Indian Television

Probably the worst thing to happen to India was their sitcoms. I wonder what the women (and some men) see in these never ending sagas that attaches them to the t.v. and that all their other work has to happen around the show timings, because once its on - no one can disturb them. I feel like the writers or the producers are probably from broken homes or families to think of such topics and issues which just go on and on and on....

Few of my biggest pet peeves of these Indian sitcoms is the un-Godly use of make up which just seems so "pretty". If this was real India, maybe 40% of the population wouldn't have the income source to own the amount of make up they use. It would probably amount to 90% of the month's average monthly income for a middle class employee.

Then you have the brightly colored silk sarees, which they seem to sleep in too! I truly applaud any Indian woman who would be fully "decked" up and in their bed! which includes the make up. I don't think it is possible to find anyone, or else i would probably give up writing these non-sense blogs. With the heat in India and the economic situation where a.c's are a thing of luxury, i am sure they would be sweating to their last bone if these sarees were worn around every single minute of the day, which includes while sleeping.

Lets talk about feminism and feminist writers here, I respect women, but seriously how can you believe that the men do NOTHING at all, stand around the house behind one strong female figure who dictates what is to be done and how she's plotting her next obsticel against her "daughter-in-law". So out of this world but for people who have not seen it, you have to see the sitcoms to believe what i am saying.

Most marriages on these sitcoms have either broken up due to "mother-in-law" influence or some "evil" sister in law or some sort of woman who plots against all of this. Then you have the ideal daughter in law who does everything in her power to stop any evil things happening in her house. I am sure some of you by now have gotten confused with my sentence, but trust me, nothing beats the story line of these sitcom, where the daughter in law is being plotted against, but then she is so darn good that the plotter turns supporter.

No prominent masculine figures are obviously present, well partly due the fact that most of them are either watching cricket or drinking or probably messing around with some other girl. But then who cares, because the women of the house are so powerful that they solve all the problems. I wonder where the money comes from to plot all of this out.

As the Indian population keeps on watching these melo-dramatic, out of the world sitcoms i guess more and more writers who write rubbish like this will be born. We, as Indians, need to move on to changing that, well as some might say the "educated" ones at least because the story itself promotes domestic violence and disturbance.

Ok done ranting about it for now. I wonder how many feel the same way? 

Because society said so....

"I feel like slowly sinking into a bottomless pool where no one can pull me out." - Well this sounds depressing, doesn't it? At some point or another we have all felt it. We have all felt like creeping under a rock in hopes of never being found by anyone. Even i have been though it or maybe am going through it?

Sometimes life should be taken under control. You control your own life, and the decisions you make either are right or wrong. But don't have regrets if the decision was wrong. Just like in school, where you learn from your mistakes, in real life you get to learn from your wrong. Most of us come around showing everyone that we are happy and life is well, but only you know your self what is going on deep within. Some of us do live a lie and this needs to change – well that’s also what I keep on saying.

Confused and frustrated, some tend to chose the easy way out of committing suicide. Is this the only way out? Surely there has to be another way around it. Life throws a challenge and you just go ahead and take the easy way out? Life is not perfect, but nothing is. Again I would like to say – Life is what you make of it.

Indian culture has a lot to do with what the society would think and what your relatives think, and most of the depression cases or even suicide cases comes from there. Parents might be as supportive as possible, but then ultimately they think about what the neighbors and the family and the society think. But speaking of which, does it really matter? Does it matter to you as a person what the neighbor’s son or daughter are doing? How they fared in their exams? Or they got married to their girlfriend or boyfriend? Or God forbid – an inter-religious marriage?

This might root from the fact that people in India really don’t have much to do but worry about others around them. See the progress of India could have been at a much higher rate, even surpassed the US if we just stopped worrying about our neighbors or farfetched relatives. And let me specially mention the idiot box showing sitcoms on “Star Plus” , “Sony” and the likes. These need to change. I wonder how people even take them seriously. Its made for pure entertainment, leave it at that.

