What you HEAR first in the morning?

Many of us have a habit of SEEING a God's photo or SEEING something which you like first in the morning, as soon as you wake up. Some see their hands and say some prayers. It is believed to be some kind of good luck charm to see God's photo. I know a hostel mate of mine, who had a big Pamela Anderson photo stuck to the roof. He wanted to see her first in the morning.

 

But have you ever tried to notice what you HEAR first in the morning. I realized today that I had never taken note of this. But tried to analyze and recall a bit.

 

• The alarm set in the mobile phone. (This is rarely the case for me, but mostly the case for many)
• Wife's voice - "ಟೈಮ್ ಆಯಿತು" (Times up) or "ಟೈಮ್ ಎಷ್ಟು?" (Whats the time?)
• Street dogs chorus barking
• Buzz of the fan...Its significantly loud to take notice. (only in summer though).
• Sound of somebody sweeping the area in front of their home.
• Sound of water splashing the ground. Getting ready for the makeup - rangoli.
• Suprabhata from a near-by temple (it could be a Muslim prayer if you are close to a mosque or a remix of Hindu and Muslim prayers).
• Sound of the temple bells which ring at a distance but pierce the morning silence.
• Vehicle sound (Neighbor uncle starting his TVS to get milk)
• Auto rickshaw sound (starting their journey early in the morning).
• Dad's shoe sound. Jumping to pluck the flowers for pooja, before starting his daily walk. 

Not so surprisingly, I do not hear any bird's voice.

Do you HEAR any other sound first in the morning?

  

Words of wisdom from volvo conductor

Day before yesterday night, Mr Ashok the honorable Transport minister of Karnataka had a dream. In the dream he thought he can make moolahs by drastically and irrationally increasing the tariffs in BMTC volvo buses. So he woke up in the midnight and sent a SOS to his officials in the department. Frantic activities started in the night and by morning of 28th April, printouts of the new tariffs were released to all the volvo conductors. Sleepy, confused conductors were surprised (to put it mildly). 

The officials forgot that the ticket vending machines are not adopted for this fare change. But quick action was taken and the conductors were given the traditional paper bundle tickets for the day. The officials had done their job. And done it in good secrecy. The press and hence the public were clueless about the hike in fares.

I took the volvo bus in the evening. It was chaos inside the bus. The passenger gives some money, conductor gives ticket and no change back. Passenger argues, scolds the conductor, abuses Yeddi (the honorable CM), conductor has his counter arguments.....and this almost happened with every passenger. Our conductor devised a new strategy. He said to the passengers that the fares are increased from today. He said "I will give you at a discounted price and pulled the tickets out of his bundle at the older price or older price + small delta (still less than the increased fares)". 

There were some interesting quotes in the bus from the conductor.

• The frustrated conductor was speaking loudly to the driver. He said "the officers who took the decisions are in ac rooms in the safe zone. We conductors are in the danger zone, getting all the abuses from the passengers."  He continued "we are the jawans and the officers are the politicians who take decisions so that the jawan faces war". Lovely words of wisdom!

• One passenger suggested that the conductor gives the phone number of the officers who took the decision on fare hikes. The witty conductor replied "this is govt bus, not your company cab. There are no mobile numbers printed anywhere on the bus". Interestingly I had never noticed this...how true! 

BMTC website has a call center number published.

Free offer from Colgate

The famous Colgate toothpaste has come up with a free offer. Yet again.
I have received several free samples of toothpaste from Colgate. Be it their "Total" or "Sensitive" or "Active Salt". Now Colgate has a free offer. To avail this you just need to spend on a SMS.

Send SMS - MaxWhite to 54646

After sometime you will get a call from Colgate, who would get your address from you and send the free sample of their new toothpaste "Colgate Maxwhite". 

Probably it works only in a few cities but will definitely work in namma Bengaluru. As all offers, its a limited period offer.

I am a very regular of "Colgate Total" though. It's the best and keeps tartar away...I am speaking from my 3 yrs experience with Total.

Wonder how many packets of toothpaste does Colgate give away free! Great going Colgate.

PS - I saw a big advertisement on the old Airport road about this offer.

Project - Post office

My 10 yrs old niece is in my home for summer vacations. She is generally playing most of the time with the kids in the neighborhood. (Who wouldn't?) I was checking with her as to what her other friends are up-to during the holidays. She said most go to summer camps learning painting, singing, art workshops etc. Some of her friends are on foreign tours as-well. And here my niece was playing indoor and outdoor games.  

So on Friday night I asked her - What happens in a post office? And the answer was very guessable - People buy stamps, cards, letters and post it in the post box. I did not comment on the answer, but gave her an assignment.

Goto the post-office near my home. Spend 30 mins inside the post-office. See, observe, talk to visitors and prepare a report on why people come to post-office and what they do there.

She readily accepted the offer. So we went to the post-office on Saturday. Me and her. Equipped with pen, pencil, eraser and a notepad, she looked like a journalist. I left her inside the post-office and left the place. After 30 mins, her preliminary version of the project was ready. 

