Travel Industry, Business Analyst: Two more sites

Kprabu.com, a 6 lettered site is my personal space on net. I always wanted to have a professional space as well :) And, that's how two of my other sites are born.

They are,

1. Travel Industry: Talks about travel, travel technology, hospitality, logistics management, tourist spots etcetera. Click on the hyper-link to know more.
2. Business Analyst: Talks about the day to day activities of BA, the do's and dont's, tips and tricks, tools for BA, etc. Click on the hyper-link to know more.

Its been a month since these sites were live and they are updated regularly as Kprabu.com. Do visit them if you are interested in Travel Industry and Business Analyst role. Happy reading :)

Simple technology, great usage

After my office hours, I reach home by 6.45 PM by office cab. My cab driver name is Rajan. I am the last drop person in my route. Rajan’s next pick up is at 10 PM from a call center company. His house is very far from the call center company, so he won’t go to his house in this 3 hours time. Many days I have wondered how he spends his 3 hours. One day I asked him,

KP: Rajan, you are dropping me at 6.45 PM, I am your last drop person. Your next pickup is at 10PM. I know you are not going home also. So, what do you do in this 3 hours?

Rajan: I halt the vehicle near the Sholinganallur-ECR junction and take rest. This junction is pretty close to the call center company.

KP: Oh, you do this daily eh.. hmm… won’t you be bored in this 3 hours?

Rajan: No sir, I will take rest for 30 minutes. Then, there is a serial that is telecasted at 7.30 PM in Sun TV. Its “Thirumathi Selvi”. That helps me to spend another 30 minutes.

KP: Serial at Sun TV?? You goto some nearby store to watch the serial?

Rajan: No sir. I will make a call to my wife’s mobile, she keeps her mobile near the TV speakers. Then I keep listening to the serial’s audio using my phone. I put my phone in speaker mode so that I need not hold the phone.

KP: WOW, that’s nice time killer. So, you make a 30 minute call daily. What’s your mobile bill?

Rajan: My wife and I have a Tata Indicom mobile. It’s 10 paisa between us. We have selected the 10 paisa plan.

KP: That’s awesome. So, for 30 minutes you pay only 3 rupees is it?

Rajan: No sir, I cut the call during advertisements. After the Ad, my wife will give me a missed call. I will call back again. So, the entire 30 minute serial will cost me 1 rupee 50 paisa. That is roughly 30 rupees per month.

KP: Very nice. What do you do after the serial?

Rajan: I will have dinner till 8.30PM. Then, I will sleep till 9.45 PM and then I will go to the company for pickup at 10 PM.

I was amazed on how much technology has improved these days, more importantly how different those technologies are being used. Mobile and TV are very common products / technologies these days, but the usage of these two by Rajan is brilliant. Entertainment comes in different packages.

TGMGT

Disclaimer: This post talks only about the girls who wear T-shirts that has lines like “Touch here” on the breast area.

Now that the disclaimer made your eye lid wide open, read on.

• Touch here
• Which one do you like?
• Think Tanks
• I am lucky!
• Hows this?
• Stop Staring!
• Pitstop!
• Got Milk?
• Left or Right?

These are the few notable lines that I have SEEN on a girls T-shirt, right on the breast area. Go through the above list again and read on.

Lets call these types of girls as “These-Girls-Make-Guys-Terrible” type (TGMGT), now that’s palindrome! (Mr KP, your computer science staff taught you how to write palindrome program in C++ language, least she would have expected you to apply the palindrome funda on girls breasts, way to go). I am sure you would have also noticed these type of lines.

If you are a conservative guy / girl, then you would have felt ‘shit’, turned your face 180 degrees from the breast and would not read this post anymore after this line.

If you are a practical and broad minded guy, then you would have felt ‘cool’ and would have starred for 5 minutes without bothering the people around you. You would also write a blog post on 'TGMGT’ like how I am doing now and make many peoples tongue touch their cheek.

If you are a person with one leg in conservative and another in broad-minded category, then this line is for you. You might think only now after reading the previous line “What I would have done? May be I would have starred willingly and act to the outside world that I don’t like TGMGTs”. Its ok guys, remove the mask.

So, these are few of the reactions people exemplify after seeing TGMGTs. Now, lets get back to TGMGTs (I mean, back to the topic).

