Of Sambhars and buckets

Reading this article certainly made my mouth water...especially since I was kinda hungry when I read it.


Of Sambhars and buckets: "Lavanya:

When Rathna Cafe, the famous Triplicane based eatery, opened a branch in T Nagar several months ago, it created a flutter in my family. Suddenly the usually calm elders of the family all got excited. It appeared that every one of them had a story to share - about fluffy hot idlis served with piping hot sambhar ('fusht klash' theriyuma <=> It was first class you know), delicious vadai dipped in sambhar, pongal dripping in ghee and accompanied by sambhar and so on. I noticed that sambhar kept recurring in all their stories.

Not one to let go of an opportunity to know, I asked the eldest to tell me more. He said that Rathna Cafe used to serve unlimited sambhar, the then equivalent of bottomless Coke, along with every South Indian tiffin item. And then came the icing, 'the server walked around with the sambhar bucket and he poured it out on our leaf with a steel mug' added Grandpa. Steel mug and sambhar in a bucket? Since I had never managed a visit to the original Rathna Cafe, I decided that the new one in T Nagar had to be visited and the sight of the bottomless sambhar matched with the one in my imagination.

Continued reading Of Sambhars and buckets...

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Also Chennai recently has become a well deserved addition to the list of cities which are metro blogged. Mumbai and Chennai are the only 2 cities in India that are there in the list of over 30 cities worldwide that are metroblogged.

check out the Chennai blog at http://chennai.metblogs.com

Writing – Just do it!

I have been reading a lot of blogs lately and I noticed there is a lot of writing talent out there. Yet I am sure tere must be a handful of them, like me who are amatuer writers...Here is something I founf that might help you.

Writing – Just do it!: "I used to be an English teacher and the most dreaded task that I could assign my students was to write a short essay. Perhaps that fear is a product of our technological environment where the art of writing to introduce or share an idea has given way to terse or coded phone messages, [...]
"

Really Cool!!

A few weeks back, I was in an ice cream store in Berlin when a family with 3 toddlers walked into the store. Although I don't know for sure, it seemed to me like there was this guy, his 3 kids and his old parents. There wasnt a woman, outside of the grandmoter in the gathering so the guy, acting like a good father which most men are, was trying his level best to keep his children well behaved yet not be rude to them.

Among the children, who were actually quite well behaved, there was this little girl who was just outright adorable. She had a nice round face, pink cheeks and big expressive eyes. You'd have to be a serial killer or something like that if you could restrain smiling when you look at the girl in the face. Initially she came in and was generally yapping to her father and her grandparents (assumed!) and pointing at things etc., It was all in German so didnt really understand what she was saying.

But then, the moment her dad handed her the vanilla ice cream, a cone which she insisted on and even refused to hold a cup underneath the ice cream to prevent the ice cream from dripping all over her, she was out of this world! I mean literally for the next 15 minutes, I was just sitting there watching her eat, while she had totally tuned herself out of everything. She was holding the ice cream 6 inches from her face and it didnt matter what her dad or her grandparents were saying or what was happening around her. It didnt matter that the television she was earlier pointing to was playing cartoons now, she was focusing on her ice cream and nothing was going to take her attention away from it. Finally after she finished the ice cream, with some ice cream still on her nose, she looked up at her dad and smiled.

That definitely was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life. I was sitting there wondering, when was the last time anything at all, leave alone a 2 euro ice cream,  captured and held my absolute attention for soo long. If I was her father, I'd be a bad one as I will be buying her ice creams all the time just so I could watch her eat it!

That really was pretty cool!!

Mornings are beautiful....as long as you can sleep through them!

All over Europe, they switched to the British Summer time today, causing everybody in Europe to lose an hour of sleep. (although it makes little difference to me). Here is an article on BBC which says, wheather you are a morning person or an evening person is dependent upon your biological clock and there is nothing you can do to change it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4838644.stm

That's fine, I am not a morning person and have never been all my life. I can stay up all night, but once I hit the bed,  I am not waking up until a considerable amount of time has passed. I somehow find it more difficult to wake up at 4 am in the morning than to run a 10 mile marathon, not that I have done either of it!!

But then, I read an article about the characteristics of CEO's which appeared on Fortune sometime back, which says all of them are morning people or atleast they start their day early in the morning. Its a pretty neat article, check it out at

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/02/news/newsmakers/howiwork_fortune_032006/index.htm

Does this mean I will never become a CEO in my life??