It is sad that you see more and more suicidal cases in India when they haven to scored the “99%” in their board exams, or didn’t get into the number 1 college of their choice or even the stupidest thing of not getting into their “parent’s” dream degree course of doctor or engineering. I wonder, being a doctor or an engineer is that important? I guess so, but it doesn’t reflect in the progress of India, does it? If everyone started becoming a doctor or engineer I wonder where India would be? Everyone would be treating each other? Or a good line in “Goodness Gracious Me” – a sitcom that used to air on BBC – “ you wouldn’t have to wait in lines for hospitals if the whole world became India, cause you would be a doctor yourself”

Lets be more positive towards people who have chosen fields other than doctor or engineer. I mean, the arts, hospitality and many more all have respectable jobs and in some cases even higher paying jobs. I don’t see too many doctors or engineers doing too well for themselves.

Why should we care two hoots of what the society thinks of us? Why don’t we do what is good for us? What we care about? What we love? Why do we force our children to do what the society has “approved”? Lets move on. 

Childishness

After a long break i'm back to bother my mind to think and write :) What could i think of - Childishness. This comes to my mind because yesterday, one of my friend mentioned in passing that my blog is much more mature than what i am in real life. He does have a point. I am childish at times but this is the only part that keeps me sane in the stress of the daily chores. 

Sometimes, when i look at my niece and nephew who are 6 and 1 respectively, i wonder what it would be like to go back to that age. Troubles of the world seem to be the lest bit of your worries. Your more concentrated on how to break something or annoy someone :-)

Children normally fear nothing unless its their parents. They may be scared of something, but that is a different kind of fear. They look at things differently from us adults. This is something unique and something us adults forget to do. They see something unique and new every time, we see "been there, done that" kinda views. 

Being a child, you have the innocence that says everything has yet to be discovered. They don't really care about the safe, boring things. They need something exciting and fresh everyday to keep them entertain. We need to learn from them! As we become adults, we tend to take the same path over and over again because we feel comfortable. Sometimes we could take risk, but we chose not too!

Kids see the world through the eyes of someone that doesn't know the meaning of the words, "too far" or "some other time" While we grow up, we lose some of this innocence and somewhere we lose our unique identity to look at things with a different prospective. I agree that as adults we shouldn't act like kids, but hey, no one asked us to act as adults all the time. 

Without some childishness, life becomes mundane and boring on a daily basis. Shouldn't we all be able to act like children sometimes? In life; in love; in business? Does our fear of real life stop us from overcoming everything that's holding back our true success?

Do you remember the last time you thought, let me have honey smacks for breakfast without milk? Let me go into a toy store and check out the new toys they have for kids? When's the last tine you bought something that kids would use? When's the last time you acted like a child? 

Respect

Respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements. Much of the universal values and virtues that contribute to the good of the individual and society and affirm our human dignity are derived from the value of respect and the value of responsibility.

Sometimes I wonder if in today’s world there is any respect left in the human being. Now some of us have different views on respect. As an Indian, I was tough that you have to treat your elders and the like with respect. You probably end up calling everyone either uncle or aunty who are older to you. Maybe closer to your age you’d call them brother or sister. This leads me to a funny thought, if I were to start calling everyone uncle and aunty or brother or sister this would be one big incestuous world.

Moving on, talking about respect I think that the basic human feelings are involved. You choose who to respect and who not to. If someone is wrong, they are wrong, be it your boss, your elders (uncle or aunt) or even someone who is younger than you. You might chose to not respect them. Nothing wrong in that. But sometimes we don’t make it clear enough that we do not respect the person and for what reason. We fail to explain to the other person that their one mistake made you dis-respect (well, for the lack of a better word) them.

Money, power, stature does not really bring in respect. Now I’m not writing a moral lesson here which I hope to teach to my kids. But I do think that you should not be forcing someone to respect you or respect someone else just because they are older, more powerful or at a higher stature of society. Let your kids chose for themselves who they want to respect. They are humans too, not robots that you would teach them every lesson in life. Let them learn.

I did read somewhere that “education will bring respect to everyone”, which is also untrue according to me. Respect in my opinion doesn’t come with education, it comes with your life experiences and the actions of the other person.

In today’s world we often hear so much news about different people groups, races, religions, sexes, and ages. Somebody is always being offended and somebody is always being discriminated against. Is our world truly such a terrible place that human beings cannot respect each other and treat one another with kindness and dignity?

So many times groups are pitted against one another over trivial matters, petty excuses, and even insignificant issues. So what is the real problem? It is a lack of communication. We have lost the ability to talk to one another, to empathize with others, and to sympathize with those less fortunate than ourselves. As we explore these different groups and their issues, problems, backgrounds, and lifestyles we should all keep an open mind, open hearts, and remember that the people we are talking about are just that, they are people. It is someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, daughter, or son. These are people who are loved and valued and they should be treated that way.