Why do TGMGTs wear T-shirts with ‘those’ type of lines? To make guys look there? To attract attention? To attract blog posts like this? They want everyone to talk about their T-shirt? To tell the world that they also have two? Two To Tango!

So, guys, next time when you read any of ‘these’ lines on a T-Shirt, the one and only word that should strike your mind is –“TGMGT”, the palindrome.

IIM-Indore and Kprabu.com

Read THIS please.

As I had already mentioned, Kprabu.com gets 35-40 hits daily on an average. Suddenly there were 250+ hits daily. I didn’t do anything great apart from writing in my site. Many asked me this question – Then how?

Answer (I came to know about this only 2 days back):

My friend Vamsi Krishna is pursuing MBA in IIM- Indore. Vamsi and his friends from IIM– Lingala, Bunde, Yashwanth took part in Google’s Marketing Challenge. This challenge is open only for higher education colleges. This is the only condition to take part in the challenge. Every registered team will be given a credit of USD 200. With this money, the team has to use their creative online marketing skills and use Google’s Adwords to promote a commercial website. Finally, Google will evaluate the campaign and the best one wins. This team of four (lets call them Fantastic Four) from IIM-I registered for this event. FF was allocated USD 200. Vamsi came up with the idea of using my website for this marketing challenge :) How sweet. And his friends agreed. Sweeter. So, the team is all set and they had setup their campaign in AdWords and the traffic was re-directed to my website through Google Ads. This is the reason for the 250+ hits. From yesterday there were no hits through Google Ads, I guess the campaign is over.

Guys, I must tell you this – Google Ads are just too good to explain. If you use the appropriate keywords and if you know how much amount to spend and when to spend it, then Google AdWords will definitely help in improving your online business. Since the traffic to my site was high last week, I enabled Google Ads in my website and for the last 1 week, I have got USD 2 in my account :)

Vamsi also told me that Lingala and Bunde like my site very much. Thank you FF guys.

Om Shreya ya namaha

I just finished watching the audio release function of the most awaited Tamil movie "Kandasamy" (cast Vikram). They screened 4 video songs (for just two minutes) and I happen to see the heroine Shreya in 3 songs.

Shreya, my god, what a beauty! Wooommmpppphhh! Fire. Magnet. Tsunami. Volcano. She's hot, hot and hot.

One more girl to the 'these-girls-make-me-go-mad' list.

Been to ‘Madarasapattinam’ shooting spot

While I was heading back home in office cab, I saw a shooting kind-of setup in a place far away from the main road. That setup was in the road that connects Vandalur to Kelambakkam. Our cab driver too saw that and we both agreed to goto the spot and check what it is. It took us 5 minutes to reach the shooting spot (from the main road). The road was bad. Only after landing at the shooting spot, we came to know that, earlier there were no roads connecting the shooting spot and main road. The shooting crew had made the path. It was 6.30 PM, the entire shooting spot was glittering with bright lights.

The minute we landed there, we (Driver and I) confirmed that its a shooting spot. I heard a voice from speaker “Move the trolley, forward….”. I could see a group of people preparing food at one corner, serving food at one end, pile of water containers at one end, more than 10-15 cars and busses, more than 30-50 people moving here and there. From our cab, we could see only the outer side of the set. So, all we saw was cardboards, bamboo sticks, some brown color boards etc and bright lights everywhere. We didn’t have any clue neither on the name of the movie nor on the actors. I have never been to a cinema shooting before.

