TJ's Kaleidoscope

Happy New Year

The Year That Was: Part 20 (The Tata Group)

First, my apologies to my devoted readers waiting with baited breadth for my next post. I kind of got engrossed in the festivities of the season, and fell off the blogging bandwagon.

I think I'll make this the last of my India photo-blogging series. That's not to say I won't have anything more to say about my trip, its just that with five more days left in the year, I have some more photos I'd like to go over before 2006 bids adieu.

Today's blog (if the title didn't give it away) is about the Tata group. The Tata group is perhaps the single most pervasive enterprise in the Indian marketplace. They make everything from Soap, Tea, Watches (Titan), up-scale jewelery (Tanishq), to cars, trucks, SUVs and even IT services. Its probably an unfair comparison given that GE has a $388 billion market capitalization to Tata's 'measily' $24 billion, but GE is what comes to mind when thinking of an American equivalent. But then is it? If they were compared in terms of market penetaration, GE would be number 1 or 2 in the following US markets:

1. Steel
2. Large Automotive (Trucks etc)
3. Automotive
4. Jewellery
5. Retail Stores
6. Soap
7. Tea
8. IT Services
9. Education
10. Medical Services
11. Watches
12. Premium Hotels
13. Locomotives

And while doing so would have to have record of no worker strikes in 75 years of operation, or gauranteeting laid-off workers full-pay until retirement.

Of course I'm oversimplifying, but I have an excuse: I'm not an MBA.

 

 

Above: Our mode of transportation while in Delhi, the Tata Indigo LS, a 1.4 L Deisel sedan. A sprity little thing (one thing about Indian roads, you need an agile not necessarily a fast car).

The Year That Was: Part 19

Well, we're still in India because even though the trip was only for 15 days, there was so much to see and talk about. I already touched upon the overcrowding of roads and here is an example:

 

Contrary to what you may think, this is actually a three lane road where two of the lanes ended up serving as parking lots. So in effect, on a very busy shopping bazaar, instead of a three-lane street you have shopping traffic (cars, scooters, cycles, rickshaws and people) snaking through a single lane. Quite humourous actually.

The Year That Was: Part 18

This recent push to globalization in India made for some very fun shopping experience. For example, McDonald's is growing by leaps and bound, but only because they've adapted to the Indian market. For example, a vegetarian sandwhich called the McVeggie, and also their home delivery service McDelivery (when was the last time you saw McDonald's make a home delivery?).

 

 

I'm still looking for a hillarious Indian McDonald's ad with the punch line of "I'm Lovin it".

The Year That Was: Part 17

Long live commercialism. Long live capitalism. Long live competition...oh wait...Wal-mart is set to enter the Indian retail market next year...

 

Above: A sneak camera shot of a Shopper's Stop retail outlet in Delhi.

The Year That Was: Part 16

India is becoming the land of sub compact and compact cars. This is mainly a factor of prosperity combined with necessity. More people have money to afford cars, yet the infrastructure is so poor that, the roads don't allow for cars any bigger than a Suzuki Swift like shown below. Yes of course, there were Toyota Camry's, Honda Accords, Mercedes S class, and even little known brands like the Skoda. You have these new generation cars competing with old Ambassador cars, auto rickshwas, cows, and even elephants (yes, I saw on on a freeway!). All this makes for some very entertaining driving. There wasn't one day where I didn't have a "oh sh*t!" or "Holy crap!" moment.

 

The Year That Was: Part 15 (Indian Food)

One of the first things that you notice when arrive in India (other than the crowds) is the huge variety of food available, local and international. I know this is pretty much true of any culture, for example, chinese food is probably much better in China than it is in the US. But in the US you mainly get two types of Indian food, North Indian and South Indian and are led to believe that that's all there is. Well, not quite. There's Punjabi, Gujarati, Mughalai, Andhra, Kerala, Maharashtrian, Bengali etc., (there's even Indian Chinese!). So you can imagine my delight when I was re-familiarized with all this variety. My taste bud's got a workout, at the expense of my belly fat, and I loved every minute of it!

