Life goes on ..........................

I had the misfortune of going to the passport office in Trivandrum today to submit an application for passport for my 5 month old daughter. I had filled in the online application and taken a print out. I also took along with it my passport, my wife’s passport and my daughter’s birth certificate. Both my wife and I have been previously divorced. My wife had her ex-spouse’s name removed from her passport, but mine still had my ex-spouse’s name in only because my passport is valid until 2018 and I did not want to change the passport to get my wife’s name included instead (my UK permanent residency stamp is in the passport and I do not want to carry 2 passports around when travelling). After we went through the process of taking a token and standing in line to finally reach the counter, the lady there said that my passport had a different name for the spouse than my wife’s. I explained to her that it was because I had gotten divorced and remarried. At this point, the ladies and gentlemen s...

I was reading today about entrepreneurship in India seeing a big push from the younger crowd. This is certainly a great thing to happen in a country where educated youngsters were milling around MNCs to get a job until recently. I hope we will have something like Facebook or Twitter originating from India in the next 5 years. And to think all of this is happening despite India having the most inefficient government in any democracy, it gives me goosebumps. The next major change that has to happen is in the electorate - the voting public have to decide that their elected representatives have a basic understanding of governance, development planning and think and act for the national cause than lining their pockets. I think the best catalyst for this would be a media that thinks progressively and captures actions of our elected representatives both in the legislative scene and outside - this would normally be construed an invasion of privacy, but with the future of India at stake, our MP...

I have been reading recently about how Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs could together make or break your career. Recruiters and HR managers check out your web profile before deciding whether to give you a job. And if they find anything that is 'objectionable' in their view, you don't get the job! Think of those who are in jobs already and never had a Facebook profile because Facebook was not even launched at the time they were looking for jobs. All that recruiters could check on those days were the references. What used to be personal before and what we still consider personal and post online, are now deciding our job prospects. The shady and savvy operators gain in this environment while the outgoing, natural folks who speak their minds lose out big time. A world full of workers who artificially create their persona online for a career is not going to be great for certain. It will be a world of deceit than something that is open and transparent. The other thing that ...

I have relocated partly to India since August 2008 and live 80% of the time in this country in the state of Kerala. I have launched a restaurant business here as well. My living in Kerala for the last 5 months has changed my views about India and Indians in a big way. Mind you, I left India in 1995 and was away for almost 14 years save a couple of trips back every year. I would like to share my current thinking with whoever reads this humble attempt of mine to write. I am adopting a 'Before/ After/ What changed my thinking' format to put forth my old and new views. Before: Indians are the smartest folks in the world After: Indians are just average when it comes to intelligence and actually below the average folks in developed countries What changed my thinking: Personal experience employing people with 'good education' in fields as diverse as IT and hospitality. They do not come up with any original idea at all. Nothing worth mentioning has been invented or patented by ...