Personal » Sneek-A-Peek

Bye Bye Twitter, Bye Bye Facebook

Dec 162010

Many people have been asking me as to why I quit twitter? And haven't got a proper reply from me. I do owe them a reply, and here it is.
I have been a bit prone to mood swings, and at the beginning of December when I started feeling low, I thought it was just one of those days. But, it went on happening for a couple of weeks with no solution in sight. And some of you on twitter may also have noticed me cribbing about some nonsense stuff. Twitter and Facebook were in a way contributing and making me feel worse. So, finally after pondering over the decision for 3-4 days I decided I will quit both Twitter and Facebook.
At the same time, I did not want to miss some of the amazing people I met on these sites. Thus, I decided I will back up my profile and keep it safe so I have it available if I ever decide to return. I know, I will be missing some of these people, I already do. But, I had to take that decision and stick with it.
I still don't know if I will ever return back to those websites or not. Thankfully, facebook allows me to deactivate my profile and preserves it. I have backed up my twitter 'Friends' too.

And as to my mood, I have had the most amazing week of my life, coincidently after quitting Twitter and Facebook – 3 days cycling trip to Pune and Panchgani, a close friends wedding, nice tweetup where I met lots of people. The time spent outdoors and in real life is just what I needed. It has given me a much needed high. And with some of my very good friends likely to meet me this month, I hope it will be just what I needed.

A Moral Victory

Personal No Responses »

May 262009

Have you been unfairly charged by our service providers? I am sure all of us have faced such a situation at some point in our life. So what do we do? Here's my experience with Vodafone recently.

The Problem
Last week, accidentally a few key presses caused caller tunes to get activated on my Vodafone number. This led to deduction of Rs. 50 from my balance and activation of a crappy ringtone. So, the next day I called up Vodafone Customer Care. They informed me that nothing can be done to deactivate and get back my balance. Instead he had the audacity to tell me "Now that you've activated it, just use it." Like he pays for my bills!

The steps
So, the next day I tweeted about the same. To this, I got a negative reply that there's no chance of getting it back. And two people who experienced the same and never got their money back.
I still decided to go ahead and give it a try. First step was to have a written, verifiable record. Doing this in writing and submitting it at a Vodafone store is difficult to manage with work timings. Thus, I visited the vodafone website and visited "Got a problem" page. So, the best way forward was to contact them. My chosen medium was e-mail.
This was the email sent by me to vodafonecare.mum at vodafone.com

Dear Sir,
   On Saturday i accidentally dialed a friend's number and numbers
8*2 got pressed accidently while the call was in progress. This
incident activated caller tune on my number, without any additional
intimation or warning. I just got a SMS to inform me that a caller
tune has been activated on my number. A call to the customer care
proved to be futile. I don't need or want to have a caller tune. I
would just like to have my balance back.
  And while at it, it would be surely preferable if an esteemed
telecom company like you stop using such cheap tactics. Just an
additional SMS to confirm the activation of caller tune would be so
much more convenient and error proof. I would urge you to take steps
in this direction and thereby avoiding your customer losing faith in
your services.
  Hoping for a positive response.
With Regards
Mehul Ved.

The Response
There was no response to the email. Just as I was considering reaching to the nodal officer, there was a reply. Finally!! 4 days later they reply to me by email that they will get back to me shortly.

Dear Mr.Ved,
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We hope we have addressed your concern regarding Caller tune charges for your Vodafone mobile number 9819XXXXXX.
In case you need any further assistance, do call or email us, We'll do our best to help you. 
Happy to help

I decided to wait for another couple of days to see what happens next.
Finally I got a call 3 days later from Vodafone. I was anxious as to what will be the reply. Luckily they agreed to reverse the charges but made it sounds like they were doing me some favour by saying that they are doing it just this once as a goodwill gesture. Balls they've got.

The Followup
Two days later I did get a refund. But, the refund was worth Rs. 45 instead of Rs. 50 which was originally cut. Something better than nothing.
This was followed up with an email from my side as to how they can improve the system to remove this inconvenience. Here's the text from the email

Thank you for addressing my query. I would appreciate if steps are
taken to correct the fault in the procedure for copying caller tunes
from friend. The current procedure is causing inconvenience and
feeling of dissatisfaction amongst many customers of Vodafone. The
current procedure is
1) Dial your friend's number
2) Press  while the friend's caller tune is playing
3) Send SMS to inform of activation of service.
If you notice here, there is no step for confirmation in accidental
press of  button.
This procedure could be easily corrected by implementing the following steps
1) Dial your friend's number
2) Press * while the friend's caller tune is playing
3) Send SMS that a request has been sent for activation of caller
tunes. Do you want to really activate caller tune?
4) Once the confirmation SMS is sent, activate the caller tunes
5) Send SMS to inform of activation of service.

