Friends Meet 2008 - Dec.

Trip to Kodai

We Sekar, MS and me with family started from Chennai at around 8:45 pm on 25th December. Kodi canceled his program as his father was hospitalized. Gugan had slight fever and we got medicine for him in perungalathore. He had high fever during the travel. When we reached Madurai, he had heavy fever and so we left Mrs. Rajasekar and Gugan in Madurai and went to Mani's house. Chock annan & Mani joined us. We then called Sriniovasaraja. He also joined us.

From there we went to Athisayam. JP was there already. We enjoyed the water games. Kanmani and Manoj were enjoying the slide games. We spent the complete day there in Athisayam. Sekar has decided to return to Chennai as Gugan has not recovered.

Raja and Sekar with Kanmani left to Madurai. We started our journey towards Kodai. Sudakar was waiting for us in the Kodai ghat road. We reached Kodai around 9:30pm. It was very cold. Kodi booked Three cottage there. We stayed in the cottage after having dinner.

Next day morning we went to Kuringiyandavar temple. Mrs. MSSenthil had purchased for wooden massage things. Mani was cutting some funny jokes there and every one were enjoying it. We had a photo session.

After having dharisanam, we had BF in Krishna bhavan. Heavy crowd there and it took more time for us to get the BF. After that we started towards Pillar Rock. As there were heavy traffic, they diverted us in a different route. We went to Pine tree forest.

Many never visited this place as this is in a different route. It was nice to see. Many cinema films were taken in this place. Kids gave pose for us. We took family Potos.

Next we went to the Green valley point and had a walk there. Then we went to Pillars Rock.


We went to Kishna Bhavan for Lunch also. We had Fried rise and Curd rise there. After that we went for boating. We took two Row boat with rower and one pedal boat.

MS, Dhaksina, Manoj, & Meenu went on Pedal Boat and others went for row boat. We were enjoying the Boating in HOT sun light!!!!!!!!!!

Mrs. Mani was saying that she is going for boating in the NOON for the first time. For us no other choice as MS was leaving to Chennai on that day.

Then everyone went for horse riding and cycle riding. At 5:00 pm MS & family started from kodai to Cennai as they have work on Sunday. This trip Manoj didn't enjoyed much.

Then we returned to cottage. We atarted dancing. All the couple danced but the kids didn't. Chock annan said all the kids are waste as they are not enjoying the trip.


Then they started dancing. It was really nice to see all the kutties danced very well. I didn't expect that Priyanka and Sivani dance so well. They really danced nicely.

Last day we had BF first and then went to boating. We hired four pedaling boat. Chock annan got everyone Ice cream and kids enjoyed the boating with ice cream.

Then we went to Garden. There we gave interview for Covai FM. Every one talked and Darshina sing a song. We then played games in the garden for two hours. It was full of fun and Mani, JP and Isu made the time lively.
From ther we went to the cottage and had lunch. One group took rest and few of us went for coakers walk. We went for some time and viewed the Guna Church and the hills through Binocular. Had some shopping there and returned room.
Then we started from there and returned. On the way we went to Silver cascade and then returned Madurai. Sudakar left to Trichy.
This is a trip, where we faced more challenges. We planned in last min. as usual. I was not able to book ticket in time. Kodi missed it last minute and Sekar returned on the day One.... JP had car problem while returning.....

Dada Retired

It is a sad farewell for Dada. He is very happy that his average in his final series is more than 50. He missed a record by 15 runs!!!!!!! Yes. He got out for 85 in the last test. If he scored century in that test, then he will be the first player who scored century in first and last test of his carrier. Clarke's superb catch stopped it.

Good Bye Ganguly............... Good Luck for future assignments.

Dada made century in his last series

Dada made a century and become talk of the day. Now fans started cribbing that he has more cricket with him and Vegsarkar the who spoiled his final phase of cricket carrier.

I feel he has made a right decision and while going out he is going to make a best last series that too against in form Australia. The credit of course goes to Srikanth and Srinivasan. They selected him in spite of not getting selected in the Irony trophy.

Wish you good luck Dada. I am expecting you into the cricketing arena as a Commentator or Indian Coach!!!!!!!

I think you can do well as Coach similar to the one you did as a captain.

Offline Conversion Tracking

Recent days the marketing spending is increasing as there is an increase in on-line marketing competition. Tracking the conversion plays a vital role in finding ROI on various marketing activities.