 

 

This is a picture from a mall food court. The extreme right is a pizza place (where you can actualy order a chicken tikka pizza), Nariyal Chutney (south Indian, specifically Tamilian), More Than Paranthas (imagine a shop dedicated to just serving every conceivable form of Indian bread), and Rasoi (traditional food from the state of Uttar Pradesh).

Now, More Than Paranthas deserves a special mention for a dish that I had there (I think it was the Shahi, i.e., royal, parantha). Imagine two naan breads the size of a laptop keyboard, deep fried with eggs, between them you have a filling that is a mix of paneer, lamb kabobs, chicken kabobs, and chicken tikka seeped in a buttery sauce making for one gigantic parantha 'sandwhich'. Good thing they cut it into four slices, for I couldn't finish more than one slice. I guess this was feast meant for princes who rode horses went into battle and burnt 5000 calories a day. I am no prince.

Ok, that's all for now, I need to clean off the drool from my laptop.

The Year That Was: Part 14 (Heathrow Part 1 of 2)

I must say I wasn't prepared for my visit to Heathrow. We flow into terminal 1, and then had to walk through this long passage way that looked like an entrance to a prison. Our London to Delhi flight was out of Terminal 4, so we had to take a bus between the two terminals, what we saw upon arrival was most perplexing.

For those who haven't been to either Terminal 1 or 4, terminal 4 looks like the backwater of the airport. Very poor lighting, very few terminals showing arrival or departure times, almost none of the food vendors took credit cards, here I was barely 10 hours out of the US and longing for something I never thought I would: McDonald's and that too for a cup of coffee. Finally we found a sandwhich shop that would take credit cards and could get some grub. The highlight of the stay over was the Bentley at Terminal 4 which quite honestly stuck out like a diamond in the rough. And I kept thinking to myself, "is this the famed Heathrow airport?"

Now before you start making generalizations based on what Heathrow, I must point out that the people were awful nice, and so it wasn't like we had to deal with a lot of stonewalling. Moroever, this is just part 1 of the story, stay tuned for part 2.

The Year That Was: Part 13

The next couple of posts will be about my trip to India, for that was definitely the highlight of the year. It was my first visit to the mother country in almost ten years.

 

 

The British Airways flight at LAX, the one that we were about to board. I guess it was because we were flying out on a Monday, but there was hardly any queue, and we were done with security  etc in less than an hour with three hours to spare. A word to the wise:

1. Check-in online, it was probably the single biggest reason why there were no lines.
2. If you book early enough the price difference between World Traveller (economy) and World Traveller Plus (economy++) can be justified, and is completely and utterly worth it!
3. Don't get surprised (as I did) when the rules of queueing in the US don't apply elsewhere.

The Year That Was: Part 12

Its funny how sometimes good things come out of something that is well....unsuccessful. Mattias and I met on a project that ended up becoming a write-off (due to a myriad of reasons), and while the project is long dead, what was born from it was a personal friendship.

 

In fact Mattias and and his Theresa also came for my masters graduation. Now if only he'd let me piggy back with him on his many international travels ;-).

The Year That Was: Part 11

The toast to good taste. That is me getting a happy b'day from my colleagues on my birthday. From Left to right: Cindy, Raj, Preethi, Myself, Ariela, Nagi, and Ed.

 

The Year That Was: Part 10

My old group at a major automotive company (which shall remained unnamed) had to be disbanded because the company's push towards offshore outsourcing. So, whether we liked it or not, we had to say good bye to each other. The next couple of days will be dedicated this group.

 

Here we are rejoicing on seeing our retirement money. From left to right, myself, Nagi and Ed (also our boss). Everyone in our group will agree that Ed is the BDB (Best Damn Boss) you could ever have.

PS: I can say that without appearing to kiss-up as he is no longer my manager.