I hope this post will help others who've been bullied by their service providers and have been unfairly charged for services. If you do have such experiences of your own, please do post it on your blog to give it a visibility and motivate people to not take the atrocities of the service providers, just lying down.

Me!!

Personal No Responses »

Apr 052009

Yesterday was a day when I ended up being so pissed off on myself, I've never been there ever before. A whole new experience for me. At this I realised that I have never blogged about myself, just about my surroundings, happenings and experiences. Thus, I'd like to dedicate this blog to a small happening that occurred yesterday and made me stop and think about my priorities.
The first thing, I forgot a friend's birthday. I don't like forgetting people's birthdays. Whenever it happens, I end up angry on myself. Still, luckily I ended up being there to wish her when the whole group had decided to meet up. I joined them up and had a good time with them. What happened henceforth made me write the post. Since I was still within office hours, I decided to leave them mid-way and go to the office. At any other time it'd be a sensible and right decision but not this time around. I knew that I did not have any work at the office, I'd just go there and [b]waste[/b] my time. And that's exactly what happened! Nothing worse than sitting idle at office and the fact that I let go of having good time friends makes it even worse. As it is, I hardly meet them up these days due to mismatch of timings. One opportunity and I let go.
What makes it even worse still is that I decided to go back to the office since I didn't want to loose Rs. 200 that gets cut for half day at office. Now you see why the whole melodrama? The fact that I put money before friends is what's hurting me. Money's important to me at this stage where I am but not at the cost of my relations. The latter's way more costly to lose.
Well it's not all downhill, there are a couple of good things too. I have been cycling and gymming regularly and playing cricket on weekends. Sports and exercises are an important part of my life. Devoting time to them feels awesome. Also, the fact that I've been doing what's on my mind. In the past I used to hold myself off and let the opportunity pass. Some simple incidents as getting ticket for the old man who had to get off at the next stop but couldn't reach the conductor to discouraging a person from spitting on the road or cycling to work, not caring about what people say. Small incidents like these make me feel happy that I am doing something instead of just sitting back. Hopefully I'll take it ahead and do better things to contribute to getting things better. Cause the best thing it does is build up my confidence and make me feel happier.

BarCampMumbai5 – The Experience, The Firsts

BarCampMumbai, Events, Friends, Open Source, Personal, Technology No Responses »

Feb 052009

Sunday February 1 2009 was the day when BarCampMumbai 5 was held with the same old enthusiasm but at a whole new venue – VJTI College, Matunga. The camp was host to many firsts for the BCM as well as for me.

First time BCM was held outside IIT-B.

First BCM without any sponsorship. It was jokingly called as recession camp by a few of us.

First time I had the responsibility of handling something on my own

I took a first session at BarCamp

First opportunity for me to live tweet from an event

Taking up a session was an awesome experience for me. I haven't spoken in front of a crowd since college days, when we used to have presentations in front of the class. And I am glad that I was able to speak better than I did at college. Also, the amount of response I received from the crowd was unexpected. I expected to have 3-4 people attending the session, so I decided to go for a BoF. But in the end had to adjust it to accommodate an audience of 15+.
There was a downside though, I almost attended no session at all throughout the whole BarCamp. The opportunity to meet up people and do something more than made up for it.
Icing on top of the cake was when some of us went to see the play -The Park, at Horniman Circle. It was a perfect way to end the nice day. Thank you Thakkar for informing about the play. My next blog post would be on the play. It was too awesome to not have it's own separate post.

Last Month CAT Preparation Strategy

Events, Personal No Responses »

Nov 032008

The countdown to CAT 2008 has begun, just 2 weeks to go. This being my 3 rd attempt at CAT, have been some of the things that I have learnt along the way. There is no silver bullet or a magic potion that works for all. It's a journey of self discovery. Some things that follow may work for you, some may not and some may not work but still help you find what works for you. The important thing is to realise what ticks for ourselves and what doesn't.
So, here's my take on CAT preparation during the final 2 weeks

1) Solve CAT level papers regularly. Previous years CAT papers make a good choice for practising but anything that matches the level of CAT can be considered worthy.