Most of the transactions are happening off-line and this makes us difficulty in calculating our ROI. When we have a definite sales starting point and a well defined process for the flow until the conversion is happening, there will not be any issue in calculating the ROI. Else it is going to be a tough task in getting proper conversion in an effective way.

In our case, our product can be downloaded freely from website (online) and most of the conversions are off-line i.e. either through phone or through resellers. It is very difficult to calculate the ROI. Measuring off-line conversions and proving on paper that the online marketing triggered the off-line conversion is difficult, because we can’t often directly measure the process from start to conversion.

Methods of tracking off-line conversions

Simple method of off-line tracking

The easiest technique is to make an assumption based on a change in sales. If sales go up after an online advertising campaign, then we can assume it’s due to that campaign. This method isn’t so much of a method as a practice.

Intermediate Methods of Off-line Tracking

Intermediate method for tracking off-line sales is by gathering some data in a trial program and then extrapolating it to future sales or a larger campaign.

Other options that give off-line conversion include the tried-and-true coupon code or special offer codes. This method relies on the customer entering a special identifier that both gives them a discount and also allows us to track where the customer came from.

Advanced Off-line Conversion Tracking Techniques

Customer Tagging

In this method the once the customer reaches the website a customer Id or an order ID or a key will be given to the customer. At every stage of the communication the customer has to be asked for the key and when he get converted, using the key we can track back the history of access details of the customer.

Unique phone numbers for referrers.

Another advanced method for tracking off-line conversions is the use of persistent unique phone numbers based on referrers.

This approach can be used to track off-line conversions from a variety of lead generation sources. JavaScript on the landing pages identifies the source of the referral and displays a unique phone number. The visitor is also tagged with a cookie, so as that visitor explores the site the same unique phone number is consistently displayed. Even if the customer bookmarks the site and returns at a later date he will view the same telephone number.

Call tracking of keyword-driven traffic.

Sophisticated call tracking tools provide the ability to track off-line conversions with a similar high level of detail as online analytics. Obviously, asking a customer what search phrase they used to find our site online won’t likely be effective. An automated service is the best approach if we need that fine-grain concentration of detail when tracking conversions.

Finance crisis: in graphics

THE CASUALTIES

Some of the biggest names in the banking world have fallen casualty to the global financial crisis.

BAIL-OUT BILL

Governments have spent millions of dollars on rescue packages - the approved US rescue package of $700bn .

UK - A bankruptcy for every five minutes!

A British resident or business is declared insolvent every five minutes or so, according to an advocacy group.

Credit Action claims that the number of people seeking debt help has increased by more than a third in the past year, 104 properties are repossessed daily and the average household debt is 9,500 pounds, the ‘Sky News’ reported.

According to Managing Director of Capital Economics Roger Bootle, the era of easy credit is actually over.

"The financial landscape will never be the same again. We have passed through a major event which is on a par of much of what occurred in the 1920s and 30s leading up to the Great Depression.

"We have been through a period when financial markets went bonkers and remarkably the central banks and governments allowed them to and many of us were caught up in this," he said.

According to experts, most people do not realize how much debt they are in. And, even those who know they are in trouble, are often reluctant to seek help. They stress that ignoring debt is the worst thing people can do.

Alex MacDermott, policy officer at Citizens Advice, said: "Come and get advice as early as possible. There are lots of ways we can help. We can make sure you’re getting all your benefits and tax credits.

"We would then look at prioritizing your debts, so we’d look at making your mortgage payments, your council tax, your fuel payments a top priority to make sure you don’t get cut off or evicted from your property. Then we'd look at rescheduling any other debts out of what's left over."

End of an Era

At last Dada Announced his retirement from one and test cricket. One of the most successful captain, made the long expected announcement. The series against Australia is his final series. He made almost 7000 runs on test cricket and 11000+ runs & 100+ wickets on one day games.

He made a great change in Indian cricket and is famous for his aggression. His record as a captain is one of the best in Indian cricket history. He supported youngsters like Yuvaraj, Bajji, & Sewag at their initial stages.

The overall fifth-highest run-getter for India, Ganguly is also among only seven batsmen in the world to cross the 10,000-run mark in one-day internationals. He is also the second after Sachin Tendulkar in terms of overall runs scored in ODIs.

