Ripples on the brain

1. Abatham…kuppai…unadulterated crap

2. The best thing about the movie was the last song. It looked like a self-mockery exercise. Nobody could have done that better.

3. It is sad that atheism, Tamil language etc. are being increasingly used as vehicles for business. In Tamil Nadu these days, all you have to do to be successful and noticed is to preach atheism, give a message about the degeneration (or some such crap) of Tamil language, invoke Ramasamy Naciker, and join the list of sycophants to the ruling party supremo. The whole thing has become a cartel that, from time-to-time, basks in self-praise in an effort to enhance its self-worth. It is so amazing in the movie that while followers of other religions go unchallenged when they pray or express gratitude to the Almighty, some specific sections are challenged for the same actions. Business compulsions, probably…

You cannot miss the pride in the faces of the waiters these days when you dine in the A/C hall of Saravana Bhavan in Mylapore. When we were there last week, I was piqued that the waiter at our table was ignoring our request for service at our table and playing with some device that looked like a Blackberry. That was before I realized that he was getting his Compaq’s (or HP’s) iPAQ* PDA ready for taking orders.

Yes! these guys now have a PDA and a small printer with them at all times. Once they enter the order, it is printed out in the printers attached to their hip and the order is also automatically transmitted to the chef in the kitchen. The waiters submit the orders printed out to the billing counter.

“Mylapore is the first Saravana Bhavan where this has been implemented”, our waiter Mr. Dheena Dayalan (in the photo) told us. There was an unmistakeable pride in his voice. “The PDA transmits information to the printer in my hip through bluetooth”, he added. We also learnt from him that this was implemented a week ago here.

I think the PDA is intended to serve two main purposes:
1. To enable the waiters spend more time with the customers (and probably attend more tables than they do at present); and
2. To reduce the wait time for customers
An added motive might be to help them forecast demand better and reduce wastage (but this they could do even without the PDA).

I must add that none of the above was evident when we dined there last week. There was no improvement in the time taken for service and also we had search for our waiter a couple of times. But these must be early days for the PDA.

* I was not able to confirm if these are genuine iPAQ’s or some fake ones. I couldn’t see Compaq or HP logos in them

It has been 3 years since I started blogging. It all started when I was studying at the ISB. I had attempted writing a couple of times and abandoned them as I was highly irregular. I tried just one more time as there was an urge to vent out a lot of things in my mind. It has come along well for 3 years now.

I honestly don’t know why I blog these days. There has been a period in 2007 when all I wanted was more readership for this blog. It worked for sometime, but I lost interest again and then the readership fell. Atleast more than once I’ve thought of hitting that “Delete the entire blog” link. Twice I have thought of moving out of blogsome. Some how this is still alive. Let us see how long this continues this way.

I somehow found this dinner conversation I had with an American colleague very funny.

We were talking about some restaurant chains when he mentioned about some restaurant that he had been to during his “wedding rehearsal”. I wanted to know what a wedding rehearsal was. He told me that it was something that happened on the night before the wedding with close family members practising their part for the next day. I mischeviously asked him if the rehearsal was limited to the wedding ceremony alone. He cut short my question and replied, “Wait wait wait! In America we test the quality of the product before we buy”.