2) Review the paper that you solve. This is a very important step that people seem to miss out. It's important to solve papers but it's even more important to review it after solving the paper. It helps you not only to solve questions better but also to gain overview on how to prepare strategy to solve the paper, understand your strengths and weaknesses and also time yourself.

3) Understand your strengths and weaknesses. By this point in time you should be familiar with what you are good at and what you are not. It is more important to spend time understanding your strength and weaknesses then trying to learn new things at this stage. Learning new things may not help much if you are not familiar with your strength and weaknesses as you may not be able to formulate the right strategy.

4) Study in moderation. People tend to step up their study schedule to cram in as much as possible during the last one month. But, what has worked better for me is gradually stepping it down a couple of gears in the final 2 weeks.

5) Relax on the day before the exam. For last 2 years have never studied for more than 2 hours on the final day. I prefer to relax and refresh my mind to be all prepared for the exam pressure next day. I plan on doing the same this year too. But, be careful. Don't over exert yourself to get to the point of tiring yourself mentally or physically. That may keep your from having peak concentration levels. Also, avoid caffeine and alcohol or any substance that gives sends you into a low after small period of high, as the high may not sustain throughout till you finish the CAT paper.

6) Practise relaxation techniques. Practise whatever relaxation technique you like – meditation, imagery, breathing, etc. I tend to prefer imagery personally but other things may work for you. It's not about which technique you use but the result you achieve. It's important to come fully relaxed for CAT and channel your nervous energy in a positive direction.

7) Eat properly. Yeah most of us find it difficult to maintain a good diet and avoid unhealthy food. But, it is important to eat right food. It helps you keep in proper frame of mind and feel active to last through the paper. And eating right reduces your chances of falling sick. That would be a disaster, won't it?

Get ready. I prefer to start preparing all your material to carry for the paper, atleast a 3 before CAT so as to avoid any last minute running around. Also, I pay a visit to the exam center atleast a week before examination to get myself familiar with the place and it's surrounding and note down any special/unusual things that I may have to go through.

9) Study with friends I like to prepare while sitting with friends for the last couple of weeks since it creates healthy competition among us and try to achieve higher. Also, sitting together helps us analyse each other to find points which we would have otherwise missed. Also, some nice fun together during breaks gets you ready to take on further preparations.

10) Believe in yourself. Rest of the things all amount to nothing if you fail to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, rest should surely be much easier and should fall into place.

If you have your own ideas, points of views, suggestions please share it with us. I'd be happy with valid criticisms in my methods too.

Food, Fun and Frolic – A Fantastic Friendship Day

Friends, Personal, Places No Responses »

Aug 052008

I just had about 2 hours of nice sleep, after having been awake whole saturday night doing nothing fun. Then my friend called me up at around 12p.m.. My group of friends from VJTI were meeting up at our usual place near Ruia college.
I met them up at around 2 p.m.. We sat and chatted for the next one hour at the place discussing about what's going on with jobs and interviews scenario amoung ourselves. After that we decided to visit Baghdadi's, a small restaurant at Colaba known for it's non-veg food and serving size. So, after wasting another half an hour deciding mode of transport and destination to meet up at, me and another friend reached the place by bike while the rest of them took a train to CST, despite telling them to take one for Churchgate .
Since we reached ultra fast on the bike, compared to the train, we decided to have some cold coffee (yummy) in the meanwhile. They delayed for too long so we finally decided to meet up at Gateway of India. There was a huge crowd, typical on sundays, with hardly any place to sit. Thankfully we found enough place for 10 of us to sit side by side near the wall facing the sea.
Here we spent a good amount of time chatting, joking and arguing. I kept getting angry with idiots dumping all kinds garbage in the water. Worst part was when a policeman took a seat taken from a tonga(a horse carriage for those who don't know the local name) and threw it in the water. This is a really apt example of how moronic some of our police are. Hopefully, an article on this incident a bit later.
We decided to chuck the plans for Baghdadi's as no one was that hungry. Rather, we decided to go to the terrace restaurant at Hotel Strand, which I had once visited a couple of years back with some building friends. It's a not-so expensive restaurant considering the locality and the reputation of hotels in the area. A pot of tea/coffee for 2-3 just costs Rs. 50. Besides we ordered some Cheese Garlic Bread and scrambled eggs, some cold coffee for those who didn't have pot coffee. The food was great but it was eclipsed by the view around the hotel. The stretch of Gateway of India spread in all it's grandeur, overlooking the majestic Arabian sea with dozens of boats going around in the sea. And it's even better when viewed at late evenings – with the setting sun, cold breeze and the darker skies blending nicely with the open air restaurant. Just splendid! It's a view to experience, especially with your other half .
We spent our whole evening at Hotel Strand's restaurant. With just 4 of us left at 8:00p.m. we decided to finally pay a visit to Baghdadi's and let my friends try their delicious non-veg dishes for the first time. My friends ordered for a Chicken Fry and a roti while I settled for an Egg Masala and Veg. Biryani, as I am not fond of chicken.
We spent a whole of 7 hours hardly realising how fast the day passed by. An awesome and joyous day ended with a nice early sleep that I so needed to catch up with.

