Does Apple have a self-imposed maximum market share limit?

With the kind of cult following that Macs have amongst their users, one would believe that Apple’s market share in the PC + Notebook category would be steadily on its way up, since their resurgence as a formidable player in the computer market in the early 2000s. Almost anybody who has made the move to a Mac (yours truly included!) swears by the fragile beasts, and wonders why they didn’t move earlier.

Read the complete article at : http://strat.in/2009/06/does-apple-have-a-self-imposed-maximum-market-share-limit/

Chill second year? Baah!

Second year is supposed to be this really chill thing... or so I'd heard. Unfortunately, the proffs here had something else in store for us. Couple that with my bad luck that all courses I had opted for had most of their sessions in the first few weeks itself, and you end up having a crazy, crazy start to what is supposed to be a time you enjoy and waddle around in and generally have a blast. So here I am, running around like I used to a year ago, except for the fact that I look at the juniors now and wonder why they never seem to have anything to do; they seem to be having the time of their lives. I am sick and bored and tired to death of case studies. A serious overload of these obnoxious things have completely blocked my ability to think of any solutions other than the mundane for them. Which is kind of sad, since it would be fun to really sit down and brainstorm, and come up with something good. Unfortunately, that kind of thing cannot happen when you sit down to do the case after 8 odd hours of classes and 2 more cases pending for you to tackle right afterwards.

Oh, how I long for the previous trimester... And fervently hope that the next ones will let me go around campus without feeling like somebody's run over me and then turned around and did it all over again.

Kampus calls again!

A year ago, I landed up at IIMK, naive and excited, eager to enter the big bad world of business, eager to be in the 'big league'. A crazy year it was, with ups and downs that a roller coaster couldn't come close to. The crazy first trimester, the unbelievable amounts of work, the awesome times spent with an amazing gang of friends with a cup of coffee and a plate of maggi in the Night Canteen, the senseless mugging before exams, days and nights merged into one and another and another till it stopped making sense to consider them as separate entities. The stress of summer placements, the joy of getting something you've dreamt of. A long and never ending yet chilled third semester, probably meant for us to destress from the crazy times of the first and second, and before I knew it, 1 of the 2 most awesomest years of my life were over.

20 days ago, and I step back into God's Own Campus. I fall in love with the place again. This time I come back as an experienced campaigner, but the excitement is not gone. Things will be different this year in many ways, we're used to the system, the seniors, our mentors are no longer around, placements are no longer something which can be forgotten about as something far away into the future. Plans have to be made, questions have to be asked, the mind has to be probed, harsh realities have to be faced, to decide... what do I do after this? What, after Feb 2010?

It's been a crazy 20 odd days here, the proffs probably want to ensure that we shake off all the rust built up over the summers properly and get down to work. But it is, as always, fantastic. There is, of course, a sinking feeling at the back of your mind that the clock is ticking, and before you realize it, your time will be up. So I have to make the most of now, enjoy these precious moments and store them in the recesses of my memory, moments which will have to last a lifetime....

Here's to another rocking, awesome year at IIM Kozhikode!

Disabled Thinking

Why, as a nation, as a society, as individuals, are we so callous to the plight of our disabled?

A week or so in Germany, and I was wondering, why are there so many disabled people on the streets? People bound to wheelchairs, blind people, people on crutches, they seemed a common sight, a tad too common for me. I saw them quite often in public, crossing streets, walking on the sidewalks, getting on and off trains, and getting on with their lives like everybody else. A few more days, and I was crossing the street in the square below my apartment, watching a wheelchair bound guy crossing the street at his own pace, when, like the sudden realization of a ghastly fact, it struck me. There aren’t more disabled people in Germany. It’s just that, unlike back home, they are given the chance to live life as normally as possible.

Read more at : http://strat.in/2009/06/disabled-thinking/

Turn the page...

A post which deviates from my current mission of not gassing my readers to death with senti stuff, but I got to get this off my chest.

It's funny how things work out. I think the fella up there has an incredible sense of humour, I can see him tilt back and laugh loudly, watching me down here below. Every time I have questioned him, questioned his actions, asked, 'why?', it's as if he's just saying, turn the page, dude... there's something else waiting for you.

