How to drive right !

In India ’left’ is right, although 95% of the drivers on road fail to realize that. I have written about traffic earlier on how lucky I am to reach office well dressed and alive !

I was reading through some old threads on www.team-bhp.com when I saw this “If the left indicator blinks, it means you can’t overtake and there’s oncoming traffic while thr ‘right’ indicator means, go ahead”

well well well. Now I know why the 95% of vehicles on the road drive this crazy.

Now lets get to the bottom of this, when you give a left indicator you are not indicating or directing anyone to overtake, roll over, brake or anything. You are signalling the rest of the drivers that YOU are turning to the left ! Well that would be the simple meaning of an indicator.

So when you signal left, the car behind you can overtake you since you are moving to the left lane(if there is one) or to the side of the road. So it can be treated as a signal to overtake, although it isn’t !!!

When you indicate to the right, it means that YOU are going to move to the right lane or turn right at the next junction depending on the lane you are in ! It does not indicate that the vehicle behind you cannot overtake ! Its common sense and traffic ethics for the car behind you NOT to overtake when you are going to turn right !

The rules/ethics were answered/explained in the thread itself, but I am surprised to see many confused on this simple signalling thing. Its very simple, an indicator would convey on where YOU are going ,  you don’t tell anyone else on what THEY can /supposed (to) do. Although its a judgement that the vehicle behind you, who should take the decision to overtake.

Indicators are not fancy yellow lights which are used in old Malayalam/Hindi movies during dance sequences to get the disco light effects. Its an indicator to save lives!

Now for some quick poll (8 questions) on some basic traffic rules/ethics. Please don’t choose the answer that you think is right, but choose the one which you actually follow.

The Discrimination

I visited Mysore yesterday with my partner from the US and two other colleagues. The weather was good with occasional drizzling and a cool breeze. We reached Mysore palace after visiting the Sri Ranganatha Temple at Srirangapatna and Tipu Sultan’s fort. The board at the entrance fee read ” For Adults Rs 25, for Foreigners Rs 200″ !!!!

When we crib and cry about our treatment in other countries I think we should step back and change our system. My colleague from the US said “Woah, everywhere tourists are charged more, thats natural. But this is the first time that I am seeing it written on a board”.

I guess if I go to the Newyork Museum and the board reads  US Nationals $5 others $10 ” I would feel discriminated. (Does any other country charge for other Nationals? Not sure.. Do comment).

May be its a goverment’s way of making quick money but then I would say its not the right way to treat foreigners in the land where we proclaim ” Athidhi Devo Bhava”.

 

noreply@customerservice.com

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” Mahatma Gandhi

All companies boast of customer support. They have dedicated lines, toll free numbers, website links and email ids to help customers at the time of product dissatisfaction, service, complaints and feedback. With more people preferring the email and web way of raising their complaints,  most of the companies have options to help the customers the eway.

I raised a complaint regarding bad service and rude staff behaivior at a Spencer store in Bangalore. I wrote my feedback down on the book they have kept at the store, on page 37( this is important read on..). After a week I visited the store again and out of curiosity opened the book only to find that page 37 is missing. All the other pages with customer feedback was there except page 37. I talked to one of the staff and asked them on the missing page for which she replied “I did not tear it”.

Me “I didn’t say you tore it off, was just asking on where the page is. Now I am sure someone tore it off”

She “I did not tear it”

Me “Can I see your manager?”

Out came the same person who was rude to me the week before that and introduced as the manager of the store. I asked the same question.

Manager “It was there”

Me “Where is it?. I am sure none of the customers are going to tear it off “

Manager “I did not tear it, why are you blaming me”

Me “I want to talk to your Manager”

On this, the manager called the store ‘general manager’ who said he will take appropriate action on it.

I sent an email to the email id given on the spencer site. The last line read “I hope you acknowledge and respect my comments and not just send this email to thrash just like what happened to Page 37″

And they did. They sent it to thrash.

I sent a similar feedback to GK Vale customer care on how their store ruined the photoframe order that I gave. No reply.

I think many of these email ids should have warnings posted on their site as “Warning : Please do not sent emails to this id as it would go to an unmonitored mailbox.”

But some companies are prompt in replying to customer emails like Tata Indicom and Vodafone. Tata Indicom also has a forum where we can post our concerns and it would be addressed in 2 working days.

From all this I learned one thing, the snail mail still helps. All complaints send as snail mail would be read and acknowledged (read most of them). May be the customer service is been bombarded with customer emails that some of the emails are missed out. I think the customer support also consider snail mail as documentary evidence and take it more seriously than the emails. So next time you want to write a complaint out, write a snail mail.

