New York City

I am writing a blog post after a long time. My two day trip to New York City was perhaps the reason. I had no expectation from my little trip other than excitement about meeting my brother. Having stayed home all winter and working with little break had made me weary and somewhat low in spirits. Life's ups and downs didn't help boost my mood either. Anyway, enough said about me. Let's talk about us!

My husband and I planned a fairly active summer this year. With increased gas prices and air fares, a road trip looked both, adventurous and cost effective for us. A week before our trip we booked our tickets with Greyhound buses. At US$312, a round trip for two looked like a steal.

Anyway, our trip started off somewhat badly. Our bus, scheduled to start at 8.15 p.m. from Toronto Bus Terminal left the stop at 9.15 p.m. thanks to lousy scheduling by Greyhound staff where they cramped everyone into a single long queue and allowed people to board first come first basis instead of allowing people to board based on the time they had booked for. Infact the ticket said we had to be at the station an hour earlier to our scheduled departure and we had made it, only to discover there were 200+ people lined up ahead of us for a 52-people capacity bus. Finally when we boarded, we were disappointed to see the seating were no way like the ones shown on the website. With very little leg room we just managed to stay cool and make ourselves as comfortable as possible. As we got closer to Buffalo, NY we saw lots of cars and buses heading towards the border for the long weekend of Victoria Day in Canada. Don't ask what happened next. I am going to tell you anyway. All the buses that were stopped for the customs check were lined up next to each other. There were atleast 4-5 buses ahead of us. To cut a long story short it look 3 hours for us to continue our trip to New York City via Syracuse from Buffalo (Later we heard the last bus that came with us completed the security check at 5 a.m.!!) Starving, with no preparation of carrying snacks plus not finding anything decent to eat, we landed at NYC at 9.45 a.m.(vs. 7 a.m.)and decided to discover the amazing subway system, only to find the subway stations too confusing, dirty and stinking. In any case, after moving from station to station we found out the line operating to our destination was not working that day. So we hopped off from the station and took the famous NY Taxi to the hotel where my brother was staying. I guess I can pretty well say that the trip went northbound there on! Must be the effect of seeing your own blood after eternity.

On Day 1, Saturday, Jay, Navin and I took a little walk to the Woodside neighbourhood and searched for some Indian restaurants. Not finding anything exciting, we stopped at a Thai restaurant to eat some chow. The pad thai noodles and spring rolls went down my gut in no time. With a slight hakka style this greasy food was a winner to me. The boys frowned on the fat sticking to their veg fried rice. For dessert I decided to try the rapidly-gaining-fame fried vanilla ice-cream. In the end, I was like a little kid peeling off the fruit skin to eat it. All that remained on my plate was the batter that the ice cream was fried in.

The afternoon remained nice and warm for spring season and we decided to head to MoMA (Museum of Modern Arts) per Navin's recommendation. The highlight of this visit for me was seeing Van Gogh's Starry Night, Seurat's paintings and other masters. After going through six levels of jaw dropping art and design we stopped at good ol' Starbucks for a cuppa and some snacks. Later we wandered away in downtown near Madison Square Garden and watched the glitz of the Big Apple, glassy eyed. As the sky turned dark, there were some light showers and we took refuge in Macy's, browsing through apparels and turned off at the unreasonable off-season prices. We walked back to Times Square and watched as numerous tourists snapped away at the huge digital billboards, cops and shops. With no gadgets in hands we had no way of finding a nice little restaurant to whet our appetite for Indian cuisine.So Jay decided to ask a friendly NYPD officer "Ahem, this is an unusual request but can you tell us if there is any Indian restaurant in this area?". The officer quietly looks at him and takes out his smartphone and googles Bombay Masala on 49th St. Not really hungry we decided to order something light, only to find the min.billing for each person is about $16 and our order didn't cover the per person requirement. Annoyed at this strange policy we find Pizza hut and order a nice hot Pizza to share between the three of us. Turns out, not only the Pizza is delicious and right portioned but saved some green$ for us! At about 10 p.m.we decide to call it a night. Jay and I are tired from a long bus journey. We plan to take the Hop off Hop on City tour early next morning. As we try to hail a taxi to our hotel we find that it is an off route and no taxi wants to go there. Finally a kind big Afro-American cab driver stops and gruffly asks us to take the ride in his big yellow taxi. Safely dropped off, we head to our rooms to sleep.