Eight trends mark the coming semester

1. A Dollar in distress (EUR 1 = USD 1.75 at the end of 2008): Panic-fear of a US currency and economy collapse eats into the American collective psyche
Bernanke, Paulson and Bush bark but the USD will not deviate one iota from EUR 1 = USD 1.75 at the end of 2008, according to the forecasts of LEAP/E2020

2. Global financial system: An impossible requirement – placing Washington under international trusteeship – provokes the system’s break
Washington’s decision to raise the bids for the return to a « strong Dollar » bears the seeds of an acceleration of the global financial system’s breaking process

3. European Union: The periphery sinks into the recession, the Eurozone only slows down
As regards the European Union, the situation will be contrasted, as anticipated many times by LEAP/2020

4. Asia: The « double whammy » inflation/export-collapse
Economies based on cheap costs and exports, hit by inflation and recession (US) or economic slowdown (EU) in two major export markets, these are the characteristics of the situation for Asian countries in the coming six months

5. Latin America: Difficulties increase but growth remains steady in most parts of the region, Mexico and Argentina in crisis
The Very great US Depression will have very specific direct consequences on all countries of the area, namely in Central America and the North of South-America

6. Arab world: Pro-Western regimes go adrift / 60 percent risk of socio-political explosion on Egypt-Morocco axis
According to LEAP/E2020, the global systemic crisis contributes to weaken Arab states’ pro-Western regimes

7. Iran: 70 percent probability of an attack by October 2008 confirmed
The nomination of Barak Obama as the Democrat opponent to John McCain props up the risk

8. Banks/Speculative bubbles: When bubbles collide
World banks, American and British in particular, will be trapped between 4 bubbles, in fact now four bombs

Stunning Performance by The Football team in Corporate Olympiad

It was a wonderful day for us in Corporate Olympiad. We played Three games on Sunday. All the three matches were exciting. In the Quarter finals we played against Intelenet. In the first half itself we put a goal from the corner. It was an excellent heading by Ratti. And Intelenet didn't come back.

We had the Semi's against Ajuba. It was the match of the tournament for us. In the first half we got a goal. It was a mistake by the back and the goal was scored easily. Our team members were totally down and at one point of time Babu was walking with his head down in the mid-field. We were encouraging/shouting from outside. Ajuba were unlucky. Their shots hit the bar twice.

There comes the turning point for us from Jagan. He tackled three defenders and made the first goal. It was really great come back for us. Then every one got the enthusiasm and the game changed. Ajuba defenders were surprised about our comeback. Babu steal a ball from Ajuba (miss pass) and hit it from top of the box. The goal keeper d no answer for it. We won the game with 2-1 margin.

The final was between Cognisant and us. We lost to them last year in Sevens. This time we wanted to win them. They were attacking us from the beginning. The ball was there in our half most of the time. We got a first chance in the first half and Babu converted it. We were leading 1-0 in the first half.

Then the game become very hot. Everyone played a rough game. Especially they played a tactics of pulling the shirts. We never played such game in our internal tournament. It provoked our players many times. We got three Yellow card. All the three because of their provoking game either shoulder push(without having the ball) or pulling the T-shirt.

Rajaram made few excellent stops and our defense was exceptionally good. Almost everyone contributed. It was a wonderful evening and I had an exciting moment after 20 years (Ties Football finals in REC Trichy 1987 Feb, where we-ACCET won the Gold).

Bailout Plan Approved by House

US House approved the bailout plan today on second try after the Senate approved it on Wednesday 1st Oct. House rejected the plan on Monday with 228 against and 205 in favor with the Republicans leading the opposition.

On 1st the Senate passed the bailout with 74-25. In the second try the house approved it by a vote of 263-171. Even this time, the Republicans more than 50% voted against and most Democrats voted in favor.

Supporters said the bailout was needed to prevent economic collapse; opponents said it was hasty, ill-conceived and risked too much taxpayer money to help Wall Street tycoons, while providing no guarantees of success. In the Senate, lawmakers who opposed the plan on Wednesday warned that it still did not address the root problems in the American financial system, including lax regulation.

In spite of getting criticism from many politicians, pundits and citizens on the left and right, the bailout bill is passed to calm the unstable economy.

Dada Included for Test series against Australia

One Last chance for Dada. The credit the new selection committee, (Srikanth and Srinivasan) gave him this opportunity. He was given a chance as he has played few good innings in his come back (eventhough he was not selected to play ROI in Irani Trophy). IT IS THE LAST SERIES. Better he can announce retirement.

He will definitely play well. He is going to play for India A against NZ A in Chennai today in the second test. This is going to be a practice match for him.