Well before I go on about this moral integrity (which I should write another one page about) I think that each human/person thinks on his own and its up to them to make a conscientious decision on what they can do and what they can not do. Who to respect and who not to respect. Its their own values. We fight over abortion, homosexuality, war, poverty, wealth, debt, government, sex, drugs, immigration, and religion. The one thing we never fight about is promotion of self. There is no respect for others left; it is about self promotion and one’s own cause at the cost of anyone else and their beliefs or feelings. Tolerance is a word that is thrown around a great deal, but very rarely practiced.

Bankruptcy - Airlines.

The airline industry consistently breaks the number one rule of business: The job of the company is to make money.

Planes are expensive. Fuel prices jump around a lot. It's hard to predict how many people will want to fly next year. But all airlines face these challenges and only some file for bankruptcy.

Legacy airlines date back to the days when interstate airlines were heavily regulated by the government. And it does seem like they've had a particularly hard time. American Airlines declared bankruptcy last month, following in the footsteps of Delta, Northwest, United, US Airways and Continental. Some of them have gone through bankruptcy twice.

Before 1978, life for the legacy airlines was pretty sweet. The government set ticket prices. If regulators didn't think airlines were making enough money, ticket prices would be allowed to rise. Instead of competing to offer the lowest ticket prices, the airlines offered more and more amenities things like bigger seats. Some 747s even had piano bars.

All that changed with deregulation in 1978. Bob Crandall was working at American Airlines at the time, and he remembers what it was like.

"Somebody decides to start a new airline and they come into the business and decide that they are only going to charge $29 for a seat," says Crandall. "Then I don't have any choice, I have to charge $29 for my seats too, even if a seat cost me $100."

Those new, low-cost carriers — such as AirTran, Southwest, and JetBlue — have a key advantage over the legacy airlines. "They get much more productivity out of their workers," he says. "The jobs are defined more broadly and their workers tend to be able to cover more of the work load."

Airlines keep on forgetting that these days consumers are more price conscious. Airlines have to adjust to it. Airline travel is no longer a luxury like it used to be in 1978. Airplanes are flying everywhere now, and in some cases for a cheaper price for a seat.

The number one golden rule applied here is, what hotels do. You have a plane, its flying from say, Mumbai to Dubai - the airline will try to fill in every last seat available on the flight because once the flight has closed, that seat will make no money at all. Pretty much the same rule applies to hotels, once the night has passed an empty room makes no money at all. This all seems easy enough to understand but it is a bit more complicated to apply.

Full service airlines have to account for number of meals on board, luggage (especially with the free baggage allowance), number of babies on board, number of premium passengers on board for the extra services they have to provide, so they can not just go on selling seats until the last minute like the low cost carriers. Everyone from catering to maintenance to refueling team is involved.

To examine the middle east market, as i have mentioned before, you have a wide variety of carriers operating in the middle east. Notable low cost carriers would be FlyDubai and Air Arabia, then you have, albeit on a smaller scale, Nas Air, Gulf Traveler (which seems to have disappeared), Jazeera Airways (which has drastically scaled back on operations).

These players know how to use their aircraft optimally. Running from airports that are operational 24hrs a day, giving the flexibility of aircraft staying in the air for a longer period of time - as the say goes - aircraft make money only when they are flying. Staff are utilized to their fullest potential and well sometimes over because there is no rules regulating staff rights and other benefits as the American market. Since they are relatively new the aircraft are younger and more efficient, then there is the pricing of Jet Fuel which is better priced in this part of the world. 

London Olympics - India

As the London Olympics comes to an end, i was thinking about how India produced results. Quiet frankly, its disappointing and shameful to find out that a populations of over 1billion and we could not produce proper athletes to earn even one gold meal? I know, sitting here writing about it might not help, as some would say, if you want to pass the blame, why don't you do something about it? Why don't you join the teams competing. Well that's understandable, but just my view is we should have managed to win atleast one gold?

Congratulations to the Indian athletes that did perform and for wining us the silver and bronze medals. Shooting, boxing, badminton and wrestling are the sports where India has won medals. What i am comparing here is the sheer size of the population.