27th April, 2007. One of the lowest days of my life. 5 IIM rejects in the space of 3 hours is enough to shake the confidence of anybody, especially somebody who already doesn't think too brightly of himself. Never in my wildest dreams would I have enough mulled over what would be reality in just over a year - that I would make it through almost all the places I was interviewed for. A year later, and as that undreamable dream turned into reality, I wondered whether I should be taking my passport along to campus. For what, my cynical self asked. One day before summer placements began, the idea of getting a foreign summers in a batch of 250 fellas, with a profile as average as mine, in one of the worst placement years sounded ridiculous. 7 months later, I stand in my room in Germany, wanting to go back the day after I reached here. Turn the page, dude, a voice inside me said. Just under 2 months later I wish I could not go back, I wish I could continue this awesome journey forever. My second weekend trip, I got bored stiff in the space of 2 hours, and thought that maybe I should just stay at home for the rest of the summer. And then, a page turned, and I ended up wishing I had more weekends. Especially since I had traveled during ALL of them.

Sometimes, I think I missed out just because I didn't turn the page, till somebody ripped the book out of my hand, conked me on the head with it and stuffed a new one back in my hands.

Maybe I need to hear it again. It's time to turn the page. And discover something incredible, beyond my wildest dreams.

Why?

Why would a guy from a city in Eastern Europe, throw the doors of his house open for a random stranger who wants a place to stay for 2 nights, then welcome him in and hand him the keys to his house after knowing him for an hour, so that he could come back whenever he wanted from the party that night? A stranger who doesn't speak his language, who is differently coloured, who comes from a culture so completely different, a stranger he will, in all likelihood, never see again in his life. Why would he offer him dinner, breakfast, anything and everything he had in his kitchen, then help him with anything he needed in the city, give him 2 gifts and one awesome home-made cake, and then carry his luggage to the bus station just before his bus left so that he didn't have to lug it around when he went around the city?

What makes more than a million people across the globe open their minds to this concept?

My couchsurfing experiences have left me overwhelmed by the generosity of the human spirit, and the kindness of souls which I have done nothing to deserve. It has raised more questions than answers, but happy questions, questions which make me ponder over the way we lead our lives, scared, afraid, wary, fearful of the unknown, whether it's a place or a person or a community.

I owe you big-time, Marek. And I owe so much to Couchsurfing. I've reached the end of my travels in Europe, but it has been an exceptional and life-changing journey. In the space of 7 weeks, I've discovered a concept which I hope I can use and contribute to as much as possible for the rest of my life. I am sad that I will be leaving Europe soon, but even more that I will not be able to continue this breath-taking journey which is shaking the very foundations of a dozen assumptions and prejudices of mine.

Kabaddi!!!

I hit the ground hard, and my head bounced violently off the concrete floor, as the American football player who'd been the reason for me hitting terra firma watched me with a bit of concern. It was my mistake, really, I should have realized that while, in theory, helping the sole Indian girl teach a gang of 200 foreigners the amazingly docile and gentle game of Kabaddi looked like a good idea, in practice, it was rather unadvisable, especially when the group of a hundred foreigners also included some hefty, tall men, apart from a lot of good looking girls. Especially since after teaching them, I couldn't very well not participate, and after participating, not quite take the lead and show them how it's played.

So after the explaining part was over, and it was time for a bit of action, I went into the ring, and well, tried to play the game. The next moment that I remember was the one I described in the beginning. From being the guy who showed them how to do it, to being one whom everybody was looking with the look usually reserved for a quadriplegic, was a rather rapid transition. And boy, it hurt. Not just the bit that my leg was so badly hurt that I could not walk later that evening and could just about hobble around the next day, but because of the realization that a mere casual tackle from that bloke had caused so much damage.

But, I guess I'll take it, for the gang loved the game (so much for it being looked down at in India as uncool and a 'rural' game!). I was in Krakow, Poland, for a couchsurfing meet, and we were picnicking in a small garden. Afternoon was turning into evening, and half the crowd was satiated with gallons of beer and all kinds of food, and wanted something new. And that's when Oindri, the Indian girl who started this stuff came in. It was kind of a tough end to my participation in the proceedings, but then it was looked upon as the highlight of the afternoon by many, so that's fine.

