Harish Palaniappan's

I loved reading the history of coffee here (barista.co.in).. especially I liked the part which read "Attempts to ban the coffee". The website's content writer seems to have a good stylish flair for his/her words and the presentation. But yes, the history page was too long in a way, and the last bit of technical know-how's made me stop tasting the content and click some other link.

Other than that, that site of barista was a good read... may be because I like them a little too much. I love the saffron orangish color barista gives to its outlets.. and their ambience all done to some simple perfection to the volume of the music (so it doesnt disturb your conversation), to the position of the TV (so it doesnt distract you if you dont want to watch it), to their mild air-conditioned ambience (so you dont feel that you are some place different than where you can talk freely), etc.,

I thought barista was a multinational coffee chain.. reading through the site, I found its first outlet was in new delhi and it covered all over india's major cities.. and atleast one outlet in all important cities. In chennai they have a lot of outlets, what even inside Taj coromandel hotel you have a barista outlet.

For the drink.. I am not an experimentor at coffee, neither a coffee-addict though I love the coffee whenever I drink it... and at Barista or elsewhere I either just take a normal filter coffee or a cappucino.

If you want to make your cappucino(yes you get cappucino coffee mixes at supermarkets to try) barista style.. then try this old post

Posted by Harish at 4:05 PM | Permalink

I am an Airtel customer..

Oh I feel so unfortunate to put that as the first line here, because Airtel's customer service people are not skilled enough, neither are their technical system good.

For instance, if you raise a compalint, any complaint it be, they will send at least 6 sms after the complaint, ... and no no,..none of the sms will be anything useful to you. it wont say the status of the compalint or its resolution.. it will stupidly be message like "we hope you are happy with your interaction with us", "thank you for your interaction.. your complaint number is xxxxxx", "if you are satisfied with the answer send YES or NO to us".. and all such useless messages immediately after you raised the complaint and well before the service team actually gets back to you with any resolutions.

And then, you take the pain of clicking menus to delete all these junk messages.

I even raised complaints/suggestion with them to stop junking like that. The stupid personnel just said, "there is no way we can do that, but it is very useful for you to receive these messages"

I told him.. "i know what is useful for me.. you please take this as a suggestion to your IT dept if not as a complaint". He said he will and took it as a new interaction, and I got all the junkload of messages for that also.

My recommendation:
Don't expect common sense with these guys. (sometimes you must not even expect a resolution.. very often they close calls, a lot of them, indirectly saying it is not possible to correct it).
They just probably use a stupidly, badly created software system for complaints, and rather than improving that system, they are happily pushing that bad quality to customers who raise complaints.

Once, I got very irritated with the way the courier service airtel uses, throws my airtel bills on the lawn... and make me go searching and pick it. Ignorant at their best.. they mean they are very busy and can't bother to insert it into your letter box sticking on your gate.

And this courier guy was coming in odd timings so I could never catch him and tell him to do it properly. .. so I called customer service and told them this.

Not surprisingly, the customer service guy said, "for these things we can't take a complaint sir.. we don't have those options for selecting the type of complaint here".. they humiliated me a further more for calling them for a problem like this.

And after I insisted enough over about 45 mins, they got me on to a supervisor who took it as a complaint and took details of the region of my house to find out their courier service guy.

It didnt get resolved, I was out picking my bills again, or worser, the stupid person delivered my bills in somebodys house, and somebody's bill in my house. I went back to them, the customer service people, and asked them to change the options to email my bills.. they simply adviced me to do it online at their website... though i had taken the time to call, they wanted me to first try it there.

I did try... their website rocks.. rocks the negative way.
Nothing will work, and all information they provide regarding help documents or contact emails, will all point to the same intelligent thing... "the customer service team". The website will ask you to email complaints to 121@airtel.in, or something like that, but that email only gets automatically raised as a complaint with the stupid team. and again, all those junkloads of messages.

After a few attempts, I finally got my bill emailed. ha, great I thought.. but how can they help you so easy.. they are gods who read books like "101 one ways to screw your customer's happiness". The email had the bill as a pdf which was password protected.. security it seems so that nobody else reads the bill in MY mailbox.