With much eagerness, we walked towards the set and stood in one corner. I was also kind of scared that they might kick us out. It was a surprise to see how artificial things can be built! how artificial things can be moved! What I saw was – a traffic police dressed up like 1940’s (during British) and standing in the center of the road, there were buildings encircling the traffic police’s location. Its like, the traffic police is standing in the center of a circle and buildings form the circle. The buildings were in 1940’s style. They were so real. Art director had done an amazing job. One of the building had the board “British Post Office”. There were many brits dressed up in police attires (again, 1940 style). There were 4-5 old model cars, 2 busses, 2 bullock carts and a train compartment. 15-20 people inside the compartment. Little did I notice that they have laid the rail track. The entire shooting land (about 6000 sq ft) had ‘thar’ on the top. Man, they have done so much for this shot. There were more than 50 people who had dressed in white and white (1940 style). Right from the beginning, I heard the director voice shouting “Hey, move than car… car go front… train come front…. bus come left …. walk fast… action…..cut it”. The scene is - all the vehicles (train, bus, car, cart) move on the road simultaneously and a person tries to cross the road. That person doesn’t know how to cross and he walks in front of the bus and earns the conductor’s curse. This is the scene. When we reached the spot, this scene was going on. They took this scene for 45 minutes. Only at the end of the shooting I was told that the person who was trying to cross the road was Aarya. I realized “oh, till this time, I was looking at Aarya”. When I turned to my left side, I spotted a familiar face among a group of unknowns. The familiar face was Nasir. He was roaming here and there with his mobile at hand.

“Cut it”. The shooting lights were off. Shooting for the day was done. Aarya walked off the spot and I saw him talking to his friend. When I walked towards them, I noticed that the person to whom Aarya was talking to was Director Vijay (Poi solla porom, Kireedam fame). When they had finished talking, I pitched in and asked “Hi Aarya, Can I take a picture with you”. To which both of them smiled and replied unanimously “No pa, sorry. Getup issue”. No regrets. Point taken. Man, heros get so much respect from crew members. I saw it to believe it. It was 7.15PM. We were walking towards our cab to head back home. On the way, we saw Omar (hero’s brother character in Poi Solla Porom movie).

Earlier in the scene, at 6.29 PM, I was sitting inside the cab thinking about my work and all the project calls that I need to attend from home. I didn’t even expect that in the very next minute I will end up in a cinema shooting and stand next to Aarya and Nasir. The sheer thought that its a surprise adventure makes me feel excited. I saw how much effort cinema crews are putting in to take just a 5 second shot. Not an easy task at all. Great.

PHD Pizza Hut @ Mahindra World City, Chennai

Yesterday, two of my project team members (Sheeja, Yogesh) gave treat to the entire team at PHD Pizza Hut. Treat reason was – Malayalam New Year and Easter respectively (though both the dates were in the last month, we didn’t forget the treat).

There is a PHD Pizza Hut in Mahindra World City, Chennai. We, 11 member team, went to Pizza Hut for lunch. Our past 3 consecutive experience with Pizza Hut was BAD. Totally bad. Pizza’s crest was very thin, very few chicken pieces. Though our past 3 experiences were bad, we thought we shall give a last try to this place. While placing the order, I told the person in-charge “Ma'am, last time the pizza crest was very thin and there was few chicken pieces only. Please do not repeat it”. We waited for 15 minutes and the pizza arrived.

Slap shot.

THIN CREST Pizza’s! Very thin!

Mood off.

All were delivered in plates, no boxes around. In all the 6 medium size chicken pizza’s that we ordered, there were a total of 25-30 small chicken pieces only. That roughly makes 5-6 tiny chicken chops per medium sized pizza. In every pizza slice, there were only one chicken piece. Grrr!!! Red hot! No plates were given to us. We had to voice out for plates. Next voice out was for tissue papers, next for ketchups :( It was a totally bad service. I must say no ‘service’ at all. PHD Pizza Hut pissed me off. Same was the experience with everyone at the table. We regretted our decision for PHD Pizza Hut. We all unanimously decided NOT to look back at this place next time onwards. Paid Rs 1100/- and walked out.

The reason for this poor quality of food: They give an offer – Buy one medium sized pizza and get another medium pizza FREE. Just because the 2nd pizza is free, they are making it up with the quality of pizza.

Guys, do not compromise on quality. We are paying you for what we eat. If you can’t run the unit, shutter is always there. Do it.

Irritated.

If you are working in Mahindra World City (Chennai), you know what to do now.

Kamal’s Punjabi Dhaba

While coming back home after my office hours, our cab-mates gave an idea of going out for dinner together. Been to Kamal’s Punjabi Dhaba Restaurant in ECR Road (Kanathur) in Chennai. Not a great hotel to go on a special occasion. Its just a ‘lets-try-this-hotel’ types. Food was OK. Not much variety though. But, there were many varieties of ‘writings’ all over the wall of the hotel. See the images below. Click on the image to enlarge. Butler English. Point is – I am not making fun of the hotel. But, the English is amusing. Have never seen such a funny writing in any other hotel in Chennai. Laughter Feast.