India's close rival China - 38 gold, 27 silver and 22 bronze. Countries with smaller population like Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Japan etc, have all done much better at collecting medals than a densely populated country like India. Indians are crazy about one sport - Cricket, and that's where everything else stops. I don't  say that it's a wrong thing but seriously speaking - our national game is Hockey and i don't see anyone stopping their daily lives just to watch Hockey. Neither do we fare well in the game. Why is that?

India is placed number 56 in the Olympics this year. Not that we've done extraordinarily well in any year, but hey who's to blame? India does have its own set of achievements but for a young nation not enough.

In a country of one billion people, it would be highly improbable that we cannot find sportsmen of the same or better caliber / potential than existing in the games. Hence I feel it is more to do with lack of infrastructure than genetic reasons. Also sports (and for that matter art, music as well) as a career is almost never encouraged and is unacceptable to Indian parents - there is an obsession with science / engineering / management i.e the more academic careers. I think both these factors reinforce each other leading to the scenario that we have now.  

India, after attaining freedom from the British rule, has been stricken with so many developmental problems that putting money  into the sports scene of the country has never been deemed to be as important. With the relatively better economy that we have had recently, I would then attribute the reasons to the obsession with Cricket.

Additionally there are factors such as corruption, bureaucracy that I cannot get into because I don't consider myself knowledgeable in that domain. I guess more factual stuff needs to be added to this answer but this is my overall understanding of the Indian sports scenario. Improvement of infrastructure at the grass-root level is essential to the improvement of sports in India.

Passion for Aviation - Emirates Airlines

Emirates Airlines is probably one of the most well know airlines around the world. It was started in 1985 and has every since just expanded in all continents.  Emirates, has grown with a precise objective in mind. They have made Dubai a global hub for connections from east to the west and back. This was also fueled by the unprecedented growth of the city state of Dubai. With modest beginnings, Emirates had launched flights to Karachi with its single Boeing 727 which was leased from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in 1985. Emirates was one of the first airlines to introduce seat back, individual TV screens for each passenger in First, Business and Economy class. They had a catering team which was of global standards. The city state had slowly pulled out of Gulf Air, which was then the official carrier for the country. For the first flight, the airline employed 80 staff to act as incognito, undercover passengers as the sales for the maiden flight from Dubai to Karachi didn't sell enough seats.

Without looking back, Emirates just kept on expanding, but with this expansion the service was lost. It was known to have high standards of service from its cabin crew, which now has been lost somewhere in the expansion. Emirates have the latest in technology onboard, but the hard product in terms of seats across all cabins differs widely from aircraft to aircraft. This makes it difficult to ascertain if you will be flying in a flat bed or a cradle seat when you have bought a full fare business class or first class ticket with Emirates. 

Emirates has created a very nice hub and spoke concept, they have a number of advantages over the traditional carriers like British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa etc. Emirates has a low labor cost expense because the pay is generally higher in terms of money but the extras that the company needs to provide its employees is not mandated by any authority unlike for British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air France etc. 

Emirates has a advantage of being positioned in the middle of the east and west bound traffic. Its location has brought a big advantage for it to be able to create a hub and spoke concept, further fuelled by the Dubai Government’s aim at becoming a well class city, so they have supported the airline for tourism, airport facilities and other concessions. Essentially, Dubai is a tax free economy which also works in favor of the airline. 

Dubai airport is a 24 hour operation facility, which allows the airline to make a couple of arrival and departure banks, with no noise restrictions in place. This is a disadvantage to the traditional European carriers. Emirates has three visible arrival and departure banks. The day’s first arrivals happen at 6am and the first departure bank (probably the biggest) take place around 9am. The second set of arrivals comes in around 11pm and the departure bank at 1am.  Further and afternoon bank has started evolving with most Indian sub-continent flights departing around the afternoon time. 

Emirates is also able to provide a world class airport experience as it has a low labor cost, it is able to employ cheap labor to work at the airports as check-in agents, baggage handlers, airport helpers etc. It operates a wide number of lounges in its network which allows to cut costs of paying outstation lounges in the long run. 

Emirates has created cut throat competition in the Europe to Australia, Europe to Indian Sub Continent, Europe to South East Asia and Americas to Indian Subcontinent market. It offers fares which are much lower than the traditional carriers. One of the concept it applies is only using wide bodied aircraft to any route that they operate. This creates a surplus of seats, and allows the airline to reduce the fares to fill those seats. 