The email message said, send "ebill pass" to xxxxx to get your password. :o) Can you imagine.. I cannot imagine any better stupid system.. I think they unanimously should be given the award for "worst automation system" for 4-5 years in a row.

And, yes, I sent "ebill pass" to get my password.. you know what.. i got an instant reply.. i eagerly opened to read the message, and it said, "thanks for your query,.. but we are unable to service you at this time.. try later" :o) ha ha..

You might think i am exaggerating things here.. you must be an airtel investor. But all these are true experiences I have had for the one year I am subscribed with them... these days, every time i think that i should contact customer service to find out something, i get doomed thinking of the process ahead.

If you thought.. "all these things are small problems.. happens with any company.. and i am only cribbing.. ".. then I am 100% sure you must be indian.. because that is normally indian attitude. we indians have an infinite quality to tolerate anything.

Anyways, after those experiences.. I have not had an instance where i should call them again.. until today.

This is what happened today..

Khul ja sim sim
I have a motorola v3i phone.. with airtel as my service provider.. (this time i dont want to start the line the bad way.. so i put motorola first).

Trying the phone's security settings... to set a sim password, i entered a wrong password once. and the phone said "SIM BLOCKED". usually this happens only in the third attempt.. blame it on the phone's software, or the sim card's make, or the service provider.. finally it is my phone connection that is screwed up.

I pray with Google and try to search information.. almost all websites said "contact service provider", and i really searched again because I couldn't imagine calling my service provider.

I call up Airtel, and the guy says he will give me something called a PUK number(Pin unlock key it means).. and i enter it when my phone asks for it.. I said,"It never asked, it just says SIM BLOCKED".. He started repeating the same theory again and gave me the PUK number and asked me to use it and solve it.

After more conversation explaining things, he said, "if it says SIM BLOCKED, it just means you have to take your vehicle and drive to airtel office, and ask for a duplicate SIM card and the problem is solved.."

The catch here was, Airtel charges 150 rupees for a duplicate SIM card, and all information on your old SIM card is possibly irrecoverable..

yes yes, I later found out that things are not that bad.. but this is the kind of information that the customer support guy had, and I told him how bad sense it is to make use of such things to earn money from customers, and how airtel should really do it the common sense way to help customers by providing all this security information during service registration rather than just giving registration receipt alone.

He took that as a complaint.. and gave me an interaction number. Junkload of messages arrive, as usual i delete them later.

I learnt from some friends that there are other service providers who were worser.. a friend once said "atleast he gave you the PUK number for free.. my provider asked me to come to his office, pay him 25 rupees and then tore a rough sheet of paper, wrote down the PUK number and gave it alongwith with a receipt for 25 rupees as service charges"

Hard nuts these companies are.. I prefer to use the term "Money mongers"... always and ever looking at everything as an opportunity to make money.. like the government always looks for ways to tax people.

No wonder why even though Airtel is so big in india, it has nothing outside india.. not even a scrap business. Only indians will sit silent and pay up .. for all that attitude and infinite tolerance we seem to have.

Ok.. no use talking about either.. indian people and indian companies.

The solution I found out from a website with more search was.

If you use motorola v3i, and it says SIM BLOCKED, then try this:

Before doing this, take the PUK number from your service provider. You can also change the PUK number to something you remember so that you don't have to call your wonderful service providers for it later if this happens again.

Unblock SIM pin code:
**05*PUK*newpin*newpin#

1. Key in **05*
2. Your phone will recognize that gsm code and ask you to enter puk code.
3. Enter puk code, and it will unblock your sim.
4. Type new 8 digit puk code. so that the change overwrites the provider set puk code with your new puk code. next time this happens you will enter your PUK code.

That's it.. about unlocking sim on your motorola mobile.
More gsm codes at: http://www.mobileshop.org/usertech/gsmcodes.htm

Continue reading "Airtel customer care - a study" »

Posted by Harish at 1:26 PM | Permalink

Are you drinking enough water, or some kind of energy fluids to hydrate your body??

Water is an important source of energy for the body, be it human body or your pet dog. Though not given so much importance in gyms and excercises by normal people. only sports people understand the importance of water and the banana. Yes, banana is one of the fruits that convert into energy usable by the body the fastest.