Day 2, we head to the City Tour Bus station and take the $55/person package tour to downtown area and Statue of Liberty. The ticket seller was very compelling and we were sold on to add the extra $10 to our package. Having seen most of downtown the previous night we go on to cover Liberty. As the tour guide explains all the landmarks to us we enjoy the excitement of being in an open roof top of the bus. We look at "Ground Zero" and the guide says that they are planning to unveil the largest man-made water falls in the area on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. We head to Battery Park and wait in the long queue (it is said that our line was one of the shortest, for a weekend) with people from all over the world to catch the ferry to Liberty Island. As we wait in the line Navin hears the Hot dog vendor talk in Kannada. He doesn't look Indian though. Thinking it is a mistake we move a few more steps ahead only to hear a busker play "Jana Gana Mana". He plays it once more for Navin to record on his camera. Few more steps ahead, a carribean plays calypso..this time it's "O Canada" for us. We smile and clap. The guy stops Navin and says "You from India? I love Indians..let me play something for you". You can see he has perfected the "Jana Gana Mana" more than the violin player. The line keeps moving. We see another lively middle aged gentleman with a rainbow colored curly haired wig. He is playing an old wooden acoustic guitar entertaining people from every nationality with his wonderful humour and lovely music. His lyrics were spontaneous as he asked people questions about themselves. He asked us where we were from. When we said Toronto, he broke into a song about a man and woman from Toronto holidaying in NYC. He looked at Navin and asked "Who is single?" When Navin blushed he asked if he would marry his sister, a 6'2'' 250 lbs black woman with big t**s who has money of her own. Navin blushed more! So the man went about making everyone in the line smiling and laughing and donating him money. Needless to say he had boxes of bill$ piled next to him. Finally when we had made it to the ticket check the lady looked at our ticket and shook her head saying it did not cover the ferry ride. Disappointed and shocked at being cheated we pouted and looked at the lady with surprised look on our faces. She must have felt sorry for us tourists and generously gestured for us to get in. What a Daymaker! We hopped on the ferry enjoying the ride on the water and saw lady Liberty waiting majestically for us. We took several pics and headed back to Battery Park and found out that the hot dog vendor with several other shop owners on the street were from Bengaluru and could indeed speak Kannada! They were originally from Tibet but had settled in bengaluru for a while with many other Tibetian settlers in Karnataka. As one of the shop owners talked to Navin we found that the Wall Street was a hop and jump away.

Next, we went to the now infamous wall street to see several land marks from movies and stories and news scandals and then the phone rang! Jay's sister and brother in law were in town to meet us all the way from Boston and it was a big siblings' meeting in Wall St. They took us to this nice Indian restaurant named "Utsav" and treated us to a lovely buffet lunch. Their mango mousse was to die for!

After several other small stops it was time for all of us to part. With a tight timeline, Navin headed off to the airport to catch his flight to London. We were dropped off at the Port of Authority Bus Station. Savitha and Balaji headed off to Boston. At night fall, we ate the delicious Iyengar Puliyogare Savitha made for us with home made curd and Frooti juice! And the trip to Toronto was smooth as ever. Victoria Day in Canada was celebrated with Jay and I sleeping away 6 am to 2.30 p.m.

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Show me your friends and I'll tell who you are

Yes, it is the day of Judgement call. You are defined by the company you keep. In other words, the company you work for. But do not panic if your company is not a Fortune 500 or one of the largest _______ in the world. This is the era of niche business. Specialization is in the air.