The Lift

The lift has many usages. The first thing that comes to our mind would be the lift as in elevator.

I would talk about something else, the uncommon thing in India, ‘requesting for a lift (ride)”. The busstop is around a kilometer and half from my apartment, with no auto stand in sight (and because I have vowed not to take an auto because of all the bad experiences I had with those folks.) gives me two options. Either to walk all the way or to request for a ride.

In India we stop a bus by extending our hands out and waving in a wild gesture or stand in front of it hoping that the driver would stop.  Since we don’ t have the concept of holding your hand out with fingers closed and thumb extended or the ‘hitchhiker’s thumb all I would do is to shout “bus stop” when the biker would slow down and nod his head (the ‘NO’ nod) and ride off !

But there are a few who would stop and give me a ride to the bus stop.

The wiki has a lot of insight on hitchhiking.

Hitchhiking is a historically common practice worldwide, and hence there are very few places in the world where laws exist to restrict it. However, a minority of countries have laws that restrict hitchhiking at certain locations. In the United States, for example, some local governments have laws to outlaw hitchhiking, with safety being the primary concern – Wikipedia

Have you tried the hitchhiker’s thumb in India?

Seat Belt

The law mandates that the two passengers who occupy the front seats has to wear a seat belt. Well its only a law, which is seldom enforced. I have seen many of the young in flashy cars wearing it. But the older generation never wear it. I guess it because they are not used to the seat belts in their time and consider it to be an irritant.

Seat belt has its on woes. Once I went home and took my dad’s 800 out. As a reflex I put on the seat belt everytime I enter a vehicle, or atleast my hands search for it. I put on the seat belt. After coming back I realized that I have a Slanting ‘L’ mark on my shirt. The seat belt was never used and dust was accumulating on it.  After that I gave the law a skip while using his old 800.

My office mandates that all employees and cab drivers wear seat belts when they exit from the building. The security folks make sure that all are strapped in. The minute the cab drive out of the building premises, the cab driver removes the seat belt in a easy fast motion. “Difficult hai” he said to me once. I stayed strapped in.

The cab driver at my wife’s company wouldn’t even bother to buckle. He will just pull the belt over his chest and drive with one hand. Once the car moves out of the building he just let go of the belt !

I recently had an argument with a relative of mine on using helmets and seat belts. His argument was that helmets and seat belts are an irritant. He went to the extent of saying that there is no use of getting a preserved head if the rest of your body got thrashed in an accident.

I guess there is no point in enforcing these laws. It should be what the people should be taking as precautions.

Consider this scenario, an Indian check the gas connection, check if the fan/bulbs are running, check if the iron is ON before locking his house. And then he pulls the ‘Godrej’ lock twice to see if it was locked right. Then he ride on his bike without a helmet. We cover all gadgets in cover/plastic. (check this post out) to protect it.

I guess we take many precautions to take care of our belongings than ourselves!

*Update : The relative I talked about is an advocate.

Should Hindi Be Imposed?

The Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal announced new reforms to impose Hindi as a subject in all schools. NDTV, ‘We the people’ also had a debate on this announcement. Do I agree to this? Well learning a language should not be imposed. Back in my school years we had the option of choosing the Second language that I need to learn. English being compulsory and ‘first language’. I choose my mother tongue Malayalam, while my brother chose Hindi. It was based on your own choice.

I guess imposing a new reform and to ask people to learn Hindi is not the right way. After all where is the ‘Unity in diversity’ theme?

The politicos argue that they need to integrate India into one, and everyone knowing one language is one way to do it. Pranab Mukherjee says that not knowing Hindi affected his chance to become PM (this was shown on NDTV channel). Some in the audience (we the people) argued that Hindi is the National Language and is our culture. I do not have anything against Hindi, but then what about my mother tongue, can’t I argue that I need to protect our culture?

What about Tamil, Kannada, Telugu or any other regional language? Are you suggesting that the next generation should not learn it?

Firstly lets look at the argument of National Integration. Don’t you think English is helping???

Secondly lets looks at the culture thing. Hindi originated from Persian. Well if its been here for a long time then its definitely part of culture. So no arguments on that. Some of the dialects of Hindi came into existence in the 10th century.

Lets look at Tamil, Tamil literature exists from 300BC !! So undoubtedly its one of the oldest languages and so much our culture ! And we need to protect it as well.

I guess either Mr Sibal want to get some screen/blog space with all his new reforms(including stopping 10th board exam) or has nothing much to do in Human Resources. Hey thats HR !

News Snips

The Jet Airways Chairman said that pilot strike was unwarranted and it was causing huge impact on the common people. Wait a min, you are thinking about common people, how about your plan to strike to get government sops last month?