Bloglines - Toyota's Achilles Heel

Bloglines user Venky (venkster@gmail.com) has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

All you Lean folks out there, check this article out and let me know what you think about it.

btw, I dont necessarily agree or disagree with the article, so don't shoot the messenger.

---

Evolving Excellence Thoughts on lean enterprise leadership from the editors of Superfactory

Toyota's Achilles Heel By Bill Waddell A remarkable article about Toyota appeared in the CNN site yesterday that exposes Toyota's Achilles heel - the ignorance of racism.  It also raises some serious doubt about their vaunted "Respect for People" principle. The point of the article is that Toyota is having management staffing problems.  They do not have enough qualified Japanese staff to control their growth - almost all of which is occurring outside of Japan.  Despite 75% of their personnel being from other countries, and having had a U.S. sales presence for almost 50 years and a manufacturing presence for over 20 years, all 26 Toyota board members are Japanese. All of the senior decision makers at headquarters are Japanese, as well. Mitsuo Kinoshita, the guy in charge of Toyota HR, says, "Getting overseas staff to share our views on management and quality is very difficult."  Really? That is either self-delusion or a tribute to incredibly poor training if 20 years of U.S. manufacturing has not produced anyone who understands Toyota's views on management and quality.  Or it could be that the Toyota management mind is such that, at the end of the day, they cannot ever come to accept the notion that a non-Japanese can be their managerial equivalent. Their 'Japanese only' headquarters culture is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  They point out that employee turnover at non-Japanese plants is much higher than it is in the land of the rising sun, which means "a 20-year track record means a lot more for a Japanese plant than factories elsewhere." With that excuse for refusing to allow non-Japanese folks into the inner circle, it seems to be a safe bet that good people will continue to leave Toyota, keeping the turnover rate churning. Staff turnover is an accurate measure of long term management performance and, by their own admission, Toyota is not doing well.  It is self-serving of them to write this off to American culture. Why would a smart, hard working non-Japanese man or woman stay with Toyota for very long when (1) there is a glass ceiling limiting the chances for promotion, and (2) there is good money to be made taking those skills to other companies or out on the consulting trail? Mr. Kinoshita says that Toyota's insistence on micro-managing and controlling everything from Japan is because, "We're afraid of slipping, so we can't help but interfere." How much respect does that show for people?  It seems to me that the cornerstone of respect is trust, and trust for anyone non-Japanese seems hard to come by at Toyota. Even Taichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo were deluded by national pride into downplaying their own contributions.  So much of their writing was couched in terms of how Japanese look at things and do things - attributing much of the Toyota Production System to this unique Japanese outlook and value system - yet very, very few Japanese companies have duplicated Toyota. Toyota founder, Sakichi Toyoda, was every bit the racist Henry Ford was and could be just as cruel in his opinions about the West as Ford was when it came to the 'International Jew'. That proud, but ignorant, value system does not seem to have completely evolved out of Toyota. In a post a few days ago, I included a quote by Massaki Imai, founder of the Kaizen Institute and vaunted TPS guru, where he said, "Japanese companies developed a very effective system of management, particularly in the manufacturing sectors, and the rest of the world has much to learn from these practices." I beg to differ, Mr. Imai.  "Japanese companies" did not develop "a very effective system of management" - Toyota did.  They are simply one Japanese company that was built by some very intelligent and capable individuals.  The fact that they were Japanese was not the reason for their success.  If it were, Japan would not be losing manufacturing jobs at a rate greater than the U.S., and there would not be such a thriving market for lean consultants in Japan. Toyota says they are stepping up to the problem by establishing training and education facilities in Japan, the U.S., Thailand and England to develop capable managers.  That strikes me as a worthwhile endeavor, but not one that will solve the problem.  If 20 years of demonstrated performance results by some very capable American managers in Toyota plants is not enough to convince the boys in Toyota City that someone who is not Japanese is qualified for advancement, then a sheepskin from Toyota U is not going to do it. In Rebirth of American Industry, I demonstrated how forty years of business success blinded GM and Ford to the flaws in their management system.  They were so sure of the 'rightness' of their model, they were incapable of recognizing and adopting improvements from external sources - namely Toyota.  Toyota is doomed to follow the same course if they do not develop the intellectual and moral integrity needed to take off their racial blinders.

Vacation

I wish I could be on vacation forever.

My Inner Hero - Warrior!