I wonder whether just over a year and half a month ago, I would have, ever, in my wildest dreams, dreamt of me teaching Kabaddi to a group of around a hundred foreigners from around a couple of dozen countries, in a small, unkempt university garden in an east european city which, to be frank, I had never heard of before, and having the time of my life inspite of almost being taken out of circulation.

Life can be the stranger than any, any, any fiction you can think of.

German websites and other such pure evil...

German webmasters seem to derive a significant portion of their everyday joy from the vile act of sadism. They design a site, all in German, of course, which is fine with me, an act which I don't highly approve of, but which I understand, since the number of customers who will take their business elsewhere is negligible, especially when there isn't much of a choice where to take their business. But why do they then lull these wretched users into a false sense of complacency by putting up a nice, small little link at the top or bottom of their pages saying 'English' is beyond my assumption that most people usually tend to be nice and not mean. The unwary or unaccustomed user, by the lack of his ability to understand a language which he has not been fortunate enough to be born into, tends to click on these things, under the false impression that it will, actually, lead him or her to an English version of the website.

He does that, and sees a page which makes his heart leap with joy; here is finally a business concern which actually values every single customer, and understands the trauma that a visitor goes through when overwhelmed by a string of familiar letters which make no sense to him. He clicks here and he clicks there and makes full use of the multiple tabs options in firefox, only to be suddenly struck by the magnitude of the vile fraud that has been pulled off. For what promised to be an English version of the site was but an English version of the page, and he is stuck with half a dozen brightly coloured and beautifully designed pages in German. Thank god I have a mac which provides me with an otherwise very nice computing experience, for the combination of German websites and annoying windows balloons kindly informing me that my wireless internet connection has now connected would have resulted in one hell of a broken LCD.

Of paid loos and cleaning streets...

Why does a country which has enough money to clean its roads, not the sidewalks, not the signposts, no, the very road surface itself, ask you for money to use a loo? Especially when it's so frigging cold all the time that you start wondering if they forgot to take the stuffings out of your bladder when they rolled you into use, somewhat like trying to put on a shoe without taking out those balls of paper they put inside. Ok, bad analogy, but I'll get on with it. The point is, you need a loo rather too frequently, and it rather annoys me to pay half a euro every time I need to take a leak. I have no fundamental problems with parting with the money, but why they would charge people for facilities as basic as this, WHEN they seem to have so much money to do things which, frankly, seem ridiculous is really astonishing. I can understand the logic in India - if you don't charge money, you get a stinkpot which will put you off food for half a week - and I am ready to pay half a euro even there to use a decent loo - but doing that in a place which is (was?) rolling in the stuff beats me. I see those funny machines BRUSHING the road surface clean, and it makes me realize that there's another addition to the list of things that I just don't understand.

Strange encounters

It's funny sometimes how somebody reacts to your acts in a manner which is completely unexpected. I was roaming around Stuttgart station, waiting for my train connection. It was slightly late, and I had nothing to do, which meant that I went around in circles, window shopping, all over the place. Stuttgart Hbf (Central Railway Station) isn't very big a place, so I ended up going across the same places a few times. This attracted the attention of a couple of policemen, who looked at me curiously. A non-white guy, lurking around just like that, with a rather large bag on his shoulders should expect that, I guess, in these times. So then, he approached me, and asked for my papers. He stood at a distance of around 3 to 4 feet from me, which necessitated that I took a couple of steps towards him to hand it over, unless I wanted to play catch with the thing. So I stepped closer. An alarmed look spread over his face, and he stepped backwards. Sometimes, you don't quickly understand what is going on, and this was one such occasion, so I stepped ahead again, following which he stepped back a further 2 steps, and we started enacting some sidey Hindi movie song dancing step.

Suddenly it all became very clear, and I couldn't resist a chuckle, and stepped back with my hand extended, passport in it. I understand that they might fear somebody with his hands in his pockets, for what he might pull out from there, and it's consequences, could vary considerably, but to fear a guy with a 170 cm x 55 kg frame who's approaching you with his passport in one hand and very clearly nothing else in the other is somewhat beyond me. Especially when you are a policeman. And a German one.

