G20 - Garbage 20 "£$€¥₩руб"

The G20 was originally set up as an informal group in 1999, following the financial crisis in Asia. Their aim was to encourage international co-operation between finance ministers and central bankers. This summit in London potential costs amount to £20m, where as the one in Japan costed $285m (2008) and the Germany costed €92m(2004). THIS IS THE HIGHEST SECURITY EXPENSE in BRITISH HISTORY!

For an argument sake, if these summits had happened over video conferencing facility, we would have more money to spend today. Background work could have happened as it happens today and the key heads could have sat across the table before a best possible high-speed video line and all these money we spend could have been reduced to a pittance. People would have faced no hardship as they go to their day jobs, petty shops would be kept open, execs could have worn their suits, most importantly, Mother Nature would have been more green! Consider the emissions from the flights to & fro between the 19 countries to UK!

Ok At least let us wait to see if the result is positive; the overarching feeling is this summit will be a flop :(

Proceeds of dogs sales, don't bark!

That's a proverb in Tamil; What the old folks mean is if you sell a dog, the cash proceeds don't bark... i.e. you may steal a dog, sell it and no one would know the source of the income... Proverbs seldom turn false. Yesterday i witnessed it. Liquor tycoon Mallya bought Gandhi's personal artifacts in an auction, gifts to Indian government! Gandhi who stood against three things, drinks, deceit, non-veg food would have definitely disliked Mallya buying his artifacts in the auction. He was so anti to drinks and a liquor baron has bought and gifted the items to government but has done so coz' he is Indian. Bull!

I think its one another publicity act... My blog titles that thoughts never belong to one individual and the writer in the article i linked above, has expressed a similar view on this subject. or is it the hundredth monkey phenomenon?

Months of Rollercoaster

Usually the last quarter months of October-November-December are of huge importance for all cultures, ages, religions, artists; in short for everyone. Hindus celebrate Navratri, Diwali and other significant festivals. Muslims celebrate Ramadan, Christians celebrate birth of Jesus; Nobel prizes are awarded in this time of the year, Booker prizes to novels; Children celebrate the festivals mentioned above and winter sets in... A cycle that never tires most of us, but makes us work hard for the fun and frolic that culminates in the last quarter of an year.

Year 2008 will be remembered and quoted most often in History for one single reason - not that we had the CDH reactor testing or failing to test the Big Bang theory, not for the reason that Olympics was a great show, but for one single reason - the 'Credit Crunch'; As we talk about 1930 great depression and 2000 dot com busts today, we would talk about the brink of economic disasters in 2008 and how the world leaders got together(?) to 're-solve '(?) the crunch. The question mark is obvious in its placement as whether they really got together and who solved it? Actually did they solve it? Often i quip about project managers that they create an issue in first place and then they painstakingly solve it later to get the name and fame... Its a similar case here.

Greed breeds greed is a simple quote often repeated in many literatures. We seldom learn lessons and that's including me! Anyways that's a simple and foremost reason of 2008 problems. I also would blame it on IT. yeah CDS and sub-prime were all possible coz' of IT and if it were not to do with the power of IT services, the traders and analysts would have not come up with so many complex algorithms to trade and different products to trade as well. If that had not happened we would have not landed ourselves into Credit Crunch... I am just ridiculing IT that's it and not seriously mean IT as the problem for all the mess. People say you could use science for good and bad, religion for good and bad. I say the same - you can use IT to help you or land you in trouble as well. All these are tools which could be used in either the way...

Personally i am in a rollercoaster as well; I am home alone with my family off to India for a month's break and i would join them in a few weeks, but at the moment I miss my family - very odd statement given that i have been a family man only for 8 months... yes i miss them. Sleepless nights, winter setting in all adds to my woes... I plan to go enjoy my photography and other hobbies that i would like to persue in this time of anonymity.

The roller coaster continues...

A thought on outsourcing...

Many reports, case studies, research papers have been published discussing the pros and cons of outsourcing. I have been reading, thinking on this particular subject for quite some time - i would say at least 7 years :). A pain is a pain - irrespective of whether an Indian or American or a Norwegian feels it. So its always hard to justify outsourcing completely, coz' someone looses the job and the wealth pattern shifts - philosophically speaking this is bound to happen... But how do we justify to the employees? When an organisation does it, some of them might accept and move on, a few crib and remain, a few quit, some are forced to quit, some grow hatred over the sourced in citizens. btw, this blog does not relate to any views of the company i work for or its intention to progress in this vein...

Couple of days back, as I 'drove' to my office in a stuffed M4 queue, i tuned into the local Asian radio channel... MissyD the DJ pitched the topic. Lots of westerners are turning to Indian, East European countries to get their health/medical related problems sorted out. The numbers from UK just for this year rose to 70K+... The DJ added that infact a few take a quick flight to Hungary for a dental check. Turkey, Singapore were in the top providers' list. The services includes anything from a heart surgery to dental care to laser eye ops. The DJ's objective on that topic was different. She was interested to know the service feedback...

But this set the ball rolling in my mind... the key benefits that the individual go for such medical services overseas are : cost-effective, better care & attention, no more long waiting times/list and above all good quality. (Sounds the same set of benefits for an organisational outsourcing)

Does this bring the above argument to a full circle? When people look to save a quarter when it matters to their individual monetary budget, why would the big organisations not do it? People want to save costs, get their services quicker and also in a better quality, why would the companies not do it - From a capitalistic view, companies are formed with a sole aim to make money. So they are better placed to source-out. Though this significant point does not answer the cons from an ethical and pure moral point of view, (business & moral? -oxymoron) it definitely counters the argument in a much better strength and would at least challenge the pseudo-nationalists who throw scorn and hatred on the sourcing-in country nationals.

Appreciate the new idea

It has been a long time since i posted my blogs. I was busy on two goals; both progressing well - well don't ask me what they are; I shall announce when they meet the targets... I have a few things to blog... one of them a series of research articles on scientific analysis to date Mahabharata... I wish i get some solid time in starting that series... Today a peculiar article from The Hindu (India's leading English Daily)... Service station on the move

This is a brilliant business idea, but initially i wished it to fail... off late with too much money, people back home why can't they drive to a garage and get their cars cleaned??? why should they be such lazy bums? but then i though hang on a minute; its a good thing from a different angle... lets say 1000 of those potato couches chose not to drive couple of miles to wash their cars = 2000 miles of petrol is saved and less pollution; indeed the service car that cleans the other car indeed has to travel around that 2000 miles - so the petrol is anyway spent.. so one idea could be if this servicing company could drive to the offices where people work then the business can grow as well as less amount of gas...

Well we all wanted to be lazy that's why we started inventing many things and this business is one such... so none to blame but all...

Anyways what a great business idea.. Wish you all the best