Yes, Its meeting the people during the travel which gives me kick. They are the best part of my travel life. Traveling alone gives you that rare chance of meeting strangers. Low cost student/youth hostels are the best place to catch other travelers. Its the best place to hear good stories at the cost of by two chai.

I met many on the road. A guy from England who was traveling alone in Asia taking off from his work. I met this high school teacher (don’t remember her name) from Finland in Udaipur. She introduced herself as the lady from land of Nokia. I had to tell her that I know Finland for a different reason! To my surprise she knew Linus and she started speaking about Indian IT personality who owns a big IT company in Bangalore. Being an Infoscion it was not difficult for me to guess . In Jaipur I met these two wonderful people on Govt bus stop. We traveled together the whole day. It was just pure fun to exchange our feels about each others nation (India, US and Italy). Read the rest of this entry »

A study by Standish Group reports 80% of the IT projects fail due to over budget, late, missing functionality or due to combination of these. Worse 30% of software projects are so poorly executed that they are canceled before completion. There are uncountable reasons for a project to fail and enough has been said and talked about it. What we are not talking is about success. Strange isn’t it? But its true.

I have been in IT industry for six years now. I have been in more than dozen projects of varying types, size and period. One thing which is common across these projects - every successful project needs a hero (s if the project is big). He is the man/woman who can think, design, code, he/she is super productive and above all he/she can help others. Its because of these heroes those 20% projects see shine of the day. My heroes are same as Bruce Eckel’s 20% struggling programmers. Read the rest of this entry »

• “We can not make a Rs one lakh car. Our engineers have said they cannot do it.” - Shinzo Nakanishi, MD Maruthi Suzuki India
• “Since, a promise is a promise the standard dealer version will cost Rs 1 lakh” - Ratan Tata releasing the Nano to the world
• An official of Hyundai Motors said “We definitely see it as impacting our sales” he said in halting English, preferring to maintain anonymity
• “I observed families riding on two-wheelers — the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family.
  Tata Motors’ engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal. Today, we indeed have a People’s Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the People’s Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility,” - Ratan Tata releasing Nano to world
• “I am having nightmares” - Chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri. Nobel Peace Prize winner. Talking about TATA 1 lakh car
• “Pachauri will not have a nightmare and Sunita Narain can also sleep” - Tata talking about emission standards
• “My skepticism about the Tata car is not about Tata’s ability to put it together but to put it together at the price of Rs 1 lakh. It is not fair to say that Rs 1 lakh is the ex-factory price — our two-stroke directly injected three wheeler, which is nowhere close to a car, costs close to Rs 1 lakh to the customer. I still haven’t heard them (the Tatas) say it will be profitable.” - Rajiv Bajaj of Bajaj Auto
• “It is a proud moment for India. It demonstrates India’s technological and entrepreneurial ability. The car will help people move from two-wheeler to four-wheeler and it will leap-frog the two-wheeler,” It fulfills the need of the common Indian who aspires to move from a two-wheeler to a four-wheeler“- Kamal Nath. Minister of Commerce. Govt Of India
• ” It is a good car but we need to test it,” “Only the Tata’s can explain how they managed to achieve it.” - Jagdish Khattar, former chairman and managing director of Maruti Udyog
  
• “The key thing, therefore, is not the price of the car but the running cost” - Rajiv Bajaj of bajaj Auto
  
• “I think it is a great thing for India because mobility is giving new opportunities. I hope Tata is driving a great success with the Rs one lakh car, but it is not our plan.” - Thomas Kuehl SkodaAuto India Board Member
• “The Rs one lakh car is a good decision and a good intention, but as far as Volkswagen is concerned producing a Rs one lakh car is a pure no because meeting the quality standards and safety is not feasible at all in such a model” - Andreas Prinz Volkswagen Group Sales India Managing Director (Passenger Cars)
  
• “It is fantastic, outstanding engineering. It helps redefine the sector in the country. It has established new grounds.” - Venu Srinivasab MD TVS
  
• “The more, the merrier. Fundamentals of the two-wheeler industry are strong and Rs one lakh car is not something which we are worried about.” - Anil Dua, VP Sales and
  Marketing, Hero Honda Motors
  
• “In an ideal world, after the small car has been launched and is successful, that would be a nice time for me to exit,” -Ratan Tata
  
• “Every car has its own buyers and I am sure this car would also have its set of customers, but this segment does not excite us.” - Karl Slym GM President and Managing Director
  
• “The 1-lakh rupee car is not going to impact our potential customers. Our customers would buy our products for the sheer joy of riding.” - P.Sam Head Sales. Yamaha
  
• “In the marketplace, the best wins. I am quite willing to fight in the marketplace. I urge all players to fight in the market” - Ratan Tata
• “The best thing is that they have kept the price at levels promised at concept stage. It is good to look at. I can’t say about the driving experience as I have not taken a trial.” - Ramesh Suri, Chairman, Subros
• “I think it’s a moment of history and I’m delighted an Indian company is leading the way.“ - Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd
• “I congratulate Tata. He has delivered what he promised.” - Onkar Kanvar Apollo Tyres

Source: TV/Offline papers/Online papers/Magazine etc. Let me know if I quoted you wrong.

I just wish Ratan Tata, a happy retirement.

Not very long ago I wrote about Akshaya Patra and how the food was on EB blog. Here is the paragraph from that post

My mother is a Govt school teacher. Last few years she doesn’t carry lunch to school. When ever I question her answer would be I like to have with my kids. They get food from Akshaya Patra we (teachers) make sure that we also eat the same food once the kids are done. I didnt care much until I got a mail from Akshaya Patra so that I can blog about them. That is when I went back to my mother to ask (Not a child you see!) howz the lunch at school? well the answer was clean, healthy and delivered on time everyday.

After that blog post. I was very keen on visiting Akshaya Patra’s Kitchen. They were very happy to oblige. But the condition was to be there at the kitchen before 7am as cooking gets over by 7:30am. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.