We need change :|

There seems to be a worldwide agenda against the act of giving change. I mean wherever I've been, across India, Nepal, and now Europe, asking for change gets you a reaction where you wonder if there was some grave mistake in the other person's interpretation of what you said, and whether your words sounded like an invitation for indulging in activities which respectable people - giving the other person the benefit of doubt - do not indulge in with strangers.

I just don't get this. It's not as if they are spectacularly rude or selfish otherwise, but when you request some change for a 500 rupee or 100 Kroner or 50 Euro note, they will all refuse to co-operate with a vehemence which is quite astonishing for an exchange which does not leave either parties worse off, and one of them slightly better. I guess there's something about this fundamentally coded in our DNA. Oh, well...

Of English and the lack of it

Prague is so incredibly tourist friendly... Almost everything is in English apart from Prague, and it's such a relief after visiting some of the bigger western european cities... which seem to be under the erroneous belief that everybody in the world knows their language or the pompous one that everybody who comes there should learn it. Now, I don't mind a country being so proud of it's language that it refuses to have anything else almost anywhere. But to have all sorts of vital information in spots where usually only tourists would read it, only in their native language is rather pushing it and defeating the purpose.

So I was actually thrilled when I kept discovering that they had taken the effort to explain things almost everywhere in English. Even the ticket machines at the small tram stops had English instructions, which, ironically, did not help a group of German tourists at all, who were wondering what to do when faced with a choice of 2 languages, neither of which they seemed to understand much of.

Subway stations in Prague have these large LCD screens which keep showing some videos on subway etiquette. I ignored these, initially, since all of them were only in Czech, but a curious look on the last day made me wish I had observed them properly, for they were the amongst the most brilliantly funny and cute ads I have ever seen. It's remarkable how something as dry as subway etiquette could be taught in a manner so entertaining that you want to let the next train go and keep watching. I was cracking up after watching them one after the other, something which amused Lydia a bit, I think. All the text was in Czech, but it was fairly obvious what they wanted to, for there are not too many different ways in which you can interpret an ad showing a bunch on youngsters occupying all the available seats, and an old lady flying like a flag, holding on to a pole desperately as the train starts, or when a football bounces over a line of passengers' heads on it's way from one youngster to another. Why these range of ads should be only In Czech kind of beat me, but they were still worth watching. I wish I could get them from somewhere off the net, unfortunately, google did not really throw up much that I could make sense of.

Prague :)

There's something unmistakably charming about Prague which you just cannot pin down. On the surface, there seems to be nothing. But there is something indeed, which makes you feel comfortable and yet bewitched by the old-world charm of this magnificent city.

Right : The Astronomical Clock in Old Town

I got off at the Florenc Bus station on the nippy morning of the first of May. A quick visit to the loo made me realize that it was essential to change my Euros into a few Kroner if I didn't want to pay a 20-30% premium for anything. My couchsurfing contact in Prague, Lydia was supposed to meet me at 6.15 here, and I had half an hour to kill, which I did by roaming around and taking wild guesses about any random female being her.

6.30, and still no signs of anybody looking even remotely interested in me, and I decided to send her a message. Well, she'd overslept, and were meeting at 9. That was fine with me, I could wait for the currency exchange to open at 7 and then drop off my stuff at the hostel. I had used the subway system in Paris and Vienna, so I thought this would be easy too, but the Prague subway takes a wee bit more careful attention. It is not too tough, but they dont have so many signboards and notices and arrows as the other ones. In Paris and Vienna, you would have to rather dumb or compete with a bat for blindness to really miss something, but here, they probably thought that it was not too bad an idea to let the occasional bunch of tourists see the Prague castle rather than have yet another round of shopping at Palladium. Maybe they'll change that, with the way the recession is biting, and make it the other way round for a while...

