Sober Resolutions

It’s the New Year time. The time of the year when you can pretend to forget about what happened for the past 365 days (apparently this year is extended by a second), and move on with the next 365. For people like me, (fresh out of college) this New Year marks a beginning of professional life; life at work. It’s the start of the end of my juvenile life so far. I now am a professional in a respectable organization. Maintaining an image of professionalism is of importance to me. My work so far on my blog as many would agree belies my usual professional conduct.

With an idea of improvising on the aforementioned reputation, heeding the advice of a few senior members of the professional ladder, I have decided to start a new blog. The link to this new blog is mentioned below. In this blog, I would be discussing serious issues, would be talking about how I can do something useful to benefit you, me and everyone in general. There will be no talk about arbit stuff, no cynical, comical articles. Only serious articles, educational enlightening discussions; technical discussions included.

Moving ahead my resolution for this new year as I mentioned will be to become serious with my life, and the below mentioned blog will be my primary one. And with this bombshell, I shall bid a tearful but determined adieu to my old life, my old blog.

All of my 3.5 subscribers please, do take a look at my brand new blog, and let me know what you think. At least for old times sake.

http://sobermonk.blogspot.com/

An old good one

Check it out, if you have the time

i found the chain of comments quite entertaining too

http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/2008/08/a_beginners_guide_to_economics.php

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y Felicidad

(Translation: Merry Christmas

Prosperous and Happy New Year)

There’s a very good reason to why I sound very bright and christmasy, or rather a good set of reasons as to why. Viz-a-Viz

• I finally got my credit card, it doesn’t feel as great as I expected, no claps of thunder, no rain of flowers, and there is an extremely stupid feel when you use it to pay something and find out that it gets rejected because it hasn’t been activated as yet. Still I have a credit card!!!!!

• I also have a hunch, just a hunch that it was my company who set up the servers that are responsible to run the ICICI call center. So ahem!!! No hard feelings, ICICI as a bank sucks, but the call center is brilliant!!! And would be much better if ICICI decided to pay us more, not be cheapskates, and buy a few more PSTN lines which they very much need.

I think that settles it nicely. And once more just for the record the technology and the servers on the back end rock!!! They pay me fair wages.

• All of the above however are irrelevant, to me, I now couldn’t care less about stupid banks or credit cards, I don’t really care about the fickle job scenario, I honestly don’t really give two hoots about the terrorist attacks, Barrack Obama could be diagnosed with syphilis for all I care. I just realized that it’s Christmas time, it’s new year time, and I don’t have exams round the corner!!!!!!

It’s honestly a Christmas miracle. Each and every one of us for the past four years (which honestly seemed like 400 centuries) was praying for this for the past 400 centuries (even the anorexic atheists I suppose). Finally it’s here, it’s brilliant, I finally can listen to people wishing me a Happy New Year without snapping back – “SAYS WHO!!!” or some other such obscenities at them. I can finally put all my resolve into more then just passing the next stupid exam. (More on my New Year resolutions later)


I can finally, with a whole heart and mind, with all sincerity and goodwill wish you all a –



MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

From Marathahalli/Monaco to Cunningham/Catalunya

It transpires that racing’s in my blood, I’m not kidding you, it is; and it’s not like a garden variety racing parasite that houses itself in most of the 20 odd racing drivers. It’s the rarest of kinds; it’s like the king cobra of blood housing micro-organisms. Why king cobra you ask? Well I’m not entirely sure if it is king cobra that I’m looking for, but somebody once told me about some snake that eats other snakes. Apparently all the other snakes live in eternal fear of coming across this chap, quite understandable what? I mean if any snake bumped across any other snake, it would just be a case of “oh so sorry to bother you, I’m just too long and it gets hard to keep track of where what is going, just hope that I didn’t disturb your slow digestion of the last meal that you had six weeks ago, I’ll be on my way now” each knowing that they can’t really inflict much damage upon the other, added incentive to not get into a rumble with each other is the fear of getting inextricably entangled in each other, which would make their twisted lives miserable until some Chinese guy comes along and spots his double snake roll thrashing along. If however one of the snakes were to be a king cobra, then the mortal fear of ending up as the official meal for the next six weeks makes all other snakes bow down with fear to the king (pin) cobra with acknowledgement of superiority.

