Capturing the Russian Prez

Capturing the Russian Prez was so easy for us. Infact we captured him over lunch. But it was much more difficult for the press who ran throughout the campus to film him. We were having lunch on the first floor of FoodCourtOne and Keyur had carried a camcorder just in case we came across Putin. We had finished more than half when we saw the media people running from the corporate building. Keyur took out his cam from the case and we were all ready to shoot, when to our disappointment we saw a cavalcade a 100 metres away from us. Limousines with tinted glasses and we thought we had missed Putin. Infact, I saw some guy sitting in the limo whom I thought was Putin. And thats when we started lunching again. Keyur joked that cavalcade had gone but the Prez will fool everyone by walking through the campus. And yes!!!!. The Prez fooled us. There he was with his strong contingent of about 30-35 people. Wearing a grey coloured suit and looking smart as usual. With Murthy guiding him, the Prez was looking impressed by the campus. Later in a press release he said that he couldnt beleive that people can work in such a beautiful campus. But now it was turn of our man to capture him. Keyur was filming Putin and the rest of our group which included Lech and Kashyap and a few others time shared between looking at Putin , Anna Kournikovas,the KGB people and Keyur's forehead(to ensure that there is no laser pointed there). So we had had him. And we were happy about that till Keyur disclosed his doubts. He asked us which one of the contingent was Putin and later said that he had noticed no one in a grey suit. Later we discovered that Keyur had got less of Putin and more of his bodyguards.

Disclaimer: This is a disclaimer applicable throughout my blog. My writings here in no way are an indicative of my company's views and policies and note that I am not the PRO of my company.

Mother of all jams

That was the topic of the day on the BB. For those of you who dont know what a BB is, it stands for bulletin board. A place where people in a company discuss issues, sell TVs and mobile phones and post A+ve blood needed requests, the BB has nothing to do with pen and paper, but is an electronic interface and can be accessed as a folder in your Outlook or through a web interface. It indeed was mother of all jams. I have never been stuck in a jam for this long. I boarded the company bus at 0850 hours and reached office at 1130. I used to travel from Pune to Bombay, a distance of about 130 kms in 90 minutes. And today I spent 160 minutes to travel a distance of 13 kms.
Some interesting statistics posted by someone called Jaise George who travelled to office in a car:
-->Time taken : 225 minutes
-->Distance travelled : 25 kms
-->Songs listened : 54
-->Time spent on a flyover : 28 minutes
-->Gear shifted above 1st : 4
-->Diesel spent : 6 litres

Luckily I had a book and a cutie next to me.

Air Deccan

Does a company's name deserve to be the title of my post? Well, dont quite know. But what I know is that I am going to spend more money on travelling from Bangalore to Bombay by bus than I will travelling back by air. To be precise, I am going to spend 981 bucks on the bus and just 721 on the plane. Just in case, you dont know the business model of Air Deccan, the airline offers 5 seats at 721( 500 + 221 tax) . The pricing of a seat depends on the availability of seats at that time and also on the timing of your booking. I was lucky to get this ticket at this price eventhough I booked just two months in advance. Yes, life for poor people(middle class is a more euphemistic term) is full of compromises. The first compromise is that I had to book the ticket two months in advance, but no problems about that. My boss is a nice guy and approves my leaves.(Hope he reads this ;-) )The second compromise is that the ticket I got was a Thursday ticket against the prefered Monday ticket. By the way, it is because of Air Deccan that I have stopped flying Jet. And at the time of writing this Jet IPO is on. So, I am still thinking whether I should put my cash in the IPO or not. With more and more no frills airlines coming up, more and more people will desert Jet.

Sweets at my desk

People are just waiting to distribute sweets and more people are waiting to grab them. The reasons are many. Someone has just returned from onsite, a baby was born to someone, someone is getting married or someone has just bought a new house. Such a 'someone' fooled quite a few people in SETLabs. When I say fooled, it was because of bad e-mail etiquettes of the sender and the people who were fooled. And I was one those who were fooled. This person had sent a mail about a fortnight ago with the subject "sweets at my desk" about a fortnight ago. Today, he replied all to the same mail with some different contents in the mail. Totally unaware of the contents of the mail, I rushed to the first floor of building 19 along with Keyur( we sit on the second floor), where we found out that we had goofed. But that was okay.There were a few more with us and we all had a nice laugh.

How much do you get?

I dont understand why people keep asking this question. I have been asked this question a few hundred times. The latest incident which prompted me to write this occured on Hosur Road. If you have read some of my previous posts and have come across the one in which I write about the traffic snarls on Hosur Road, you would expect me to eavesdrop some interesting conversation. Yes!!! That is exactly what I did today. Our bus(company bus) was crawling in the traffic and a BMTC( public transport in Bangalore) bus was running parallel to us. The conductor of this BMTC bus who was standing at the gate started a conversation with our bus driver. He started by asking what company did he work for to which our driver replied "Infosys" with the 'fo' pronounced as you do in forest. A few questions followed and even though the entire conversation was in Kannada, I could make out what the BMTC conductor was asking. Just to verify, I asked the two girls sitting next to me what was the discussion all about. They told me about the Salary question and also what the driver replied. Well, if you are the one who keeps asking this question, then you must be interested in the answer too. Well, he gets 2000 a month. Now let me clarify as I end this post, that the driver was not an Infosys employee, but an employee of the contractor from whom the buses were hired.