Right : One of the ancient Jewish synagogues

So I wandered out of some rather tough-to-pronounce-for-my-non-Czech-tongue railway station, and tried to proceed towards a similar tram station. Unfortunately, the council probably tries to keep the tourists off the trams - there are so many of them, or maybe I should say us - it's not a bad idea if you let a few of them rest for a while in the zillions of parks and benches they have everywhere rather than fill the trams. So there was nothing to indicate where I should be heading. I wandered down a street, and found a man walking along. He stopped when he saw me, and a hint of a smile covered his face. I offered a hesitant 'excuse me', to which he his face lightened up with a genuine smile and he went 'How can I help you?', and then proceeded to tell me just where the tram station was. Wow.

The Hostel was seemed rather nice, although I believe they had forgotten to put up a board outside which announced that this, indeed, was HostelOne, so I had to bear the risk of ringing a random bell and have a rather cheesed off Czech fella hollering at me for ruining his public holiday slumber in a language which I couldn't even read, forget understand. What they do with so many consonants and so few vowels kind of beats me.

A quick bath and dumping of my luggage in the luggage room later, I left for Winceslas square where Lydia was going to meet me. We were going to meet under the large horse, which seemed like a good idea, until I saw that the place was swarming with half of Prague's tourist population. A bit more of the guessing-whether-she's-the-one game, na she's looks a tad too old, na she's way too young, na, oops, she's actually a he, later, she walked up to me and introduced yourself. Sometimes it helps to be the only person who looks a fair bit different from the rest. It would have been jolly fun if I was also a white westerner, we would have played catch me if you can around the horse for a few times before realizing that we both had mobile phones and could call each other.


And so we roamed around, all over the place, seeing majestic castles and towering, err, towers and ancient clocks, and really ancient synagogues and a whole lot of a lot else. As usual, we discussed about a zillion things, the Czech Republic, India, Germany and since she was from there, Slovakia.

Right to Left : My right shoe, me, Lydia, Ondrej and Branislav

No, I don't have one exceptionally large foot... just an exceptionally awkward pose :|

It was 3 incredible days. The first one went in seeing the usual touristy stuff, which was rather beautiful, but a wee bit tiring because of so many
tourists. The evening was rather nice, at a Slovak students party, where they tried their darndest to get me drunk, by making me have 3 shots of some rather strong Pear liquor, neat, thank you very much, followed by Vodka and something else which I now find it tough to remember :P Unfortunately, just as things had started to get a wee bit wild, we had to leave to catch the last bus, since this place was somewhere rather far away from the city. We had a dozen odd Slovaks with us, all in different stages of inebriation, who proceeded to ask me anything and everything about India. They were incredibly friendly and nice, and there was never a hint of malice or a trace of superiority in their voices even when we talked about something about India which wasn't exactly nice. I really liked these guys, and it made me want to visit Slovakia a lot. I got off at my stop, and realized to my relief that I was in pretty ok shape to make the 5 minute walk back to my room :)


The second day was spent in sunbathing on the banks of the Vltava river, and soaking our feet into the water to remind us that it was rather cold, and it was not a very bright idea to have a dip in it. 2 of Lydia's friends joined us. They were really fun company and slightly crazy at times, which I believe is a very good trait to have, especially when I have it in abnormal quantities. We then went to this hillock which looked upon the entire city, and was surrounded by a small forest. It was a stunning view, and I wish I could just sit there for an entire day, taking in the sight.

Right : Moi on the hill-top

Sunday, and we had just a few hours left, for I had to catch a bus back to Germany in the evening. We went up the Eiffel Tower replica, not a bad effort, though I think they got bored of it after a while and decided that they needn't make it too tall after all. The view from the top is fantastic, though, and it's well worth the hike up the spiral staircase.

After a long walk down, Lydia decided that it was time to take me to a vegetarian restaurant. I was wondering what they would have in a veggie restaurant in eastern europe, when we walked into proper indian restaurant. A few bites and I couldnt believe myself... this was way better than what I would get in a few places back home! Superb food, and really authentic Indian stuff, not the rich, greasy stuff you tend to associate foreign indian food with. This was the stuff, seriously!

Right : Lydia and a rather zonked looking moi

Another hour spent on a park bench, soaking up the sun, and it was time to go. Prague and its people had left me enchanted and wishing for more. It was a beautiful place with really friendly people, and it left me wondering if I could change my travel plans for next week, chuck Zurich, and somehow find my way into Slovakia or Ukraine instead. I mean where else would some really, really nice girl troop around for 3 days with a twisted and strapped ankle (I realized the strapped bit later :| ) with some random stranger just so that he could see what was not even her native city? Oh, Eastern Europe!