The selection committee gave Badrinath also an opportunity to play test cricket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Picnic to MGM with Friends

Prabhakar came to Chennai with his family. He called few of us for a picnic. Rajasekar, myself, Kodi & MS were ready to join. Prabhakar suggested Mayajall, bu Mrs. Rajasekar was not for it as nothing is there except movie and Bowling.

Finally we decided to go to MGM. Last min. Kodi and MS were not able join. We three families (except Sekar) went to MGM. We started at 11:15 am delay by almost one hr. We went MGM around 11:45.

Kids started the events with Giant wheel. Me, Mrs.prabakar and Mrs. Sekar opted out. Praba was telling he will not go but last min. he went. Once it started rotating, he closed his eyes and was under complete pressure.

Then kids went for some rides. They played some fun games Priyanka, Kirthi and Kanmani won some prices. They played video games for some time and went to Swimming Pool. All the kids enjoyed swimming. Prithivi went for the big slide first. Then Krithi and then Kanmani. Prithivi injured his shoulder but nothing serious.

Then we went to jungle safari. Everyone expected much there. But all were disappointed. They said nothing inside. Everyone went for the Rein Coaster. Then Krithi and Geetha went for rider and roller coaster. The Rainbow was not working. It was big disappointment for us as most of the raids are not available and no fun.

Then we went to dizee world where kids had many rides. We went for Dashing Car.

Sekar arranged dinner in Hotel Residency. All went there around 8:15 and finished the dinner at around 10:00 pm. It was a nice one day trip. Kids enjoyed it.

Bailout Plan Rejected - Banks pumping funds into money market

Investors worldwide dumped shares on Tuesday after US house unexpectedly rejected a multi-billion-dollar bailout plan. Across world governments started pumping money into either banks or to the market to avoid complete economic collapse.

Bank of Japan has pumped cash into the domestic financial system to try to keep credit flowing. Morgan Stanley's share drastically gone down in last few weeks. Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. pumps $US9 billion to Morgan Stanley to buy 21% of the stakes. This may shore up investors confident on Morgan Stanley.

In Europe also the market crashes as the Bailout plan was rejected. France, Belgium and Luxembourg agreed to inject 6.4 billion euros ($9.2 billion) into the beleaguered bank Dexia.

In Asia investors started investing in bonds and gold, despite calls from policymakers for calm.

US Finance & Banking collapse continued

Last week there some more acquisition happened in the US banking sector. This shows that the world is going to face a major crisis as USD is the currency used across the world to measure their financial status.

JP Morgan Chase last week purchased Washington Mutual's failed assets and this makes additional pressure on the other major banks that are struggling under the weigh of bad loans.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon announced writedowns of loans similar to those hold by Wachovia. Now Wachovia Corp. the fourth biggest bank of US whose stock has tumbled 80% in the last One year is forced to sell itself because of Dimon's announcement. Its share down by 47% in the last week itself. Citigroup and Wells Fergo may bid for Wachovia Corp. (Already Morgan Stanley's aquisition plan on Wachovia failed in Mid Sept. 2008).

Moving an existing website to a new domain

We are in the process of creating a strong brand identity for our products. One of the issues in our brand building is our website URL. We have our website on our Company's name and all our brand urls are 301 redirect to our company name domain. If we change the domain URL, it will affect the traffic due to SEO impact. The following are some of the major factors

• The back links
• The Page Rank of the domain
• Web pages position for various keywords
• Age advantage of the domain

As it is a critical operation, we wanted to implement it in steps. Otherwise we will loose the traffic immediately.

• First, put up a small selection of urls on the new domain and establish a single Webmaster Tools account that authenticates us as the responsible party for BOTH domains.
• Next, we have to plan for our 301 redirects. We should not 301 the entire old domain to the home page of the new domain. But also, should not use a separate 301 for thousands of urls to thousands of other urls. Use a 301 for the most critical relocated urls. The rest of "lower importance" the URLs can serve a custom "we have moved" message with a true 404 http status code.
• One other step - work with the backlinks. We have to contact major backlink owners and request a change .
• Start establishing NEW backlinks as soon as possible, so let a lot of people know about the new site, in a way that encourages new links.

Brand Building -Learnings from our hereditary food business

Building brand name is a talent in any business. A brand is a collection of feelings and recognition about quality, image, lifestyle and status.Companies are spending millions of $ to build brand names providing/sponsoring/conducting various events. A strong brand makes tough decisions easy.