I'm courageous, straightforward, and charismatic. I'm a born leader, but I'm also not afraid to face danger on my own. Nothing stands between me and victory... nothing that lives to tell the tale, anyway. If you need someone to charge into battle for you, call on me.



How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

This is what i got as a review about myself..just dont know if this is just plain bullshit or actually means something...but at the moment it doesnt hurt to brag..does it?


Congratulations!

Hello, Warrior.

Character Stats:

Rogue (14)
Warrior (23)
Wizard (11)
Paladin (6)

Your Profile:

You're tough, courageous, and up to your eyebrows in chutzpah. If you're still in school, your teachers probably talk a lot about your "potential." If you work, your boss calls you a "pro-active self-starter," whatever that means. You don't shy away from hard work, that's for sure. When it comes to leisure, you'd rather be out hiking or biking or snowboarding than sitting around watching TV or reading a book. You care about your health, and have strong opinions.

Above all, you're a man/woman of action and a born leader. You see obstacles as challenges and hardship as an opportunity to build your character (and your muscles). You're not afraid of conflict - in fact, you're not afraid of much of anything. You tend to dive into things headfirst and sort out the consequences later.

Your Mission:

You were put on this earth to lead others. They will follow you, because they are bowled over by your forceful personality, your charisma, and your willingness to do what they're afraid to do. You are the one who has to make things happen, because everyone else is too afraid of rocking the boat.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to Start Something. Something small, or something big. Start a club at your school. Propose a new project to your boss. Invent a new family tradition. Start a small business. Start SOMETHING.

And don't dally about it. We WILL be checking up on you.

A Warning:

Try to remember: it's not all about you. Yes, people tend to do what you say, but don't abuse that power. Don't be a bully, even if you feel like the weaklings really deserve it. Have a Paladin teach you how to "make nice" when necessary. You have the potential to become a great leader, but only if you curb your tendency to be thoughtless, egocentric, and well, sometimes just plain rude.

And by the way, just because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean it's "stupid." Get a Wizard to figure things out for you instead of just giving up when your attention span runs out.

Fashion

I am convinced fashion should be a mandatory 0 credit course in college in India. Everytime I fly out of or into the United States, the flights are filled with a bunch of desis wearing well...interesting clothes, like for example dark brown trousers with light brown dress shirt and sneakers with black socks. Then ofcourse there always are the people (me including!!) who fly into the united States in summer wearing a jacket, expecting it to be freezing!!

The point I am trying to make is that India is rapidly growing into a superpower and its highly skilled abundant workforce is increasingly seen as a great positive. What all this means is that we are going to have more and more Indians work in different parts of the world. While its our performance that really counts, first impressions do matter and looking sharp and fashionable can't definitely hurt us. Also being sensitive to the culture of the place and genuinely trying to understand it and trying the local costumes will only make us more amicable and win us friends and fans world over. After all when was the last time we got pissed at a western woman for wearing a saree ? (which btw I still think is the most elegant yet sexiest costume a woman can wear)

I know people who know me or seen me atleast once are probably wondering who I am to be talking about fashion, being a pathetic dresser myself? The problem I have with fashion is

1) I was born color blind and still am color blind...so no matter how much I try, I dont see crimson or turquoise or olive, I see the world in red, blue or green and my knowledge is limited to the 12 basic colors you get in a pack of crayons. (I did really try...check out http://www.yaelf.com/colour.shtml) So if somebody tells me crimson will look good with ivory black...sure but first of all how does crimson and ivory black look like? you get the point?

2) Being an Engineer, it troubles me if something doesnt follow rules and can't be defined by algorithms and basic laws..and fashion is a fitting example of something that just doesnt follow any rules..Infact I always hear..to be fashionable you got to first break all rules and yet somehow when I break all rules...I look pretty disgusting!! And where rules do apply I follow them painstakingly...like the color of your socks should be the same as the color of your trousers, the color of your belt should match the color of your shoes, wide big ass buckle belt for jeans and dressier belts for trousers etc.,

Guess again that's where a course could have helped. I can vow if there was something like that 99% of college students wouldnt have missed a single class....it would have become like the "mid-day meal" for many college students to get to class.

Peel potatoes quicker!!

For all those people, like me out there who cook everyday and love potatoes, check this video out. It tells you how to peel a boiled potato in one step.

http://www.zonalibre.org/blog/roge/archives/090899.html

As true Lean enterprise enthusiast, I am a sucker for efficiency, be it on the shopfloor or elsewhere...

btw...you can thank me for the video through my amazon.com wishlist!!