Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

Friday Lunch turns Pilgrimage Discovery Being Friday today and instead of just struggling with the old unpalatable and monotonous food, I had a schedule to work out some sumptous lunch outside. Then, the decision was homed in on to Hotel Saravana Bhavan in Ashok Nagar. Of course, the restaurant is bit expensive. HSB did enter into and get hands dirty into litigations but that is in a different behavior aspect of its founder, Rajagopal. As far as the restaurant is concerned, the quality is extremely good albeit the quantity would be an inverse proportional. They do have door deliveries and fast food outlets in many of the key places in Chennai. So planning a bite at HSB should'nt take a while as also getting a bite for the wallet -- credit card and the bank account. Well! Coming back to the discussion, the travel to the restaurant from my workplace is just about three bus stops and in the bus, there was an advertisement by a travels operator based from Mylapore (I guessed this, base...

Taints of Sentiments amidst business ventures Commissioning a new business venture is no easy task. There are so much of environmental, economical, social, political factors that come into interplay and have a resounding influence on the business. If it comes to a more critical financial segment like banking and finance, the effects are still significant. Indian society with its more sentimental touches in everything that it ventures, seems to give a more sensational touch cum inspiration to this and is no exception. Besides investigating all the above options and verifying them to be viable, which applies in the case of residential premises, in the case of latter, we also see some religious causes like whether the chosen area is in preference to Lakshmi or Kubera so that it would invite more prosperity to the households. Now this sense of prosperity and flourishment is followed in the case of banking in Chennai to a greater degree. There are at least two instances me and my colleague ...

Bhagavad Gita Discourse by Sunanda Parthasarathy in Chennai While travelling from Triplicane to Chennai today, I found a hoarding announcing the Bhagavad Gita discourse by Sunanda Parthasarathy, daughter of Shri A Parthasarathy in Chennai. I have also seen this last week but I forgot about it. I would like to share the details with the readers too and I hope it would be beneficial for others also, in attending it. The details are: Venue: Kamaraj Memorial Grounds (Congress Grounds), Teynampet, Chennai [near Gemini Flyover] Date/Time: July 1 to July 5 from 6 PM to 8 PM Fees: FREE (All are Welcome) Programme Sponsor: State Bank of India Try to mark your calendars so that we can attend the same. Since this discourse is on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2, I searched the Internet for some online Bhagavad Gita and I would like to share the following URL with the readers: http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/Gita/chapter-02.html

Wedding Bells Ring It is time for the Wedding Bells ringing again. Two weddings in a single day. An auspicious Ekadasi day and the most adored Friday would witness the wedding of two friends, one in Chennai and the other in Pune. They are: Santosh Sinha with Priyanka(in Pune) Sharmila Lakshmipathy with Vinoo (in Chennai) Let us join hands to greet each of them hearty wedded life for thier respective weddings. Happy Wedded Life to the brides and grooms!!

Win-Win Offer does not seem to apply between service providers and consumers I hope you would have seen advertisements like Win Win offer which says that the product is discounted so that both the manufacturer is benefitted by forecasted huge sales and also cheap products for the consumers.  Good. I accept that largescale production really helps in cheaper product and mass consumption at affordable rates. But there are certain cases, I felt, that there is a disproportion and this Win-Win offer or a good weighing variant does not seem to get applied or does it not apply to these contexts? It is just an open ended view. Feel free to share your comments too. Take an example of currency exchange. When you go to a foriegn exchange shop or a bank dealing with foriegn exchange, there are actually two rates mentioned -- 'We purchase dollars at XXX and We sell dollars at YYY'. Normally the purchase price is higher than the selling price. This seems to be beneficial for the financial ...

Pure Luxury Communications Mobile (Vertu) It was Friday evening and just dropped in casually at the Internet Kiosk for a while. A couple of SMS alerts on my mobile phone. One was the usual CitiAlert from my Citibank, keeping posted regarding the card statements and so on and so forth. The next was quite interesting "World's most costly mobile (Vertu) is on display in Rani Meyyammai Hall". What? What is special in that? As I was already sitting in the Internet Kiosk, tapped one more Internet Explorer to run Google to find out about this elusive Vertu . Some of the most inquisitive and/or interesting information on this are as below: The world's most costliest mobile model from luxury communications company. Diamond, Gold and Stainless Stelel studded mobile chassis. Most highest capacity of Phone Memory, Notes, Message Capacity, Talktime and Standby time etc. Currently, the other most sought after mobile model that is driving everyone crazy are Nokia N Series and BlackB...