Everyday we lose water from our body through sweat and perspiration, through urine, and by even breathing. And this loss has to be replaced. When not regularly replaced, the body makes you feel thirsty.

How much water?
Depends on your weight, your energy usage in physical activity over the day, and importantly the temperatures you put your body through because more temperature means more loss of water through sweat and perspiration. So, in summer you will drink atleast 40% more water than in winter.

If you thought you are drinking the right quantity of water, and if you never checked that against some standards, then here is a website that helps calculate your daily hydration(or water) needs.

You can key in details like weight, workout you do, age, and get to know how much water you should be drinking, atleast ideally...and if you are not drinking other energy fluids

Hydration Calculator

You can find more information on fluids and energy and why people drink special fluids like gatorade etc., why water itself may not be enough, through 'make every drop count'.

I found the above links accidentally going through, the coca-cola website. The website has an interestingly squeezed world map out of a bottle thing on its website...artistically a good concept for their homepage. I would have liked to see it in their print adverts... hey, I just remembered, have these cola companies stopped advertising on the print media...its been a long time.

Posted by Harish at 4:17 PM | Permalink

Making a simple pizza at home could be fun.. especially when you realize its actually easier than all those other indian dishes to make.

When we say 'easy' we are not under-estimating the process.. Everything is easy to do in cooking as long we don't want to be perfect, not bother about nutritional facts, and when we know we are only cooking to make a meal and are not actually trying to out do the experts at the pizzarettes.

To be a good cook, you need practise and importantly observe how other people do it. That probably can be said for becoming good in most things actually.

So to do a good pizza, the below process, and some instructions or cookbooks that you can find on the internet or your local store can give you a start.

Try this link below for a starter.
Make a pizza

What pizzarettes' use to cook is an high-temperature oven (which supports a maximum of 500 degrees centigrade).. but this we may not have at our homes.. and normally we are reading how to cook a pizza only to make one using our new microwave oven. In that case, keep your pizza size small. Also, if you bought a pizza base which is like bread rather than flour, then you cook for as long as the bread doesn't become roasted and hard. Using more cheese and oil can help this.

In india, home-made pizzas aren't the order of the day, and hence you may not find mozerrella cheese or a home-cooked tomato sauce at the stores.
You can though, get a ready-made pizza base, and probably Cheese for pizza from your local food store. Also, bottled tomato sauce can be used, but make sure how much you use, because bottled sauces are generally strong and as Indians we are not used to bulk consumption of bottled sauces.. that might upset your stomach.

Pizza is not a healthy food.. its probably the most bad junk food around, because of lots of cheese, oil, sauce and a lot of all the junk foods put together. So, you should only be eating one a month and also working out regularly at the gym to keep your body from becoming lazy.

Posted by Harish at 2:50 PM | Permalink

The information on starting or registering a business in india, is not one of those things that are very well available. The government staff who do it, don't want any layman to be informed, because their bread and butter is in the bribe money they get on each and each thing they do to accept your registration to helping you understand what and how to do it.

But things are better with egovernance now.. read on. I think the company registration stuff is one of the first things to be a successful egovernanance project for India.

About this post:
I am setting up this blog post, and will be updating it regularly as I find more information on this and other interesting areas of starting businesses in India.. also I plan to write posts on my experience over years in helping people operate or handle their businesses... in the context of Indian companies only.

If you have something to share/add/suggest, you can email me at harish.palaniappan @ gmail.com and I will find time to discuss with you and add your information and experiences in this blog as well.

Information On Companies, Acts, and processes in India

May be these links help to kick-off your information collection drive:
Starting your own business in India
Forming a company in India
Starting a business - by doingbusiness.org
The Indian Ministry of company affairs website
Starting a business in singapore

MCA21 : Online company registrations and other e-form processes
The Indian ministry of company affairs has setup an online governance website since september 2006 (delayed by almost 6 months) with the help of Tata consultancy services.

* Note: Before you read further, understand that this post is not updated regularly when the ministry of companies of india's policies or processes change.. so you should look at this as a starter only.. and do find for yourself more information at the Registrar Of Companies offices around India.. or in the mca21 website.

Types of companies:
In the different types of companies that can be registered (or that can be created in India at all legally), there's no possibility of starting a single person company.. At a minimum, you can only start a private firm with 2 directors.