Couchsurfing!

Couchsurfing. Come again, I said when I heard of it for the first time. Couch..... surfing? Weird name. But well, that's best way to describe it. So this is this awesome idea which lets you meet, and stay with, complete strangers in a strange and unknown city. That's it. There's no catch, there's no punchline. And neither is this some new, weird way to hook up. it's not about dating. At all. It's just about surfing. Couches.

I had a look at the site, and was intrigued. This seemed very interesting. My Eurotrip (ok, Summer Internship) gave me the perfect chance to try this out. I came here, and somewhat developed cold feet. Stay in a strangers house for a night? Meet a random stranger just like that? I balked at the idea, and decided to 'not take a chance' and book into a hostel on the night I was going to be Vienna. But then I reached Vienna, and after half a day of trooping around in the sun and wondering what made me think of the loony idea of traveling alone in a city where I did not even understand the road signs, and where each beautiful monument made me go... hmm... nice... now what do I do with that?... and I thought of shaking things up a bit. I remembered the CS site, and decided to give it a shot. It was a long shot that somebody would respond so quickly, but having nothing to lose, I dropped a few messages to some interesting profiles, with the confidence that I would never hear from them.

I wandered around in the evening, looking for some place where I could decipher what went into the food so that I did not eat something which I did not want to, namely meat, sat in the underground and decided to get off at a random station, and spent the evening on the banks of the Danube. I came back, and to my surprise, I had a reply and a phone number. A call next afternoon and a few messages fixed things up, though I was still rather skeptical of the whole thing. But then what followed blew me away, it was an experience which was simply awesome.
And now I am in love with this concept. I think it's not just a fantastic idea, but very doable. I can hear the usual arguments - it's ok in Europe, it's ok for a guy, it's ok just for coffee, and such blah. But I say, for a moment, open up your mind and trust a person. Just for a little while. Maybe you can ask him or her to have a reservation in a hotel as a backup, and meet up over coffee to see how it goes. Why not? Sure, it would be a tad strange to tell a chap to buzz off after being with him for a few hours, but hey, if not that, you'd have stayed the same old you, closed and scared and not wanting to meet anybody. Maybe you can call a friend over to stay with you when the visitor is going to come, maybe when you stay with somebody, you stay with somebody of the same sex (which somehow does not make me feel any more relieved, though ;) ), there are a hundred things you could do. The CS site also has a reference system where previous surfers and hosts rate how their experience was. Yes, it's not risk free, but then what in life is? Bad things happen, irrespective of what you do, at times, but does that mean we close ourselves up completely? I mean you could take all this care and be safe and then get mowed down by a car the next day (which is quite possible for me in Europe, with my unerring tendency of going to the extreme left of the road each time I turn when riding my bicycle, and consequently landing up right in front of some rather startled motorist who is too freaked out to even be angry at me).
So then, I am game for this. Time will tell if that's a wise thing to do, but maybe I'll trust the collective wisdom of several hundred thousand people who use the website. And disregard that of some people who told me I was stupid to go to a city all alone without knowing anybody or anything. Maybe, I'll just let go and see what happens!

Why it is a big deal...

Now, my reaction to all of this might seem to be a bit overboard. But then, what are the odds that one will ever end up having this sort of experience? When you meet a complete stranger, and have a fantastic conversation, and end up having a great evening, in a place far away from home, where you know no one, and are all alone. When you see a city the way it's supposed to be seen, unlike a typical tourist, running around and seeing strange edifices and articles, forgetting the last after seeing the next. Yes, I spent half a day from the mere 2 that I was in Vienna doing nothing but taking a walk along a river, but so what? I'd seen half a dozen of the typical tourist spots the day before, but had come away without feeling a thing - I mean, sure, they were beautiful, but so what, what do I do with that - half of Europe is beautiful that way. But that evening on the banks of the Donau - that I'll remember for a long time, as an experience which is indeed rare in a world in which we've learnt to be always wary and watch out for somebody - anybody - whom we don't know.