Website ++

www.kprabu.com gets 30 - 35 hits daily on an average. But, for the past 3-4 days, its 250+ hits per day on average. I use Blogpatrol (www.blogpatrol.com) to monitor my website’s hits, site access locations, site access details, top 10 search keywords, top 10 URL hits etc., By Blogpatrol.com I figured out that these hits are due to Google Ads. A tremendous change in hit trend I must say. To my surprise, for many search results, my website was listed in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section that you would see in the right side column in Google Search. I don’t know how my site is getting listed there, I didn’t subscribe to Google Ad Words, but still my website is displayed sometimes in Google Search’s Sponsored Links section. May be because of popularity ;-))

Below is a screenshot of my website monitoring section. X-axis is the dates, Y-axis is the number of hits. Who wouldn’t be inspired to write (blog) more after seeing the INCREASING hits.

KP happy!

Prevention is better than cure - Short Story

This is my 3rd short story. You may read the 2nd story HERE.

Story begins.

Kaana Singh and Maana Singh are very close friends. They both are at their 50's. They live in a village named Thaanapur. Kaana and Maana are into politics. Meaning - they both support a political party. They don't do any work other than attending party meetings.

Sun rise.

Kaana wakes up and walks towards the calendar. Kaana flips the calendar paper and his face beams "Arey, today is July 10 2009. Tomorrow is our party meeting. I will have to make sure all arrangements are done for the meeting. My party chief is coming to Thaanapur, this is a prestigious moment for us. I will have to meet Maana today".

Kaana takes bath, finishes breakfast and walk towards Maana house.

Kaana: Maana... Maana...
Maana: Arey yaar Kaana, why so early? Party meeting is tomorrow only right?
Kaana: Yes Maana, its tomorrow only. You remember, our party president Jeena Jin is coming to Thaanapur. We need to make sure all the things are done.
Maana: Oh yeah Kaana, chalo yaar, lets make sure all arrangements are complete.

Kaana and Maana walk towards the party office building.

Party members: Welcome Kaana and Maana bhai. I hope you both are doing good. You remember about Jeena Jin's meeting tomorrow right?
Kaana and Maana: Yes, we do remember about Jeena Jin's meeting.
Kaana: Guys, posters and advertisements regarding tomorrow's party meeting is ready right?
Party members: Yeah, they are ready.
Maana: How about the meeting place, the stage, mic, electricity, food, logistics and all?
Party members: Everything is done. They are in place.
Maana: Wareh wah. I am impressed.
Kaana: But, guys, have you taken care of 'THAT' rule? It is very important we implement 'THAT' rule for Jeena Jin.
Party members: Oh yeah, 'THAT' new rule is also implemented.
Kaana: Do you think people will follow 'THAT' rule tomorrow?
Party members: They should definitely follow 'THAT' rule. Only people who follow 'THAT' rule will be allowed to enter the meeting compound. 'THAT' rule is written in a big board outside the meeting compound.
Kaana: Good that 'THAT' rule is in place.
Party members: 'THAT' is taken care of.

Wondering what is 'THAT' rule? Click HERE.

Vehicle Paparazzi :)

I was driving on the roads of Adyar; a black Maruti Alto with an interesting wording at the rear glass overtook my car. On reading the wording at the rear glass of the car, I couldn’t resist myself from taking a picture of it. Picture below for your eyes:

Don’t know what the owner is trying to convey by these words. But, two to three different messages can be inferred from this line. Up to you. Ambiguity.

Diddle the ‘Middle’ to Fiddle :)

• Yes, I did cast my vote.
• Oh yeah, I voted.
• I voted.
• Yeyyy, I voted for my favorite party.
• See my finger, I had cast my vote. At least, believe me now.
• Yo, I got the voting mark in my finger.
• Finally, I voted.

These were just a few ways of conveying the message that you had cast your vote. But, see the picture below where the Bachan’s convey the same message different handedly :) You guys rule!

You may also see pictures of other celebrities conveying the same message more politely and safely :D

-------Amrita Rao------------------- Sonakshi Sinha--------------------- Sonam Kapoor---

Picture courtesy: SantaBanta.com