But, the government has been recommended by an expert committee, to add a new class of companies which is proposed as 'One person company' and probably may have OPC Pvt. or OPC Pvt. Ltd. as the ending name of the company.

If this recommendation is approved (which probably will be by amendments in the companies Act), then there will be a possibility of registering One Person companies in India. As of now, you atleast make a friendly legal entity as a director apart from yourself, like your mother or wife, or some friend, and register your company as a Private company with minimum 2 directors.

Though it is technically bad that India hasn't still recognized 'one person companies', practically it is better to register as a private company since that will avoid further paper work when your 'one person company' grows to have employees which then requires a conversion in your registration or possibly re-registration.

-- continuted --

Continue reading "start-up registering business in india ?" »

Posted by Harish at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you have an aquarium at home and sometimes bothered about having proper guidance in maintaining it, or bringing down the fish death rate for months... then this website below should be of good help.

http://www.firsttankguide.net

if you need more help, books seem the best.. because its not so common to find people who can guide with scientific info on aquariums.. evens vets only seem to choose to specialize in larger animals in India, rather than fish that too decorative fish..

Update 30 July 07

Just select a specific type of fish that comes in many 100 colors and varities like chichilds, and discus fishes... and rear different types and colors of them in the same tank. This will help in lesser maintenance and you don't have to worry much about fish incompatibles or fighting over different species in the interest of dominating their space in your tank.

If you select the first type of tank, where you breed different species of them in the same tank, then you need to find an informative fish shop dealer who can tell you which fish is incompatible with which others, so you don't have to protect your fishes from fighting with each other. Also some reading might be neccessary.

Fish of the same kind doesn't mean they won't fight.. Regarding fighting and incompatibles, you actually should read books, search information, ask people or shopkeepers, and importantly have one or two tank divider slates or slides for stopping them fight until you find out a remedy.

To understand how interesting and important fish breeding could get, read this post about somebody's oscar fish fighting with its partner.

Some good sites:
http://www.elmersaquarium.com/:
This site has good amount of information on fish types, fish compatibilities, and importantly covers all the common aquarium problems with quick solutions.
Click on 'Site Guide' link on the homepage of this site to see its index of resources.

It has an online aquarium manual too. here

It has an interesting guide on a variety of fishes here.

fish-tank-guide.com has a list of fish types and some notes on it.. good for a quick read. (scroll to the bottom of page in the link)..

For books, you could search up the appropriate books from amazon or the FishBookStore.com

More links:
http://www.aquariumfish.net
http://www.petfishtalk.com
Aquarium mainenance - Do it yourself homemade filters, sumps, kits

Posted by Harish at 1:38 AM | Permalink

Climate Change Basics:
Climate change, as we know is about how the climate or weather in the earth changes due to the effects of rise in avergare temperature.

Temperature rise or fall happens by design, by nature of the earth, hence climate changes and the consequences it has on life on the planet are all natural. And it would happen many thousand years once as a cycle even if humans weren't inhabiting the earth. One might ask: So, why are we humans disturbed about rising temperatures and climate changes??

It is because we have directly or indirectly fastened the rise in temperature by polluting the atmosphere with gases they call Greenhouse gases. We have fastened the process to an extent where climate changes that happen only once 'many thousand years ' could happen in just 'many hundred years'.

Greenhouse gases, the effect:
Greenhouse gases are those that create a greenhouse effect on the earth.

Back in school, or elsewhere we have learnt that Greenhouse effect is good for plant life and hence we have the 'Green' in the term Greenhouse (The house structure made of glass within which they grow plants).

Greenhouses help control the environment inside as best suitable for plant life, and helps avoid almost all external agencies that affect plants when they grow in open ground.

If something is good for plant life, it can be straightly said that something similar should be good for human life also. Then: why are we worried about greenhouse effect on the earth??

Well, its little different. We are not worried about the greenhouse effect itself.. by nature greenhouse effect is already there in the earth and this is the one reason why humans and all life survive. But, too much of greenhouse effect is what we are worried about. To say about it, we have to remember that even in glass enclosed greenhouses, they have equipment to control the temperature and moisture levels to make sure the greenhouse effect is optimal to support plant growth and not high enough to hurt or kill plant growth.