Today in the food industry many brands survive and prosper with out advertisements, with no branding and with no positioning. How is this possible for them? The competition is high. Are they changing with time? or What is there in these brands to maintain their value?

In Kolkata, Rosagulla is famous in KC Doss, Strawberry biscuits are popular in Puna's Kayani Bakery, India coffee house in Bangalore and so on. All these brands are popular for years without any marketing and advertisements. How do they achieve?

Whether it is Thirunelvali iruttu kadai Halwa or Chennai Grand Sweets, they all known for their dishes for more than three decades and their brand is as great as the taste of the dishes they offer.

The main reason is they Never Compromise on the Quality of food. If there is a need, they will compromise on the price or the quantity but never compromise on the quality of food. It is the main reason people visit them continuously.

If we apply the same principle for any product - If we can convince our customer that our product is worthy of purchasing, we can achieve our sales without marketing/advertising spending & without public relations. Successful branding starts with superior quality products and backed by an excellent customer support service.

Organic Search Position Using Google API

Google had the SOAP API (Google's First API), for finding the organic keyword position. It was stopped in Dec. 2006 and they recommend Ajax API as alternate to the SOAP API. We are using the Soap API (They are still supporting the old SoapAPI users) and we are storing almost 1000 keywords position (alternate days data only) Using Soap API, we can get data for any no. of pages and we will get it from the google data centers.

We can get the data and can store it in DB. But max. of 1000 queries only can be accessed from one key. We can compare the keyword positions over a period and this helped us a lot on SEO perspective. Lot of companies started using it for both personal and commercial purposes.

Now using the Ajax API, there are lot of limitations.

• You can not go for server side queries.
• We can query max. of 32 positions only.
• The results will be fetched similar to your browser search.
• You will see Google Ads in the results.
• It comes with Google branding.

But Ajax API has more powerful features, including access to Video, Maps, Blog Search, and New search results.

Googlebot Crawling - an experience

We created a new website. Google crawled the website within a couple of days. It was realy very fast and we don't want the site to be crawled when it is in beta. We have added a robots.txt and added the below tag.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Once the site is ready, we have updated the robots.txt with the below tag
User-agent: *
Allow: /

Also we have submitted the page to Google for crawling. (http://www.google.com/addurl.html)
In addition, we have added Google site map and added all the pages into the list. Even after a week of the updates, the website is not yet crawled. Are we missing anything in the process ? or Adding Disallow tag and removing it within couple of weeks will delay the crawling frequency?

We have added the website to our Google Webmaster Tools account and submitted the reconsideration request. We followed the below step.

• Added the new site to our Google Webmaster tools account.
• Verified the site ownership.
• Logged into the Google Webmaster tools account.
• On the dashboard, under Tools selected the Request for Reconsideration.
• Selected the site, and explained the above reason for reconsideration.

I hope our new site will be crawled in a couple of days.

World Economy Collape

Major financial/insurence institutions are in danger and it begins with the fall of Lehman and Merill acquired by Bank of America recently. "The worst of the financial crisis may still lie ahead and more major financial institutions may face trouble in coming months" IMF director general Dominique Strauss-Kahn said today.

Global European Anticipation Bulletin says the Euro will move up to 1.75USD by end of 2008. Today the US market status is showing that it is going to happen. But Fed. is trying to keep the dollar value high compared to the other currencies. This shows that they are purposely keeping it high for the US presidential election. Immediately after the election, the dollar value will fall.

According to GEAB N'27 - "The world plunges into the heart of the global systemic crisis" the main title of the GEAB's June edition.

the specific nature and conditions – as they are described in this 27th issue of the GEAB – of the wide-scale manipulation of the US currency index that the US Treasury Department has been operating since the last week of July 2008, with the active support of the US Federal Reserve's « Primary Dealers » and the central banks of China and most probably of Japan and Europe, have convinced our researchers that, besides the fact that it was temporary, the upturn was in fact the sign that the collapse of the dollar system we have been living in since 1945 was gaining momentum.

There will be a big impact for the whole world and for US it is going to be a disaster after 1945's. Europe, Asia and the rest of the world will be affected at various levels and will experience some economic slowdown.