 

The last year at our group was a very dynamic enivornment. You could literally come in to office one day to find your entire cubicle shifted to another part of the country. We had to resort to innovative methods like the one above, to ensure our offices remained untouched.

 

The full album (aptly called The Melting Pot) is here.

The Year That Was: Part 9

Among the many goodbyes we had to give was to my dear colleague George. Now George is the kind of guy you want in a high-stress, tense environment. It seems that nothing seems to get to him, he's always the professional, courteous, and calm, and what's more, gets the job done right and done well. He's saved my sorry b*tt many times.

 

 

Bottom Row, Left to Right: Nagi, Ed, George,Froi

Top Row, Left to Right: {need help with name}, John, Avi, Steve, Larry, Malcolm, Ariela, and Preethi

 

 

George was also the official office historian because of his excellent photography skills. That day he even let me take the temporary mantle and drive his ferrari of a camera.

The full album is here.

The Year That Was: Part 8

This year was also one of goodbyes, some sad, some bittersweet. One of the better goodbyes was to Nagi, a colleague who has come ato be a close friend. He moved out of the area to other side of the country for greener pastures. It was a better goodbye because we knew he was moving on to bigger, better opportunities and for a better life. We had a farewell dinner for him at Elephant Bar where most of us showed up.

The person standing is Nagi (blue shirt) This picture I call the Patel brothers. Bob (Babu) and Raj, two people who taught me a lot in the past 2+ years. The funny thing is they think so alike that might as well be blood brothers.

The full album is here.

The Year That Was: Part 7

Like everyone else, I too got a year older. Dan and I have our birthday's a week apart, and so we decided to combine the celebrations into one big one!

 

 

From left to right: Anthony, Justin, Dan, Nora, Chad, and Jen. The full album is here.

The Year That Was: Part 6

We're in March of 2006 when my conspirators and I decided to play an April fool's prank and come dressed up all formal on a Friday! If someone asked what was up we would say "Job Interview" and then after a second of delay follow up with "nailed it!". Needless to say we got a lot of attention so much so, that our boss got tired of trying to answer the question "Why are so many of your group in suits?". Fun times.

 

 From left to right: Myself, Steve, and Bill (who also moonlights as a darn good magician). The picture was taken at the Nissan's former headquarters in LA.

The Year That Was: Part 5

This was a year of many changes in the workplace and we ended up saying goodbye to many a colleague who had become good friends. One such guy is Omar, one heck of a guy, we had a BBQ lunch in his honor. I didn't take very many picture, as I was too busy eating.

The Year That Was: Part 4

We are now in April of this year where we spent some time celebrating Chad's birthday at his home. His mom cooked some great food for us, I got to meet my long lost friend Judy, and got back at Chad for trying to kill me.

 

 

The rest of the album is here.

The Year that was: Part 3

Post for December 3. In March of this year I attended IBM's Technical Leadership Exchange--a meeting of its top technial, managerial, and consultive talent.  I got to see the biggest horses I've ever seen and not only that, meet two of my colleagues who for years had just been voices on the phone.

 

From Middle Left to Right: Chris (the guy who helped resolve issues with the Vaporware known as Vitria BusinessWare) and Debbie (who showed me how to treat WebSphere MQ with respect).

The Year That Was: Part 2

I'm blogging from Atlanta this weekend visiting friends and playing catch-up with them. Here's second in the series. This time its Jen's birthday. We went to CPK (California Pizza Kitchen for the un-initiated) and then went for some bowling where the girls just kicked our butts.

The rest of the album is here.

Year That Was Series: Part 1

As the year comes to a close, I thought it would be nice if I focused, through pictures, on some of the highlights on the year that was. In order to enable that, I am going to post one picture in the order it was taken in the year. Today we begin with the farewell luncheon my office group had for Nagi, who decided to leave for greener pastures from TN.

From Left to Right: Raj , myself, Bob (a.k.a. Babu Patel), and Nagi at the Golden Pheasant in Torrance, California. I fondly refer to this picture as "Three Indian and one Wannabe".