To study more on greenhouses, and the effect, you may read the How stuff works article in the below link .. and compare all explanation it provides regarding a greenhouse.. to the earth itself.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/eden2.htm

How humans affect climate change, and the factors involved in controlling the change:
The reason for rapid increase in temperature, is due to pollution from burning fuels, and other stuff that release huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and water vapor...chiefly.

We mostly know that the fuel we burn, the factory exhaust gases that we release into the atmosphere, etc., constitute directly/indirectly a huge increase in most of the above mentioned Greenhouse gases...especially carbon dioxide which is favouritely identified as the culprit in climate change.. Culprit, it is definitely, for it is one chief greenhouse gas that humans have heartily added and still adding in huge amounts to the atmosphere every second.

But Water vapour?? It is something that is majorly exhausted by the oceans that bask in the sun everyday...what can we do about that?? Water vapour is good in that it supports the effect of cooling.. hence decreasing the temperature... but water vapour is also important because the earth could enter an ice age if we have too much water vapour.

There's definitely nothing much humans can do about controlling the amount of water vapour thats in the atmosphere. Not often do they discuss water vapour during climate change debates.

How are nations tackling climate change:
Different countries have different views about climate change, its effects, and especially their priorities to take measures on it. But collectively, the most important commitments are being made through an international body formed by the United Nations, called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The UNFCCC is a treaty that basically lays down rules or commitments that nations can adhere to. Many nations agree to it.

The basics of the UNFCC treaty declares that all countries that accept the treaty will record their greenhouse gas emissions regularly throughout their country, and share the data with all other countries. The reason behind sharing is not only to make countries compete to avoid the embarrassement of being the top pollutants, but also for the simple reason that single nations cannot fight climate change, and collective data and collective reduction in emissions is important.

It is like, one country may not see any advantage of reducing its greenhouse gases, unless all its neighbors are also reducing their greenhouse emissions (especially highly polluting countries in the neighborhood).

The Kyoto Protocol
In December 1997, in Kyoto- Japan, the UN made an amended to the UNFCCC treaty in consultations with many countries, which became the Kyoto protocol. Countries that agree to the protocol commit a timeline(Individual targets) to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50-55% of their 1990 emission values.

The UN market and negotiate with nations trying to convince them to accept the kyoto protocol. The effort has been good and by December 2006, there were close to 170 countries which accept the protocol(out of the current strength of 192 member countries in UN).

It is by this protocol that Unleaded petrol and gasoline has replaced its Leaded counterpart in most countries.

More the acceptance, more is the pressure on countries in UN that have not accepted the protocol. Though the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, which is also the top veto power in the UN and the most powerful country on the globe today, the United states of America doesn't approve of the kyoto protocol.. yet.

In the process of negotiating countries to accept the protocol, the UN exempts countries like China, India from mandatorily committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions with an individual target... though they have accepted the protocol.

America's argument is that, this exemption, which is a strange excuse, flaws the kyoto protocol and its validity... and hence America wouldn't accept it and make committments either. Unless all nations take the same steps and reduce their emissions its not worthy of America to do it is the american president's argument. Others say that is no good excuse or conduct of America, which is the topmost greenhouse gas emmitter in the world.

The recent G8 aggreement:
In June 2007, at Heiligendamm, Germany, the G8 nations comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, have agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% of their 1990 levels. This is similar to the kyoto, or this is just the same protocol revisited, but, this time the G8 nations which include America have an agreement and that's what is making this interesting.

This meeting and the agreement is just being released as breaking news at this time of the writing, which states that the deal is to reduce 50% of emissions by all G8 nations by 2050. The details of it are yet to be discussed, or made official.

Update - 8 June 2007:
This official UNFCCC press release states that the breakthrough for discussion in December 2007 is achieved.. so it must mean that America is willing to accept to reducing emissions but things are not layed out as to How much or By when is not yet confirmed.

Related links for detailed reading:
How Stuff works: Global warming
Wikipedia - Greenhouse gas

UNFCCC Links:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Basics of UNFCCC

Posted by Harish at 2:50 AM | Permalink