Shashi Taroor was on the news for the wrong reason again. First he was on the news for holding his hand on his chest when the national anthem was played. Now for staying at a 5 star hotel. The minister replied to the news saying that Kerala house did not offer gym and privacy, he also added that he was spending his own money. Now the question is if he is spending his own money let him stay any where he want, why does the media care? If we think of the amount of money spent on refurnishing and redecorating those ministerial bungalows (crores are spent by the state and central government on this) each time the goverment changes, I guess it would be much cheaper to let them stay at the 5 star hotel, spending tax payers money.

NDTV had a huge debate on this and people were arguing about on why the president spent crores on entertainment and hospitality bill at the Rastrapati Bhavan(around 130 crores)… hmm. Some ministers went ahead and started displaying their economy class tickets on television to prove their generosity.

If you could show your return tickets as well……..

Road Humps/Speed Bumps.

Okay, it may seem like a usual thing that you ‘bump’ into when you travel on road. But too many is too much !

The road (15 km route) that I take everyday in Bangalore to and from office has around 50-60 humps. I am thrown around 50*2=100 times every single day. Searching for humps on the internet I found that there is a group which actually discuss the pros and cons about it.

I guess the reason why we have so many humps in Bangalore would be to discipline the drivers who drive too fast/do not stop at signal(so a hump at every signal would atleast slow them down !!! ) .

The road humps at the signals slow down the traffic, also the humps in Bangalore are too high that you need to stop your vehicle(if it’s a car) and maneuver it very slowly so that you don’t scratch the bottom of the car.  The humps are also reason for many traffic accidents involving two wheelers as many humps are not marked and there are no signs warning of a road hump.

This also reminded me of a highway stretch in Kerala which was constructed by a Malaysian company. The stretch had warning signs 100mts before a road hump and the humps were properly marked, helping drivers during night drives.

I wonder why we have so many humps in Bangalore, aren’t there any other alternatives to control/discipline traffic int the city?

The Elevator Syndrome

A man neatly dressed, walks into the elevator. Once making sure that his floor has been chosen, he searches for something in his pocket, takes out a cell phone and starts fiddling with it.

A woman carrying her laptop walks into the elevator. She choses her floor and then takes out her blackberry and starts read old emails.

A housekeeping guy walks in, takes out his cell phone and start fiddling with it.

I am not sure how many of you might have noticed this, but this is called the elevator syndrome. We all suffer from this. Even when we know that there are no new messages, calls or emails(thats why cell phones have vibrator/ring alerts, if you did not hear it ‘there are no new messages’), we tend to check it again and again.

Not when you waiting for the lift, but soon after you enter one, you have this sudden surge to know if any new messages have come. If not check the old ones and re-read the emails.

If its a non blackberry then go ahead and check the call register, inbox for those ghostly messages which you know for sure that, its just isn’t there.

Do you suffer from this?

A man neatly dressed, walks into the elevator. Once making sure that his floor has been chosen, he searches for something in his pocket, takes out a cell phone and starts fiddling with it.

A woman carrying her laptop walks into the elevator. She chooses her floor and then takes out her blackberry and starts reading old emails. (I admit I peeked)

A housekeeping guy walks in, takes out his cell phone and start fiddling with it.

I am not sure how many of you might have noticed this, but this is called the elevator syndrome. We all suffer from this. Even when we know that there are no new messages, calls or emails(thats why cell phones have vibrator/ring alerts, if you did not hear it means ‘there are no new messages’), we tend to check it again and again.

Not when you waiting for the lift, but soon after you enter one, you have this sudden urge to know if any new messages have come. If not check the old ones and re-read the emails.

If its not a blackberry then people go ahead and check the call register, inbox for those ghostly messages which is not there.

Do you suffer from this?

Mobile Number Portability.

What is it? Once this becomes active, we could dump our existing service provider and switch to another one by paying a nominal fee. And the best part is that you can use the same number. So no more sending messages to all friends/relatives/consultants etc. (  link link)

Now, the service provider would have to keep the pace with the market to keep their subscribers. With new plans introduced by companies, the stubborn ones(read vodafone) would have to kick their age old plans and introduce new ones.

I have a corporate connection with vodafone with STD charged at Re 1. Airtel gives the same plan for STD at 75ps. I approached the corporate relations to find out why the vodafone users do not have this facility, I got a reply saying that they do have such a plan, but I am not eligible for the same.  There was no reason provided. It just said that I am not eligible. May be I should blame my ’second name’  for it or just move to a different service provider.

Once the mobile number portability is introduced, I guess I would be soon moving to a cheaper provider.

Now the dog, the small kid and the zoozoos would have to convince me to stay with them.