Emirates is the largest customer for the A380 aircraft, which further pushes its notion to dump excess capacity into all markets to be able to lower the prices. Emirates, by no means is a boutique carrier in any of its classes. Singapore Airlines maintains its exclusive service and boutique airline status while Emirates keeps on adding seats and lowering the fare, making it a mass transport airline. You get what you pay for. Emirates is one of the first airlines to introduce a 3-4-3 seating across the B777 while the industry standard was 3-3-3. Adding one extra seat on every row further reduced the seat width and the aisle size, which makes it difficult for the crew to get around with their trolleys, and they have to serve more passengers per aircraft than their counterparts in British Airways or Air France or even Singapore Airlines. Emirates Business class product also has a 2-3-2 seating arrangement across the aisle, while the industry average is 2-2-2 to give more privacy and comfort to the passengers who are pay well into the 5 figure sum for their seats. 

The Wall Street Journal article on Emirates airline has been published for a while but it is still drawing interest and comments. Despite the economic downturn the UAE-owned airline is adding to its fleet but there are some special features that have attracted the 10,000 flight attendants to this company.
Here is a brief summary of their employment guidelines:
* Hire attractive looking stewards
* Emirates draws young recruits (average age is 26 but by comparison, 12% of all US flight attendants are under 30)
* Emirates prefers women to men: 75% of total flight crew must be female
* Train them in beauty and etiquette
* Regular manicures and facials for men and women
* Women must retouch lips with bright red lipstick every 15 minutes
* Keep your weight down
* No pregnancy policy for unwed women
* Innocuous onboard flirting is condoned (accepting business cards and phone numbers is OK)
* No alcohol to be consumed in the 12 hours before a flight
* Smoking and eating in uniform are prohibited
* Pay is less than other airlines but Emirates offers free accommodation and transport to and from work.

from he article of:
Farnaz Fassihi, Rich Dubai Flirts with Hard Times but Its Airline is Still Flying High, Wall Street Journal.

Emirates Catering was one of the best until recently when it also came under the axe due to financial constraints and in order to still stay profitable. It cut back on the portion sizes beginning from First class till Economy class. Service has also dropped drastically over the years, yet it is still a hit or a miss service you would expect from Emirates. The standard protocols are always followed but there is that human touch which is missing. The crew are most of the time (again I am generalizing) are too often just snotty. 

I always find Emirates ticket fares to be more expensive when flying from Dubai than flying from any other out station. Emirates charges a bomb if your flying out from Dubai or Kuwait or Bahrain and to connect via Dubai, especially if the home country airline is weak. Emirates, a few years back had bought a stake in Sri Lankan Airlines, and eventually after the contract term it had to leave the airline, it was able to revamp the airline from Air Lanka and make it a good carrier. Sri Lankan, was recently able to start services from Colombo to Zurich and Manila but now in the next few months has to close the routes as Emirates drastically increased its services to Colombo and dropped the rates for Colombo to Zurich (via Dubai) and Colombo to Milan (via Dubai). 

Emirates is large enough to push out the small players from the market. It had applied for service right from Sydney and Auckland to west coast USA as there is a big market for that route but the Australian and New Zealand government had stopped them from using the third party rights for these routes as it would take away the market share from Qantas and Air New Zealand. Emirates has established a huge connectivity from Sydney and from Auckland to Dubai and also between the cities. 

Emirates has also strategically started investing heavily in sports teams and sports stadiums. This gives them a huge marketing ground all over the world. They sponsor only the biggest names, biggest sports and the biggest teams. They have also opened their own stadium in Arsenal. Emirates has made its presence felt all over the world by marketing and advertising. It also holds regular road shows in different continents to increase its presence. One of the strategies is doing a road show months before they launch a new destination in that market. This makes it easy for them to fill up the flights from day 1.  

Emirates also has the advantage of operating one of the world’s youngest fleet of aircrafts, which makes the maintenance and the up keep of the aircraft cheaper, as they buy only new airframes. A lot of support is received from Boeing and Airbus in terms of special bulk discounts when ordering aircraft, and also delivery slots. 

As it keeps on adding aircrafts, more routes are opened up, more A380 aircraft keep on entering service, only time will tell how global would this airline would become and how its presence would pressure the traditional carriers, small home carriers to change their strategies or shut shop all together. Its major key market is the Indian sub-continent, in which it is willing to invest, after the recent opening up of investment into the loss making Kingfisher Airlines. Lets see how big they get or do they drop all together.