I think by sheer force of habit I must’ve digressed from the topic, pardon me for that, but I felt obligated to explain myself sufficiently. Coming back to the crux of what I was saying; I’m a racing legend, songs will be sung in my praise when the world finds out how great a racer I am. And as usual, I don’t just say things like that without elucidating. So here’s what happened – it was a bright sunny Saturday, and we the disciples of the holy circle had met in pursuit of nourishment for the day. The day went well, the wild mushrooms were delicious, n so was the flesh of the bird albeit the bone in the boneless chicken was a little confusing. While we are contemplating on the confusing bits, the uncanny resemblance of the attire of the serving staff of one of the better restaurants in town to that of those in a much smaller outfit did tickle the grey matter as well. Besides these two minor glitches however, the meal was delicious. Following this, and the short trip for dessert to Cunningham road, we headed to an electronics store of an Indian company owned by a couple of gujju brothers. Now it was what happened here that convinced me of my high racing pedigree. They had in this store, a demo of some Xbox 260 or some such thing. One of the games on the demo was Formula one. Having nothing to do as such, laughing gas, also known as arvind challenged me to a race of 10 laps around the catalunya. Needless to say once the race began, it was quite clear that I was in a different league, I was beating laughing gas hollow. He stood no chance. The evil git however kept restarting the race over and over again, everytime I pulled away from him (which was like everytime) he would just restart. On a totally unconnected note, The Rebel meanwhile was showing his mastery off in getting things to bounce. His commendable talent was attracting quite a few eyes.

Tired of having “restart arvind” restart the game everytime, I let him take the lead. I let him get away for around half a lap. Honestly I did not even move till he went far ahead. Once I was satisfied that I had given him a fair lead, I started racing, and boy oh boy did I race my heart out. Mika and kimi would’ve been proud of me. It was quite a close finish, but I managed to pass the finish line much before restart arvind did.

Thus I rightly conclude that racing’s in my blood. On giving this a second read I realize that apart from the few of us who were present while all this happened, the others must be wondering about what the hell I’m on about. But then that’s alright, it’s my blog anyway, and I think that it’s important for genuine talent to be praised, and stupid restarters with no racing talent whatsoever, who depend on luck, to be condemned.

Good one..... had to put it in

A: my dog doesn't have a nose
B: how does it smell????
A: Bloody Awful

ICICI, but IDontCIdontCY???

So here I am again, and this time I’m here to take out my frustration on another organization (yes I do seem to enjoy doing this). You get no prizes for guessing who, the title is quite self explanatory. Now normally a guy like me wouldn’t bother an establishment like ICICI, and knowing the sort of potential business that I was likely to offer them, they wouldn’t bother me either. However I’m amongst the working classes now, and considering the unusually large number of phone calls that I receive from financial institutions, concluding that I rank amongst the better half of the extremely unstable job market is just a matter of two ticks of the clock for me. You are very welcome to disagree with me, please let me know if you do, the current economic slowdown is somehow producing a dearth of fools, which makes my job quite difficult, not to mention boring.

So back to doing what I like. A couple of days after the company that was privileged to have me working for them took me onboard. They realized that to retain talent like what I have, they would have to be quite lavish with me, and they would have to give me the good treatment, a good salary. To do so, they would have to open a salary account for me. So they insisted that I bank my precious money with ICICI. And so it was that I started associating myself with the most irksome bank ever. A couple of days after my account was opened, a nice voice called me up, asking whether I would like to have a credit card. It seemed like a nice thing to have, and I’m sure that it is, of course I cannot claim to have had first hand experience with that, so if one of you could narrate the experience to me it would be great. Upon replying in the affirmative to wanting a credit card, the next day I found myself photocopying a few necessary documents, signing them and giving them to some guy from ICICI. Quite speedy service I must say. And for somebody who until then was used to the snails pace of SBI and Canara bank, I felt dizzy. It was a great feeling the next day when again the same nice voiced lady called me up to say that she had received my application, it seemed that we were developing a good rapport.