A couple of years ago I was conducting a Focus group study for a leading technology organization. The target group consisted of experienced professionals from a cutting-edge technology background. When I asked them to "Define your dream company" majority of the participants gave out the names of companies that were growing, new to the market, with employees of 25-50 numbers, and were innovative product and service providers. Incidentally, all these companies were paying compensation packages above industry standards. Now, don't go 'Aha! Here's the catch'. The compensation is a good carrot, no doubt. The bottomline though, is the fact that you could dodge red tapes of a large multinational corporation and make autonomous decisions. This is very important in a growing economy where risk takers are increasing in numbers and the entrepreneural spirit is spreading like wild-fire. Naturally, the additional package helps them sustain their existence as well as enables them to set up boutique consulting services across the city. Not all of them are successful but no one can object them trying.

An indication of your economy's health is when percentage of risk aversion lowers. For years people in developing and under developed economies have been trying to find security in large stable organizations but no one can deny the fate of such an organization after the downfall of a major financial institution in recent times. The fact that this happened in a developed country is a litmus of things to come. Companies in countries like India and China are feeding off many small businesses and self employments. The rapid growth of skills in Information technology in these countries have uplifted the life styles of the large middle class and opportunistic lower class. Still, the gap between the rich and poor leaves your mouth agape. This is because the scavengers in the social strata have not been able to latch on to the lower end jobs in smaller organizations like how it used to traditionally be. The stratification in the middle class itself is so intense that you can see predatory tendencies when they compete for all employment opportunities that are available to them. Lower classes are completely thwarted. If you noticed I have used words that are associated with primitive instincts of us civilized animals. That's because the current Job market is a jungle out there. The sanctity of a patriarch / matriarch providing for the family is long gone. Man, woman and child are competing with each other to make their mark in the future of turbulent economy.

In the end, all we are interested in is to see a better world for ourselves and our children to live in. But when we reach there I know there will be debris all around us. The one, we realise that was created before we made our mark. And that is why I am not sure of the importance in keeping the right company. The bigger question that is looming over me: 'Is the institution greater than the individual?'. I guess not.

Frog in the well

Internet is a force to reckon.
Internet is an emerging media.
Online traffic numbers are staggering.
New age media. Pay per click. iTV. Portals.

This is the pattern I see in articles about internet as a medium. In the last 3 years the amount of interest and focus that marketers have gained about online media is making me go Uh oh! Not another fad! The truth is, I am somewhat prejudiced, bitter and jealous about Internet.
Prejudiced because I don't fancy anything too hyped.
Bitter because of its influence over young minds in every thing.
Jealous because of the kind of attention it gets.
O.k. For argument sake, you may ask me why I blog. To be heard, I say. You say, 'There you go!'. Well, I must confess that I started blogging just to understand a client of mine, one of the largest internet companies at one time. That's a story by itself. Anyway...

The frog in the well in this story is the person who suddenly wakes up to the fact that Internet is gaining momentum as a strong media and feels earth crumbling under the feet. For this person, all other media blurs into the background. The outline is only Online media and nothing else. So there goes 100% productivity in making a martyr of the Big I's. Interactive. Internet. IPods. Iphones. Ibook. IMac. So on. Note that other latest geek-dgets are added too. The trends extend to Pod casts, Blue tooth marketing and others.

Now, I have observed that this frog has a cousin. The traditional marketer. The one who never budges to try anything new. Only those tested and tried methods are the weapons of mass marketing. Example: Print medium, billboards, In person trade shows etc.

One thing I have never been able to understand is that, why the two cousins don't get along and put their heads together. Perhaps, the best explainations may be given by Behavioural scientists. The kind that deals with humans. There! I have come to the point. The inconsistencies in marketing approach results from human judgements and thoughts. No matter how advanced you are technologically, you are still thinking based on your pre-conditioning and the opinions you form based on your personal interest. So how can you possibly think that all other humans (the one you presume are your target group) will succumb to your latest techniques and be in awe with your isolated advancement/dementia?

