The gift of maggie and cereals!

This blog has got little to do with O' Henry's gift of Magi or Maggie food controversy. Based on a real life incident, but any interpretations are yours and yours only!


I was on my way to ASDA with a mission on hand - I had to buy a few things and one of the items was a cereal for the kids - Kellogg's Rice Crispies Multi-grain Shapes cereal. Well as usual heard half of it and assumed - ah! big deal I can get that. I was a bit annoyed with the missus for reminding me ten times and let me forget the fact that I forgot to buy the cereal twice in my previous visits to ASDA.

Today I was destined to buy or at least I thought so. Happily set off with the shopping cart, I got a whatsapp text with all groceries in the list with the cereal name shortened like MGSR cereal... Oh my - for god sake, I run a proper function at my office, am I a kid to be reminded like this with a whatsapp message?

Bought all the stuff properly and I entered the aisle 22 - 2 is my favourite number, how much better can it get? A casual walk and I couldn't find KRCMGS... I am casual, so I should have missed it. I need to get a 10/10 today, so I spent an extra careful 1 minute walk around aisle 22. What?? I couldn't find that box. ok ok, let me go to a different aisle and come back - another 2 minutes later, I was back in aisle 22 - 10 minutes later I was still there; there were so many combinations - rice crispies, multi-grains, kellogg's, and shapes but I couldn't find the bloody KRCMGS. I must have started talking to myself, because I had a few curious eyes on me. I was getting really anxious!

Then the socialist in me started cursing the brands and the brand tactics of manipulating the families and deep down from somewhere the "male chauvinist" started blaming the women and moms... I suddenly remembered how the world is driven essentially by 7 brands etc. etc.

Well whatever be the macro-politics, this evening I will be a laughing stock at the dinner table and the next day morning kids are going to be cranky - especially the little one. The boy likes porridge, well you never know there are another 100 brands and flavours of porridge too - omg! I am not buying something else that was not on the list... I will be off her list then.

Reality kicked in - after all I am faced with a real problem, and I am not afraid of asking help. So I called the missus and she re-defined KRCMGS crystal clear - I decided to use technology to my help. Took a photo of the racks and whatsapp-ed her.

Right Decision - Time will say: Times of India acknowledges it...

August last week, after 3 years of mulling on a decision to buy a LCD TV, We made the decision to buy a LCD TV. As usual, I started browsing the net to find an appropriate TV. I remember and often repeat the incident that happened when I began my 'second' life i.e. starting to live on my own after the first job in Satyam. I was enjoying the IT salary class in India and planned nice furnitures, TV, bike etc. I got a nice Honda Passion motor bike and that gave me a 'freedom' of driving! I decided to buy furnitures to decorate the empty house - Gyan Darshan. I actually was staying for no rent at my Sister's place in Chennai. I thought why not decorate the houses with nice furnitures, so when my sister returned to India, I could leave them as 'presents'.

Anyway, my friend Shiva known for his saving abilities stepped into decision making on buying new furnitures.We also had to visit my maternal uncles' place in Beasent Nagar for helping some problem in his PC. Discussion turned to my idea about buying new furniture. My uncle who has traveled a lot, stacked some good ideas and thoughts too. My Uncle and Shiva influenced me heavily to reconsider my decision and made me buy a used Diwan. I would have spent a minimum of 10,000 Rs, but ended up spending up 1,300 Rs on buying the nice Diwan and 100 Rs for transporting the set. Shiva saw the ad on Adayar Times and thats how we ended up buying.

It became an important learning that too right at the beginning of my career. So almost every other purchasing decision had this learning back in the mind. The same learning influenced me. In the case of LCD TV, my wife was not keen too. With the little boy and my MBA, we had little time to spend on entertainment. However as i was about to finish my papers by Nov and the little one became manageable, buying a TV and Sony's offer convinced us. The climax was yet to play.

We found a nice 40 inch LCD TV, 100Mhz, Wifi, TV Stand, Blue-ray player  etc. from Sony on the web. However when we visited the showroom, Sony offered us a full 3D TV pack for a bit more extra on our budget. We withdrew and went into mulling. We analysed many things and couple of points blocked us.

1. When guests visit, what do we do for extra pairs of 3D glasses? just one costs around £80 and we usually have a lot of guests.

2. What about health risks? - Its completely a new technology and there wasn't a lot of research on such technologies. Especially what happens to eyes and our brains that are fooled to imagine them as 3D images. Also with young lad around, we did not take the risks and settled for a nice regular TV.

In 3 months time, i have an answer. Check this out..."3D TV can make you really sick"

Right Decision - Time will say: Times of India acknowledges it...

August last week, after 3 years of mulling on a decision to buy a LCD TV, We made the decision to buy a LCD TV. As usual, I started browsing the net to find an appropriate TV. I remember and often repeat the incident that happened when I began my 'second' life i.e. starting to live on my own after the first job in Satyam. I was enjoying the IT salary class in India and planned nice furnitures, TV, bike etc. I got a nice Honda Passion motor bike and that gave me a 'freedom' of driving! I decided to buy furnitures to decorate the empty house - Gyan Darshan. I actually was staying for no rent at my Sister's place in Chennai. I thought why not decorate the houses with nice furnitures, so when my sister returned to India, I could leave them as 'presents'.

Anyway, my friend Shiva known for his saving abilities stepped into decision making on buying new furnitures.We also had to visit my maternal uncles' place for helping some problem in his PC. Discussion turned to my idea about buying new furniture. My uncle who has traveled a bit is also known for his saving skills. Both Shiva & my Uncle influenced me heavily and made me buy a used Diwan. I would have spent a minimum of 10,000 Rs, but ended up spending up 1,300 Rs on buying the nice Diwan and 100 Rs for transporting the set. Shiva saw the ad on Adayar Times and thats how we ended up buying.

It became an important learning that too right at the beginning of my career. So almost every other purchasing decision had this learning back in the mind. The same learning influenced me. In the case of LCD TV, my wife was not keen too. With the little boy and my MBA, we had little time to spend on entertainment. However as i was about to finish my papers by Nov and the little one became manageable, buying a TV and Sony's offer convinced us. The climax was yet to play.

We found a nice 40 inch LCD TV, 100Mhz, Wifi, TV Stand, Blue-ray player  etc. from Sony on the web. However when we visited the showroom, Sony offered us a full 3D TV pack for a bit more extra on our budget. We withdrew and went into mulling. We analysed many things and couple of points blocked us.
1. When guests visit, what do we do for extra pairs of 3D glasses? just one costs around £80
2. What about health risks?

In 3 months time, i have an answer. Check this out..."3D TV can make you really sick"