Live - from Chennai Airport

It is 11:55 pm. I’m writing this blog (Though going to post it later) sitting at the passenger’s lounge beyond the security gates at the Chennai Airport, waiting for my flight out of the country. Right at this moment, the entire nation of 1.2 Billion (As per the latest census 2011 ) is in a jubilant mood. The scene is no different here at the airport – Strangers are wishing each other, the airport personnel are smiling ear to ear and are greeting passengers happily. What is the big occasion? – India has just won the cricket World Cup, after 28 long years.

Apple Halwa

There were too many apples at home and I was tired of just eating them raw. So, I decided to try making apple Halwa. It came out very well and every one said it tasted good :) But the sugar has suppressed the apple taste a little bit. I should try reducing sugar a little bit next time.

Here is the link to the recipe that I used: Apple Halwa from 'Aayi's Recipes'

Gobi Manchurian

I tried my hand at making Gobi Manchurian today. Came out pretty well. I'm happy that it tasted almost like it does at restaurants :) But it was quite a time consuming process though.

Recipe from: Awesome Cuisine, Quick and Easy recipes for you

Ironies of Life

Recently, I read a news article titled 'Paralympian regains legs, but dream lost' that caught my attention. It was a unique case, where a miracle that would be considered a divine blessing has actually shattered some really lofty dreams and ambitions. I really do not know if we should feel happy or sad for the individual concerned.

Outsourcing blues - Managing Client Politics

Every organization has its share of internal politics with so many different groups having conflicting interests. It is always a great challenge for a CIO to negotiate all these political alignments within the organization and implement an IT strategy spanning across different groups, departments, business units etc.

In most organizations, IT is still seen as a major cost center. While a lot of investments are required to build and maintain IT systems, the tangible benefits are less. The benefits may come in different form - increased sales, better employee productivity, higher customer satisfaction etc. But most of these benefits are intangible and cannot be expressed in numbers (profits). Hence it becomes very difficult for a CIO to convince the rest of the organization on investing more in IT systems.

While an 'in-house' CIO and IT department themselves have a huge task in negotiating the political alignments, the situation becomes even more challenging when you throw in an outsourcing vendor or worse, multiple outsourcing vendors. Although the practice of Outsourcing is fast spreading across the developed world, there are also a number of concerns among the employees of the outsourcing company - Loss of jobs, loss of control / power within their departments, distrust of foreign players etc.Under such circumstances, negotiating organizational politics of the client is one big problem faced by the vendors. More often than not, the vendors have to work with multiple departments and implement systems spanning across the organization. Being outsiders, they do not have the required political clout within the client company to force the warring parties to the negotiating table. The result - Non-cooperation, deliberate witholding of information, political manipulations, blaming the vendors for anything that goes wrong etc.

Kindle, iPad .... iTunes replayed?

A couple of months back, we were discussing the Ipod – Itunes phenomena in one of our classes. We were discussing the game changing effects of the Ipod – Itunes Combo which has completely re-organized the  entire value chain of the music industry.

Today, is the publishing industry poised for a similar shake up? The Kindles and the iPads are competing with each other coming up with new models and arrangements. The way customers approach books and other published content has been constantly changing over the years and these devices seem to be accelerating the pace.

Decade of Change - World through my lens

In my previous post, I had recollected the changes in my life over the past decade. Along the same lines, I also started thinking about the important events of the past decade that have affected our lives. The ones that I have mentioned here are those that popped into my mind as soon as I thought about the past decade. These are the events that caught my attention - Events that brought joy and also those brought great sorrow. They made us happy, elated, proud, shocked, sad, angry and sometimes even frustrated. Some of these literally transformed the world that we live in, while others had a more personal effect. I hope that a similar list drawn in 2020, will contain more of the joyful events and less of the tragic ones.