That was four months ago, by this time even the snails pace of SBI or Canara bank would’ve managed to churn out a credit card for me, nice voice or not. And in case you guys are wondering, the nice voice I found out doesn’t work with ICICI anymore.

It’s not just the four month (and counting) wait that really irritates me, I mean I know that every now and again there are a few unlucky people with whom things take time; but it’s the sequence of events that occurred in the span of the past four months that really causes some sense of anger. So let’s now examine the sequence of events.

• First the call from the nice voice mentioned above confirming that my application was received, which also included confirming each and every detail as given in the photocopied proofs.
• A week after that, another call which again insisted on confirming every single detail.
• Another week and a half later another call, again to confirm all the details mentioned.

Well all this is quite alright, it doesn’t paint ICICI as a very trusting organization, but then again it’s understandable. Each time I got a call, I asked how long it would take for the credit card to arrive, and was quite buoyed by the answer of in the next 15 days. This left me waiting eagerly for the credit card. But for the next month or so I received no correspondence from ICICI. Extremely enraged, I called the ICICI customer care which for more then half the day is unavailable; when it is available however, the voice quality isn’t too great. Now if you think that these are your only troubles, you are hopelessly mistaken. You biggest trouble is yet to be spoken about. The biggest trouble is the extremely complicated Interactive Voice Response itself. It is sooooo moronic, so irritating that it’d drive you up a wall. Try finding out the status of your credit card application once, n you’ll know what I’m talking about. After asking you to first enter your date of birth and then your mobile number, and then your official landline number, and then your home landline number, your shoe size number, and any other such numeric data it can squeeze out of you, it’ll very nicely inform you that one of the zillions of the numbers that it made you enter is wrong. I mean the balls on it, it doesn’t even suggest that the database it stores is not updated or that it isn’t able to match the given data, it just declares your data to be wrong. After a lot of patient jostling around with the IVR, I eventually just called up a local ICICI bank, made a lot of noise, and found out that my credit card application was rejected. Enraged I called up a guy in the credit card department, and demanded to know why. His extremely logical, totally acceptable, completely understandable answer was – sorry sir, sometimes every one in ten applications just gets randomly rejected by the system.

So just like that, for no perceivable reason, one in ten applications gets rejected. I raised hell I tell you, hell. I bet at least a couple of guys would’ve wet their pants, and at least a half a dozen women would’ve gone into hysterics. It gave me quite a high. So within a couple of days, the whole process was set into motion again, confirmation calls started flowing in again, this time apart from the three calls mentioned above, calls started coming to my house, to my office, wanting to confirm my existence. The calls had just stopped coming, and I just about wanted to call up and raise hell again, when ICICI gave me reason to do so. I got a call from another nice voice from ICICI, asking me whether I’d like to have an ICICI credit card. This time I kid you not, the nice voice was on the verge of tears, her boss who I insisted on speaking to was quite shaken himself. So after all the hullabaloo, and four further confirmation calls, just yesterday the guy who gave me the last confirmation call congratulated me for having obtained an ICICI platinum credit card, which would be delivered to me in the next 7 to 10 working days. Now where have I heard that before???

I wrote this article 10 days ago, and I wanted to finish it by describing to you how it feels to finally hold a credit card, but now I’m too tired of waiting. My Kotak mahindra credit card promises to come round the corner (wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t), and I’m changing my salary account from ICICI to Standard Chartered. If my saying this could influence you to change, then change from ICICI to any other bank.

Maybe my vendetta against ICICI is a little too extreme, there are a few nice things as well that ICICI has given me, viz a viz – the satisfaction of taking my frustrations out on some unfortunate person at some god forsaken call center. The epoch of the whole rigmarole is the reaction I get when after receiving a big piece of my mind; some call center agent starts asking a few basic questions, and finds out that I’m just a fresher with only about 4-5 months of work-ex. It’s quite fun I tell you.

So if it is sadistic pleasure and an infinitely long wait for some basic banking accessories that you are looking for, then ICICI is the place for you. If not, avoid it like the plague.