Travel Torture

Personal, Places No Responses »

Jul 302008

I had taken up a week's assignment, where I had to travel all the way from CST to Badlapur, which is like 70kms travel, everyday.
It took up 3.5 hours of my time everyday just to travel to and fro. This kind of travel feels like such a waste of time. For 4 hours of work, I had to travel almost another 4 hours everyday. Thankfully it was just for a week so I could handle it.
I wonder how to people manage to travel that long everyday. I have heard from some friends that they travel for 3 hours a day to-fro their college. I wonder how do they manage that?

Water Woes

Personal No Responses »

Jun 072008

Ironically, it's the heavy downpour in Mumbai that's making me sit at home and write this blog entry on water shortage in our building last week.
Eight days back, one of the 4 water tanks – each tank for each floor, burst. So, the people on the 2nd floor were left without water till the tank was repaired. This scarcity of water created chaos as many people were left without water.
Instead of co-operating to solve the problem, some of them, idiots as they are, decided it would be a better idea to cut off all the wires to the water pumps so no one else in the building gets any water.
So, for two days the whole building had to face a huge shortage of water and the repair work was set up on a fast track.
This article is more so about the stupid and narrow minded thinking of the small subset of people causing inconvinence to majority, then about the shortage of water.

The NeXt Step

Personal No Responses »

Feb 152008

After getting unbelieveable 97.46%ile in CAT2007, I got a call from IMT for their PGDBM programs at Ghaziabad and Nagpur campus.
I got a call letter from them that I had to reach The Institution of Engineers(India) at Mahalaxmi on 14th February, 2008 at 8:30 a.m. for my Group Discussion and Personal Interview.
Reaching there at 8:15 a.m., I was feeling a bit scared seeing people all dressed up and readying for the occassion with truckloads of certificates and I had none, not even my marksheets . After gathering in the hall I met 2 of my BBI classmates. One was univeristy topper for BBI, Monalisa, who scored less than me ie.e 91.5%ile and the other was a guy who got thrown out of the class for low marks and creating nuisance, Tushar Kant, who got 98.1%ile and was unusually serious and he was nicely loaded with a work experience and sports certis. You never know what can hit you.
After a while we were handed over a form to fill for choice of program at Ghaziabad and Nagpur campus. In all there were 9 of them. I preferred to elect for Full Time, HR and IT at Ghaziabad as my first 3 choices followed by Finance and full time at Nagpur.
Following that we had to go to a separate room for Group Discussion. In all there were 15 of us guys in that GD. We were given 2 topics to select
1) Do Management Institutes only generate employees or do they create enterprenuers, too.
2) Should MBA's replace IAS officers?
We decided to go with topic 1 as the group felt it to be more relevant to our future and it's best to leave each to separate professional.
I got a decent chance to speak as the crowd was relatively well behaved and IMO got in a couple points only but they were pretty good. Overall the GD was nothing great but it wasn't any bad.
Considering I was the only non-engineer in my GD group makes me wonder again why is it that engineers always fare so well in CAT?
After that we again got together and discussed for a while about GD. My BBI classmates were both in group 4 opposed to my group 3. They had a nice topic, newpaper and television. Ah! The all mighty 4th estate .
After that we had a PI session. I was the second person from group 3. The same people who conducted our GD also conducted my PI. Here's a gist of how it went
INT:- So, tell us something about yourself.
ME:- I mention a bit about my educational background, current job profile, my favourite subject and my hobbies.
INT:- What bike do you own?
ME:- Pulsar DTSi UG2 150CC
(Next they changed the track)
INT:- Why did you change your feild from Banking and Insurance to IT?
ME:- explained about getting my first computer in the 2nd year of BBI, getting interested in the working of PC, fascination with Open Source, why Open Source makes business sense to me.
INT:- What kind of work do you do currently?
ME:- gave briefing about my job
INT:- You take risks?
ME:- Yes, but not too much. I prefer informed risks than blind bets.
INT:- What about you, would you like to change when you go to a B-School
ME:- getting overexcited too soon (discussed a bit on this)
INT:- What would you like not to change
ME:- My stubbornness and use of both mind and heart before making a decision (a bit of discussion on this)
INT:- Who is your favourite businessman
ME:- I consider Dhirubhai Ambani as the topmost(damn I never remembered about Larry Page and Sergie Brin or Rupert Murdock in there. I guess that's how it all goes)
INT:- Now, if Dhirubhai was alive and offered you a piece of land in Himachal Pradesh and asked you to take up a project there, would you take it up?
ME:- Depends on the terms and conditions. Also, I wouldn't if I was his employee.
INT:- OK, so he'd make you a partner if you are able to create a flourishing business. Then?
ME:- I'd ask for time to go to HP and survey before giving a final reply.
INT:- Sometimes you don't have so much time you have to reply within 5 minutes. What would you do in that case?
Me:- I would reject as I don't want to play a blind game using someone else's money.( I could have addded, I can always go later if I feel that there might be something worth out there and if I feel that there is still an opportunity, after surveying then I'd look for sources of finance again.)