Her modus operandi was very simple (like instructed earlier) - Observe what people do and approach people and ask them why have they come to the PO. She also introduced herself and told the individuals that she was doing a project in her vacations. Predictably the reactions from the people was pretty open and warm.

What amazed her is the number of people who come to post-office for the "original purpose of post office" is very less. More people visit the PO for the traditional banking purposes like collecting old age pension, collecting money from savings schemes like monthly income scheme(MIS). Indian postal service is spreading its wings into various domains.

She is now ready for a bank project.

Personally, I felt that such exercises to the children would give them confidence to interact with people. Of-course the knowledge they gain is also immense.

I hope she makes the preliminary version of the project into a report to show it to her classmates after the vacation. Proudly.

When winners are not in focus...

You thought that the winners corner all the glory! Not always...

Read a few examples below - 

1.  Royal Challengers Bangalore were rocking in IPL 3. They thrashed Mumbai in Mumbai, chased down 200+ against Punjab in Bangalore. You expect that to be in the headlines of atleast Bangalore edition of newspapers. The front page of atleast 3 newspapers carried match pictures. Not of RCB boys though. It was Sid Mallya with Deepika Padukone. Siddhartha Mallya also told that Deepika gets credit of RCB win because she is the lucky charm. Damn! The cricketers who slog on the ground did not get the credit.

2. Ask a few colleagues and friend - Who won the Augusta Master Golf tournament 2010. 8/10 will not know the answer. But the same 8/10 guys would know that Tiger Woods returned to the golf course after 6 months of break. Sorry Phil Mickelson...theres very few lines written about you. When Tiger is around Micky can just squeak ;-)

3. "Hurt Locker" beat "Avatar" at the Oscars this year. Also the best director was Kathryn Bigelow. But hardly a few know her. Most of us only know all the details about the loser James Cameroon of Avatar, Titanic fame. Most news articles had headlines as "Avatar looses", "James disappointed at Oscars"....Hardly a few praised the movie "Hurt Locker".

4. When ex SAP CEO was replaced by the current 2 co-CEOs - Most news articles did mention the new co-CEO names only at the fag end of the article. Leo Apotheker hogged all the lime light as the "moving out" CEO. The news channels captured the co-CEOs (Bill and Jim) much later because of the co-CEO model which is rarely seen in the industry.

5.  In the (in)famous Kuwait invasion - all one remembers is the loser Saddam Hussain. The allied troops led by USA hit back at Saddam and he had to retreat. Even the US media had more Saddam than Bush (the then President of USA). 

6. The latest and the fresh one - Who is the new IPL commissioner? I doubt if he(Amin) would be present in the headlines atleast for the next few days. But the charismatic Lalit Modi (some suggest that he has to be Lallit Modi) would still take prime time in most of the news channels.

7. When Fedex or Nadal is defeated in a tennis match - the news is mostly about the form and stats of the loosers and very less about winner.

Are you wondering whether to be a winner or a famed looser!

It's no choice dear!

Just go for the win....and hope the limelight is on you.

Cocos nucifera - prices set to go up

Summer is hot..really hot in Bangalore and generally in South India. In fact we had the hottest April in 27 yrs. What has this lead to?

The common thing and the first guess is "rise in the sales of cool drink"

For what cool drink. I suppose all cool drinks had a good market. 

When I said cool drinks, i am sure you thought about Pepsi, Coke, Maaza, Frooti etc etc. Though most of you have had TENDER COCONUT WATER (TCW, ಎಳ ನೀರು ), none of you would have thought it as a cool drink.

TCW is the best and healthiest cool drink that you can have in a hot summer day. I love the drink and have had it a lot during this summer. 

In around 100 sq mts, there are 4 vendors of TCW near my home. All the 4 are pretty busy making holes into cocus nucifera or coconut. At the end of the day, there is none to make hole and that's when they pack their bags for the day. Next day begins at 6:45am with a fresh stock arrival from places like Tumkur, Arsikere, Kanakapura etc. In the old airport road you can see atleast 6 vendors of TCW between HAL to Marathalli. This is a common phenomena across Bangalore.

Most of us are consumers of coconut either in its copra form (ತೆಂಗಿನ ಕಾಯಿ)  or as dry copra (ಕೊಬ್ಬರಿ) or coconut oil. I need not teach Botany for you to explain that TC ages to become copra which ages to become dry copra which is in turn used to make coconut oil. 

To put this in perspective, here are some cocos facts.

• If tender coconut water is required, the nuts of 5-6 months of age are harvested.
• If copra is needed (for culinary purposes), the nuts of 8-10 months are harvested. 
• If dry copra is needed for coconut oil extraction and for other purposes, then fully ripe nuts of 10-12 months or so are harvested.

As we have consumed a lot of TCW, we harvested nuts at the age of 5-6 months. Or the nuts are not let to become copra. So there would be lesser copra. The demand supply law says that if the supply is less and the demand is more, the prices will increase. With no chance of increasing the production of cocos, I can only see my expenditure on coconut (and its products) going up.

Gear up for the increased expenditure!