11000

On the 18th day of 2011, I turned 24

Cheers!!! :)

Going Green is truly rewarding !!!

I had another of my "Go Green" moment today. I was buying myself some groceries and at checkout, I gave my clubcard and told that I am carrying my own bag - I don't need yours.

The cashier gave me an extra clubcard point - Green point and Eureka! I reached yet another 100 points milestone!!!

Reward points aside, it gives a feel-good factor when you re-use your shopping bag - a small contribution to the environment - but hey! every little helps.

To know more about green-living, go to www.commonfloor.com/green-living

Incredible India - II

My flight from Moscow got delayed by 7 hours because of thick/heavy fog at New Delhi Airport. Its quite surprising to me that the country which has technical institutes like 7+[x] IITs cannot up with a solution to fog problem.

If there is a problem get engineering involved and solve it. If there is no technical solution available, then come up with a winter time-table for flights (Here, I make an assumption that India has good enough weather technology to predict clear skies and visibility conditions). At-least, commuters will be mentally prepared and plan their vacations/meetings/schedule accordingly.

From the point of view of Airport Authorities at New Delhi, it is just another delay in another flight. But generally, people have a lot of things planned and arranged after the flight which gets totally disrupted because of the looooooong delays.

I wish, concerned people understand the value of time and take some constructive steps instead of just reporting delay statistics and using just-in-time approach to re-schedule flights.

Personally, I didn't lose much except for 7 hours of my limited vacation days, paying ~50$ for a taxi which I did not use, being late on reaching home on my birthday. Given the mobility involved in my job, I am OK with waiting for flight for 8-9 hours at any civilized airport at any time of day/year, but it really helps a lot if you know it well in advance.

Related Reading:

• Incredible India - I
• ATC Systems crashed at Delhi Airport, flights delayed
• [Jan 2010] Fog delays over 100 flights at IGI
• [Jan 2008] Fog delays over 100 flights
• [Jan 2007] Fog, flight delays greet Delhi on New Year
• [Cricket] Second cricket pitch fiasco for India, Sri Lanka
• [2009] Angry over Games preparations, CGF chief wants PM to step in

10111

On the 18th day of 2010, I turned 23

Cheers!!! :)

With more readers, comes false sense of power?

I recently came across a blog post which made me think about misuse of popularity of your blog and online community.

Author claims that he accidentally pressed a few buttons when he was ringing his friend and that caused a deduction of [x] rs. from his account balance and a "crappy" caller tune is activated.

- He called them, got a negative reply.

- He tweeted about it, his social network said, they had same problem in past and did not get their money back.

- Emailed them to a have a written record (for -? consumer court -?)

- He gets a refund of 0.9[x] and suggests that their should be an additional layer of verification through SMS.

I might be wrong, but having an additional verification channel of SMS would consume extra resources of the company.

I think, people at the mobile company returned the money only as a goodwill gesture or like some random holiday gift. As per my understanding (which might be insufficient), I don't think the company was legally obliged to pay the money back!

Also, the mobile operator has very clearly advertised in their campaigns, that to copy a caller-tune from your friend, dial his number and then press certain combination of keys. If you "accidentally" do that very sequence, pay for it.

Next day, someone might dial a number accidentally from their speed-dial and claim money back because he did not talk.

So, personally I dont think this was an ethical step from the author to try to defame the mobile operator as bullying the customers OR unfairly charging for services.

You have got a great blog, a good readership, use it for more constructive reasons - with great powers, comes great responsibility!

P.S.:

1. I am not giving link of blog post here to respect the annonymity of the author. Although, I am fully aware that with the information given above, a small google search will land you on his blog.

2. I am one of the regular reader of his blog.