That's about it. All worth 2 hours of my day. All went quite nicely and smoothly. Much better than I'd expected.
In the end, I'd like to just add this, "Be truthful, don't worry about your weaknesses and don't try to hide behing a weil. When you're truthful you can easily go on with your PI without falling into any traps set by the interviewers."

The Day When Everything Went Wrong

Personal No Responses »

Dec 102007

No this is no school homework, hey I finished school long back!
Yeah, today is the day when everything is going wrong. Let's start from the beginning of the day.
I was returning from Bangalore to Mumbai in Chalukya Express, I woke up to pain in my ankle. I got up to see that the idiots sitting on the side berth had kept all their luggage on my leg. While arguing on that I happened to check my watch, it was 6:50 am- just 5 mins to reach the destination. So, I had to leave it and start packing up.
While leaving, I got a call from my uncle that mom had an operation while I was away. That pre-occupied my mind whole way while traveling back home.
After reaching in my house and relaxing for a while, I realised that I left 7 hand bags containing KDE-IN posters and gentoo flyers in Chalukya Express. That was enough to completely spoil my mood. Then, I decided to proceed to the gym to leave these thoughts behind and relax. Thankfully had a great couple of hours in the gym. A good workout after a week's break is surely refreshing.
Returning back home, I put some eggs for boiling. In the meanwhile I started preparing for a bath, just to realise that the kaam waali bai put all my pants into a bucket of water for washing. I have no pants to wear at work today . Just great. Thus, I proceeded to spend some time on my computer to kill the time while eggs are ready. To my horror, I got a grub error 22. I booted from puppy live cd to check what error 22 is. This is what I got, from GNU GRUB Manual

22 : No such partition
This error is returned if a partition is requested in the device part of a device- or full file name which isn't on the selected disk.

I furiously started checking pmount tool for the partitions, only 1 partition containing some 240 mb free space. I started gparted then and saw that there's a 243mb ext3 partition and 37gb extended partition containing an unknown partition! WOW!!!!! I said "Fine let it be so for a few more days, will reinstall gentoo later." Just then my grandmom told me that I forgot the eggs on the stove and they're overcooked. I had to throw most of them away, as it was uneatable.
This is just within 5 hrs and still 13 hrs to go in the day. Looks like it's going to be a long day ahead. I have got some running around to do the whole day it seems.
Good thing is now if I ever again have to write an essay on "The day when everything went wrong", I will never have to make up a story.

Older Entries

Sneek-A-Peek

Bye Bye Twitter, Bye Bye Facebook

A Moral Victory

Me!!

BarCampMumbai5 – The Experience, The Firsts

Last Month CAT Preparation Strategy

Food, Fun and Frolic – A Fantastic Friendship Day

Travel Torture

Water Woes

The NeXt Step

The Day When Everything Went Wrong

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