Practice

Like any other activity, riding a bike is also a matter of practice. I have learnt this the hard way.

I was no expert on riding, ever. But fear never had a grip over me till few years back. For the last two and half years or maybe three years, I have not been riding a bike. And now when I do ride, there is this lack of confidence and a certain level of fear that has a grip over me. 

So I wanted to figure out a way to deal with this. And it seems that Malcolm Gladwell's book, 'Outliers: The story of success', can be the saviour.

Anyways, this problem shall be dealt with over a period of time. The book explains the interesting study by Anders Ericsson which is '10,000 hour rule'. Its simple, one masters a skills as a result of dedicated practice, it is the magic figure of practicing for 10,000 hours. And then he goes on to give many examples of successful people e.g. Bill Gates, Beatles etc.

Since I have no desire to become a great biker, hopefully even few hundred hours of riding should work out!!

Although I am not sure if there is an empirical analysis but there is an age age old maxim, "Practice makes a man Perfect", so there is not much hope for me either. Except riding the bike on every possible occasion. Even Rome was not built in a day, perhaps with time the riding fear will lessen.

False tone

I am sure; some of your friends must have bought a Tata Indicom or Docomo at some point. Do you remember their complaints? If you don’t remember then just call up your friend who had used any of the Tata’s telecom offering and ask them, if they would like to use or let’s say rely on the service (Indicom or Docomo or Virgin) again for their office or their personal work? Also try and recall if you have you ever heard any corporate connection with the services of Tata telecom? My memory fails on any such information.

During college days (like two years back), I remember many of my friends having a reliance connection to talk to their parents, as their parents also had reliance at home. And they would keep a second mobile to call up friends and use locally. This second service would be one of the major three: Airtel, Vodafone (former Hutch) or Idea (then it used to be Spice in Karnataka and Punjab).

Only one friend took Tata Indicom for calling home since it had a better offer. Two months later, the mobile and the service found its way to the dustbin, and the easiest way to infuriate my friend during those days was to ask "How’s the service of Indicom?"

The second time I heard about their service quality was when one of my friends bought Tata Photon, the USB dongle. Well this particular customer was satisfied with the service initially. Till he reached Jamshedpur, also sometimes called as the Tata Steel's city. Apparently the USB didn’t work in the region, I meant in Tata Steel’s city.

So, the simplest way to check out a loser or a winner in the service sector is to crosscheck with about three questions. How good is your service? And how fast can you adapt to technology? Are they using technology to enhance the experience of the customer? And is it worth the cost?

The recent article by Forbes on Tata's telecom business was good. There were lots of information in the article, how the telecom business is run and what Ratan Tata may be thinking. They even tried giving some suggestion of what could happen.

The most interesting part I found was now it plans to merge all of its telecom businesses under a single umbrella. Its still better to be late than never. 

The second interesting information was: "Customers will normally switch to market leaders or if the network has exceptional voice clarity. Tata has neither the leadership nor the right type of network. It has the 1,800 MHz frequency band, which isn't the best for voice clarity and competing on that front will be hard."

And "Worse, it has to pay other operators for carrying traffic for it in some very key markets." This certainly was information for me.

Somehow I felt the conclusion was over dramatised, "Srinath may be an insider but some of these tasks are so tricky that even for someone of his experience, tying up all loose ends may just take too much time. And that's a commodity that might run out for the Tatas even if their money doesn't."

When was the last time when Tata's have closed down a company after investing so much? If you can’t get an answer to that then keep watching.

'12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal': Eid Milad-un-Nabi

According to the Islamic calender, based on lunar movement. Today (Feb 16, 2011), is 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal, it is widely celebrated as Eid-Milad-dun-nabi also known as Mawlid in colloquiol arabic marking the birth of Prophet Mohammad. There are two interesting facts about this celebrated day.

First, he was born and he died on the same day of the Islamic calender, 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal.

The second interesting fact is, celebration on the 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal started only 400 years after his death.

The topic is covered well in Wikipedia. It is inevitable to conclude that the only reason why the then government encouraged the celebration was to boost the rulers power base, or perhaps it was done to divert public attention.

Whatever, be the cause, it goes without saying that the birth of Prophet Muhammad was the significant event. But the point is that the companions of Muhammad did not observe this event. Also, Muhammad did not observe the birth or death anniversaries of anyone, nor did he advise his followers to observe his birthday. There is not a single instance in any of the biographies where such a celebration is noted.

Considering all of these together, perhaps its best to treat 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal as another normal day.

'Jago re'

Once in a while its good to be on a very long vacation, there is lots of time on our hands to look at what has been happening around the world and reflect on it.

It was interesting to read about how the so called strong economies of the slowdown year (2008) are getting a bit shaky -- Canada, China, India and Germany. That’s something to worry about especially if you are living in one of them. Maybe it might us a chance to make some money, the mid 2009 way. Turmoil in Middle East and North Africa, whooha, it would be good fun to read some of the articles by conspirator theorist. It may give some nice ideas on writing short stories, probably even a novel. 

Falling skeletons from the 'cabinet' of the Indian government. It seems the so called smart businessmen are not so smart. Their smartness is more a result of willful negligence on the part of our so called leaders of natural assets like spectrum, oil fields, mines etc.

Ambani's were famous of pocketing the government for their benefit, the Radiia tapes have put a blot on Ratan Tata as well. But who cares, most people will not fail to praise the advertisement which are part of the 'Jago re' campaign and fall flat on their face when the time of action comes. Ironically the advertisement is supported by a Tata group company. Wonder if they will shut it down.

This reminds me of an incident. One day, I went with a friend to a nearby mom and pop store. There was one customer shouting over the shopkeeper. Apparently the shopkeeper was trying to sell an expired product. It was his bad luck; the customer caught the plot and threatened that if he tries to pull the trick again, the shopkeeper will have to deal with the consumer complaint department.

This threat was the result of an advertisement campaign by the state government. The ad was on the lines that consumers’ should not allow themselves to be cheated and if they notice something like this then they can get help from the consumer complaint forum. The ad used to end with a quip "Jago grahank jago". (Wake-up customers wake-up)

Coming back to the scene of the incident. After the customer left, the storekeeper turned to his friend, who was also present there -- "Grahank aisa jaga hai ki sone ka naam hi nahin leta". (The customer has woken up in a way that they are not even thinking of falling asleep.)

It would be nice if the people of the Republic (of India) someday also ‘wake-up’ the way it has been put up in the advertisement campaign. Perhaps then we will get the chance to fulfill our tryst with destiny.