All I am saying is...be the frog. But the kind that goes beyond leaps and bounds. Connect with your stakeholders, work hard to be democratic but assertive, make attempts to know your customer well and only then you may flood them with your superior ideas and techniques in making their experience as a customer better.

eMarketing Vs Employee Productivity

Warning: Please note that this article is based only on
a. Companies focused on eMarketing and b. Internet users at work place

Have you ever wondered why your focus is slowly shifting towards terms like impressions, traffic, CPC, CPM, optimization etc? And have you wondered what relation does this have on your employee productivity?

Here is a theory in eMarketing. You are the reason why people spend more time online than the other way around. With free access to internet more employees spend time on their desk for a. To appear to be working b. To surf the internet. Ok, you already knew this.

But imagine this. With 1000s of establishments providing Desktops with internet connections to their employees, it is likely that you are targeting your products and services to millions of office workers. Again, you already knew this.

While you are happy with so many netizens around the world, are you thrilled with the fact that other businesses are happy too? To target your employees!! Would you rather have your employees shop online than complete a project proposal? (Note: Employees can be both, active or passive shoppers).

The easiest way to curb this user behaviour is to cut off access to general websites and social networking sites at the office. However, this would also mean employees meddling with the system admins to obtain easy access. This is especially true in small to medium sized companies. Aren't they spending more time cracking ways to browse than browsing itself?

I would think that browsing the internet is not essentially bad. It is definetely an asset to have access to so much of information but not knowing when to stop is! So how do we drive a message home?

Like a few companies I know, the best way is to use the timer system. An employee can browse anytime of the day on any website but those sites unauthorized by the Network administrator will go off if the usage exceeds a certain time-limit...say 1 hour per day.
Also asking employees to maintain a log of all sites visited and profiling themselves with their areas of interests. This will help you track user profiles and behaviour using your own employees as consumers. Be it any product! Just make sure you assure your employees that it's ok to do this and it has no reflection on their performance reports. This may not be the most conventional idea nor would every company practice this. But if you are Computer/Consumer product company trying this will surely not hurt your pocket, unless you have a stringent Internet policy at your office! ;-)

Recruitment communications with a difference

First Choice Haircutters

These guys are so neat. They ran a TV commercial with the tag line 'A Chair and hair is waiting for you'. The ad was simple showing colorful hair being cut over a chair. I couldn't quite believe a hair salon could actually do recruitment ads on TV! Wake up Fortune 500s!

Creative Niche Inc

This is a staffing firm specialising in placing ad people like me. They have open house sessions and recruiting events at their office. They provide guidance to new candidates in job search. They also have this wonderful external referral program which pays $100 to anyone who refers their name to candidates.

Government funded programs in Canada

Any new comer to Canada thirsting for employment could benefit from a vast array of programs supported by the government. This includes Self Marketing for Employment programs, work place simulation program, assessments and subsidies for employers to hire new immigrants. Now, all these don't necessarily guarantee you a job that pays your bills but for someone eager to make their mark these are great initiatives to benefit from!

Smart

I was going through this site www.smart.com recently and noticed that not only Daimler Chrysler's new babe is a smarty but its website is too! Easy to zip through from one section to another with no fancy flash movies that would slow your browser speed in your existing bandwidth. Gives clear graphic images of the product and its features.
Nicely uses people's pictures to show that this auto was not made in a factory just to invade the spaces of the crowded cities but thoughtfully designed and created for the consumption of people who need a 4 wheeler out of necessity and for those with an aesthetic sense. Ofcourse nothing is free of flaws. Our nice car is made of 'high quality plastic' but supposedly is eco-friendly!
Well, I leave those comments to experts on automotives. I am just a lowly advertising executive who sifts through site after site to whet my appetite for destruction....oopsie..I meant information! Take care. Hallelujah!