourselves and let me know if it works for you :))) Also feel free to add any other out-of-box ideas to be smart on gas usage:))

Happy savings!!

Identity

I recently arrived here in US and this is my first visit to Uncle Sam's place. Being away from my homeland, I tend to be conscious about myself and my behavior. I sometimes feel that I tend to see myself through others eyes - could be cynical, but that's true. Am I doing the right things? Following traffic rules? Paying my bills promptly and timely? Tipping for every service that I avail?? Uncountable questions to myself. I was not so conscious in my previous trips to Western Europe countries or UK. May be because in India, Uncle Sam's homeland is hyped with several stories - I guess the hangover is not gone yet and quite possibly could take sometime to normalize.

I recently had an opportunity to visit the National Museum of US Air force in Dayton. My colleague-friends criticized that in India neither we have such museums nor details to history on war. Conveniently my friends forget the fact that India was never involved in a war rather our approach is non-violence and we should be proud of it. Perhaps I understood their criticism that we don't posses such technical capabilities. Also what I too felt or keep feeling is we never established a museum to that detail. Our capabilities of documenting history is definitely not so awesome, the reason could be lack of pride, passion, political, or economical. Being Indian all that we posses to display our next generation is just the religious places and some natural resources - I recently visited Akshardham in New Delhi - wow, what a beautiful and awesome place, I can't believe myself that we have one such place in India, however as said its a religious place.

Our identity of being an Indian is so prevalent than what it was while we were in India. Yes obviously we are different here amongst Americans in many ways - physical characters, etiquettes, and importantly thinking process. At work we are able to demonstrate our technical abilities but realized that we are lacking so many softer aspects that all contributes my thought on our Identity. I checked Google Trends and was happy to note the search trend on Mahatma Gandhi from various countries and especially from Central American countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. I became curious to know why, but the trend doesn't reveal all such fact. As we all know, Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi for his 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) approach and thus he adopted non-violence approach to fight against discrimination on Afro-American people. I'm happy for being born from a land that is respected for its Leaders and Legends like Mahatma Gandhi.

Basically our identity becomes more important and obvious here in Uncle Sam’s land could be the fact that America is historically land of immigrants.

Beyond Sport!

India winning T20 Cricket World Championship has brought back the Cricket hype in the Indian sub-continent. The way India came back in T20 and winning the championship was an icing on the cake after its just not-so-long disaster in 50 over’s 2007 World cup Cricket. The whole country enjoyed and celebrated the victory. I like cricket but I'm not a die hard fan of Cricket.

Success is a success and no second thought about it and India won T20 World Cup. However, how many people are willing to accept a different perspective of the way entire T20 Cricket Title came to India and importantly both the big cricket playing subcontinents India and Pakistan came to the finals? Also a perspective on other sports not getting their due recognition and support from the same Indian Nationals?

My comments here are not against any sport including Cricket but to question myself why other sports are not getting their due importance and recognition and more importantly Cricket overshadowing other sports. No offence intended but it’s just a Why-Not-Perspective and if you don't like this perspective you may ignore this blog at all. All in all, I appreciate your views and feedback.

Why India and Pak in the T20 Finals?

After the disaster exit of India and Pakistan in the 2007 World Cup Cricket at just the league levels, the entire Cricket fraternity's interest fell down overnight and also the sponsors failed to get their expected returns on investment. If you know, India and Pakistan is the two biggest Cricket playing and spectatorship nations across the world. And importantly BCCI is the India’s highest revenue earning board across all other cricket boards in the world. That means more sponsors for India. Of course, India is the nation with 9% GDP and consistently growing irrespective of economic and political turbulences in the neighboring nations in the Asian subcontinent. This genuinely makes lot of sense for most of the business enterprises to invest and grow in India. In all sense and given a chance, cricket is the sport through which any business would put its money to its instant revenue and profit. Having said this 2007 World cup didn't unfortunately bring the expected returns to the business tycoons who partnered and sponsored the event after both India and Pakistan's immediate exit in the league games. Of course the TV viewership dropped sharply and affected the companies which had put their money heavily on various advertisements, sponsorships and promotions.

On the other side, T20 cricket is a new format of game on the international Cricket space and it needs sufficient promotion and importance developed, first to be accepted by the cricket playing nations and also to catch up really fast with this new format. T20 Cricket provides an opportunity for more number of games to play if compared to both 50-overs and 5-day-long Test crickets. Having known the fact India and Pakistan have the highest spectatorship for this game, it makes lots of sense to hold these two nations till T20 final so that new format game positions very well for the future spectatorship. Thus, it is just a perception that it is a victory decided well ahead for both India and Pakistan to play the T20 Finals and India clinching the world cup. This provides the advantage to ICC to have the buy-in from both the important and big cricket playing nations and also from other nations accordingly for this 20 over cricket format. Also ICL’s (which is a competitive Cricket board evolving in India) cricket format is 20-20 cricket, that BCCI had not thought in the past. So BCCI also had the pressure of making T20 in favor of India so that it doesn’t loose players and viewers against ICL.

Why other sports not recognized equally?

First of all Cricket in India is promoted by a private body BCCI. Any private body’s motive is to invest and see the returns. Cricket is a business for BCCI. I think BCCI is doing its business perfectly and there is no question about it. It's just like football teams promoted by several private clubs in UK for ex Chelsea, and so on.

Whereas other sports are governed by the Government bodies. For example Indian Hockey Federation is an apex that governs the Hockey sport in the Indian sub-continent. All these sport bodies are not managed by business tycoons unlike cricket board. Which certainly means they fail to get the due recognition and growth that they deserve like Cricket or more.

I believe the sport - cricket became synonymous only after 1983 World Cup win by India. Otherwise Hockey and Football definitely had its share of viewers and players. Starting 1983 Victory, BCCI got the timing right and hijacked the entire sport enthusiasts to Cricket, by planning and promoting the sport professionally partnering with sponsors. In fact today Indian's are not bothered so much to recognize and appreciate any other sport next to Cricket. This Cricketisim has overshadowed and has induced slow-poisoning to other sports and its enthusiasts. The reason I say so is because the accolades, prize money given for Cricket players is HUGE and unimaginable. These acts only promotes the cricket sport and encourages everyone to play only cricket as it can give more-than deserving accolades, popularity, prize money and of course overnight stardom.

What is the way out for other sports to grow?

Today any sport other than cricket has to have its own hard-means to start-grow-succeed-and-survive. It’s quite apparent from how many private companies have really come forward to partner with Hockey, Football governing bodies. The learning’s are clear that, for any sport to be grown, it needs private participation in terms of sponsors. I personally see two means of developing other sports next to Cricket.

1. First approach is like helping a friend in need. Though BCCI is a private body and however being the only apex for cricket sport in the country, it holds certain responsibility of encouraging and helping grow other sports too in the country. This is what I see as true sporting quality. Since BCCI has surplus fund on the board, may be a certain percentage be funded to other sport bodies in the country. If this happens it not only helps other sport, sportsmanship to grow, but also develops a good will about the BCCI in a long run.

2. Alternatively, other Sport bodies also have to be managed by private bodies so that they devise and develop those sports like Cricket in a more business-like approach. We definitely have to have other sports growing as we have strong and motivated individuals striving hard on their own for success.

Note: My views are personal and could conflict with your views and perceptions. Please feel free to share your views, ideas, opinions so that I get to understand the theory "Beyond Sport" much better.