Serving the educational cause of the challenged kids... Yesterday morning, I recieved a courier mailout in my home that was from CRY . It was about seeking donations for kids since it is start of academic year. I visited CRY website and it is really amazing to find the noble educational service that these guys render for education of the financially challenged kids. It is purely lack of education that opens up plethora of avenues for legal, political and socio-economic problems in the country. Even child exploitation is aplenty even in several parts of the country. I just thought I would like to share the CRY URL and a message to other readers as well, so that they can visit the website and if the message reaches right philanthropists across the world, it would be a humble service to the Lord and lighting a candle of knowledge for a kid.

If you have watched a television screening any film that has been shot sometime in 1960 and portraying Chennai city, you can see them focussing Chennai on its erstwhile Mount Road (now Anna Salai) and particularly on the 14-storeyed Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) head office near Santhi theater complex. However, this situation is changing now. This is not the only tall building now. Every corner you turn now in Chennai, you can find at least a minimum nine-floor building located starting from western end near the Chennai Airport towards the far east near Marina Beach or from ECR in the South to Minjur in the North or North West towards Tiruvellore. Real Estate and particularly industrialisation and constructions with multi-tenanted buildings have been a common figure in Chennai. In one way, is our City capable of handing this tremendous growth of industrial development and population? This is one such question that needs an answer both from the district administration and from the pe...

Are we trading humanitarian attitude for modern life? Concrete jungles. Mechanical Life. Busy Schedules. Stretched Hours. Stressful Moments. These are the some of the common words that we could hear these days. Are we cheating ourselves or pretending to be modern and busy? Even the most common desktop application that we use (Microsoft Office) has lively animated characters like Rocky, Merlin, Links which makes to shed the mechanical shell ego and support and breathe the live world. Rocky never appeared as just another dumb animated character built out of Agent Character SDK. Whenever, any of the Microsoft Office application or even its Windows Search (from XP or higher) is open, the desktop becomes more vibrant with more liveliness. So what is this discussion for? There are a lot of things that we ought to learn from Windows XP too. I am trying to describe here two types of incidents. First cruelty to animals. Second nonchalant attitude (passive cruelty) to mankind. Heinous Cruelty to...

Ashtamangala Devaprasnam reveals that Lord is unhappy The world's most famous pigrimage shrine and the most small and cute Lord Ayyappa seems to be terribly upset, intimidated and furious as diagnosed from even the first day of the Ashtamangala Devaprasnam towards the proceedings in His Devaswom. It is an yearly practice by the Dewaswom of Travancore to hold a Devaprasnam to find out how best is Lord satisfied by the devotional activites of the temple and as well the devotees and priests. The prasnam began on 11 AM on saturday and the astrological committe comprised of twenty astrologers from different parts of Kerala and led by Parappanangadi Unnikrishna Panicker. The very first day of Prasnam seems to reveal some serious issues with the ongoings in Sabarimala. All purity and sanctity seems to have vanished long ago. The full bunch of folks at Sabarimala (comprising of priests, traders) and the Government of Kerala seemed to concenterate on making money and fleecing the pilgrims ...

Operation Anamika Mobile Phones are no wonder the best communication gadgets that man has ever discovered and is using to a very large extent. However, the obscenity and glamour that the cine fields portray drive them to make dirty use of these excellent communication gadgets through modern messaging techniques like MMS, GPRS etc. About sametime last year, the news papers have been reverberating in thier headlines on a MMS scam in New Delhi where obscene photos were being passed through. In January, this year, Pune took its stand to curb a similar menace in its realm. Check out the news coverage here . Next this month, it seems to be Chennai. A private bank collection executive has chosen MMS has a technique to lure school and college girls into taking obscene photographs in his mobile and circulating them among the underworld. Starting with a first set of photographs, he has adopted a modus operandi of blackmailing the girls affected by him that he would releasing them to their parent...

Health Alert in Chennai With the climatic transition from Summer ( Kathiri Veyyal ) to the Aadi (July - August) month in progress, there has been a lot of incidents of infections spreading across the width and breadth of Tamil Nadu and its capital city of Chennai. The most significant among the infections that are currently causing panic in Tamil Nadu are: Chicken Fever (colloqially called as Chicken Gunya) Acute Conjunctivities (colloqially called as Madras Eye) Here is a small introduction about this disease and quick helplines so that you can safeguard of yourself, your family and diseases and ensure that you have taken greatest care of your precious treasure and wealth, that is health . Chicken Fever This disease is spread by mosquitoes that proliferate and spread from stagnant water near the residence. This is a viral infection that causes symptoms like persistent fever and headaches. Though it does not cause death, the normal functioning of the patient is affected to the period ...

Account Number One in my branch for the financial year 2006-07 Earlier sometime we have been discussing about the importance of Small Savings over my other weblog here. A friend of mine suggested that we can have an account in Corporation Bank. This is a premiere nationalised bank in India, with more innovative technology features introduced in the banking sector. The foremost banking to have introduced Visa Debit cards amongst the nationalised banks besides its peer from the same region of Karnataka, Canara Bank. Rather than depending on the vagarious equity based investments which I think is just another diplomatic gambling, I think, a Corp Classic account from Corporation Bank should help us out with our future aspirations and ventures. I closed one account with another private shack and migrated here. The customerservice and the more friendly ambience and atmosphere, lures into small savings instead of just making you to spend. After the account got opened, I jus...

Healthcare on the Web There is a very famous and well-known proverb called Health is Wealth . Perhaps, in Tamil, there is one another proverb called ' Suvar irundhal thaan Chittiram Varaya Mudiyum '. To translate this means, only if we could maintain good health, we can be able to achieve a lot of laurels and achievements. These are the days when each hour is brimming for us with competitiveness. We have what is called Fast Food restaurants to cater to us, Dial-a-Pizza for dinner since we go home late and then no time for cooking. Gone are the days when our elders used to practice Joint Dining. By the way, I fondly remember, that our school correspondent (Ananthu K Bhat) used to stress on two things that every student ought to follow daily rather religiously instead of just for the sake of AK Bhat or Vanitha K Bhat. The two things are: Shasthanga Namaskar of Parents before starting off to School. Joint Dining with all family members in the night. Avoid any discussions wh...

The necessity of saving had never been underemphasized in any literature. At this juncture, I would like to fondly recall two slogans, though in the context of advertising, that I came across. One of the agencies is now defunct, but nevertheless, I don't find a reason, why we should not adopt this slogan (a good thing). State Bank of Travancore, T Nagar: "No one has ever collapsed doing saving operations for the future" Royeppetah Benefit Fund (RBF) "Let your first expense be savings". Towards this, it had been magnanimous on part of the Governement of India, to open up banks to private entrepreneurs. However, as in the case of any private firms whose ultimate ulterior objective would be " profit making by cost-cutting using outdated technologies ", there had been a steep deterioration in the banking quality. One such salient example being the number of grievances posted on ICICI Bank on Arjun's blog . In this context, it had been a dire need o...

Week of Tight Schedule This week had rather been an hectic and a tight schedule, mostly being devoted and dedicated towards various planning activities. As usual, everything has been tracked and managed by my MSN Calendar . Perhaps amongst the schedules the significant among that that were pending was reviving of my old account with Corporation Bank and closing of certain unneeded accounts which were difficult to mention and were opening security holes, just like what Windows Firewall in Windows XP2 defines these interface points in Help and Support Center which goes like this: To allow an exception is like poking a hole through the firewall. If there are too many holes, there is not much wall left in your firewall Towards this, I would also emphasize about Corporation Bank. A humble start financial institution from Bangalore but providing the most affordable, polite and dependable banking services to the masses. The more innovative Internet Banking and a globally valid International...

Unrelenting Telemarketing Calls -- Best Way To Make Use These are the days when most of the businesses thrive on potential tele-sales. This trend is copied from the Western hemisphere to India but interestingly, the way it has been copied and developed here seems to be quite amateurish. The private entrepreneurs who pitch the business deal for the major clients, in order to save significant ex-chequer, employs just passouts or passing-by grads. While this is a welcome measure and appreciated stand that they are magnanimous to provide a good measure of employment to people, supporting the administration of the country, the sad part of the story is that they feel stingy to impart the basic communications skills training. When I say communications skills, I am encompassing a significantly wider range of topics including neutralized accent to cover a wider sector of people, professional message conveying skills, diplomatic way of handshake with the tele-customers, so on and so forth. I d...

After a significant amount of time, I had to travel the Sardar Patel Road, Adyar to visit my State Bank of India, Adyar branch. Today, as I was driving a bit slowly, since the traffic was more even during the afternoon, I slowly recalled the Sardar Patel Road, which used to be there some about even five years back. It used to be an avenue road, with only minimal amount of exposure to sunlight so even in Summers, it would'nt be a bit hassle for you to have even a prolonged walk. Things seemed to have changed and each of the changing governments ushering to make the best of the city and filling thier 'private' treasury chests with all imported flyover contracts etc. Too much of human intervention has rendered the road wide open to scorching sunlight. I think it is high time that NGOs and even the government should take steps to correct this. Eliminating greenery from the face of the earth for lame reasons like widening of the road etc. can not be accepted. Deforestation comes...