US debt corrected for inflation (in year 2000 dollars) - Source: US National Debt Clock

In this issue of the GEAB (N°27), details the mechanisms at work in this large manipulation of the dollar index orchestrated by US and Chinese authorities. They also anticipate the disastrous outcome of this operation which contributed to accelerate the ongoing process of disintegration of the US and global financial system. Panic now reigns in Washington (and New York) as much as in Beijing, and the consequences over the next 12 months have become very predictable in the eyes our researchers.

Olympiad Carrom tournament

F5 ventures are conducting the Olympiad 2008 a Corporate Sports and Games event. We are participating it. Last week we had carrom games - both singles and doubles. Our team members actively participated and we won three medals. One in singles and two medals in mens doubles.


It was a thrilling event in doubles especially Kumaran and Rajangam's matches. All the matches except the Semi (that they lost) they had argument with the oponents starting from the first round. All the matches were tight finish. The great thing in it was the team work. In addition to the players, others also helped them in strategic planning starting form sitting position.


In fact, the semi-final for them was little bit tough and they didn't play well especially Rajangam missed a lot - to say in our terms "Nerraiya Vassichan".

The winning team Srini & Prakasan won the Gold easily. There was no match for their game. Even Prakasan did lot of mistakes. But Srini....exceptionally good. His performance was outstanding.

On Saturday, Srini won the Singles silver medal. All others reached max. of third round. It was a team performace. The Group consists of Vijay, SRK, Sasi, Kumaran, Srini, Prabakar & Prakasan.

Dada dropped again!!!!!!!!!!!

After a poor performance in SriLanka, Ganguly has tough time in cricket again. He has been dropped from the Rest of India (ROI) squad for the Irani Trophy.

This may be the end of the Ganguly one of the most successful Indian cricket captain's carrier. It is time for him to magnanimously say good bye to cricket. If IF he is coming back to Indian team after this, it is a dream/miracle/history.........

His poor form in recent days shows that he must give rest to his bat/show/pad... The previous come back to team showed his confidence & aggression and I really admire that. Even in the come back he did exceptionally well even though there was not a big scores during that period. He was consistent in both bowling and batting.

Team Trip to Wayanad

This year team trip, we went to wayanad. First time I am visiting the place. It was a hilly region. We started on Thursday night from here in Mangalore mail and reached Calicut in the morning. We have booked a van from Calicut for the complete trip.

We had the BF in Calicut and traveled to Kalpeta. On the way we went to the Pooket lake. We had boating. It was a different experience for us. We booked two types of boats. One is Row boat with a Rower and the other is Canoe/Kayak. It is the boat sailes use in the rough water.I had the experience for the first time. Sivarani joined me and we were not able to use it properly. Some how we sailed for 30 min. Last Five minutes it started raining. Eight of us enjoyed the Canoe ride. We had fish there and went to Kalpetta Hotel PPS Tourist Home. It was very normal hotel.

We refresh ourself and had lunch there itself. The lunch took longer time and so we changed our plan. We initially planned to visit the Meenmutti falls but the hotel receptionist advised not to take risk as it was very steep and we have to treck three km. to reach the falls. We decided to go to the Soochipara Falls. It was one hr. travel to reach the falls. We went down the falls. It was very slippery. Only Five/Six of us took bath. There was a heavy flood in the falls as it was raining in previous couple of days. We were not able to go near the falls. Muthu, Siva and Nirmal had enjoyed it. We went into the water but we didn't take any risk there.

Day -2

* 8:00am- Went to Falls

* 1-2 pm - Lunch on the way to Idakkal Caves
* 3-4 pm- Visit Idakkal Caves

* 6:30pm-Drive Back to Kalpetta
* 9 pm - CampFire
* Overnight in Kalpetta

Day -3

* 7-1pm -Chembara Peak for a trek (breakfast on the way)

* 1-2pm - Finish lunch and check out from Hotel
* 5pm-Drive Back to calicut
* 8pm - Board train(Chennai Exp) and reach Chennai at 8am on Monday

Family trip to Elagiri

In a span of two months I visited Elagiri twice. Last year also I had similar trips (visiting same place in short span but with different groups). This time the trip was little bit hectic. I started from the F5 cricket match at 1:30 pm. I went to Vannanthurai and picked Kirthi and went home. From there I started at 2:30 pm with Kirthi and Mom. I reached Vellore at 5:00 pm. I was planning to reach Elagiri before Six. Almost I reached there around 6 -6:15.

Athai, Mama, Geetha, Guru, Matchi, Snega, Deeps, Prakash and Appa reached there previous day itself. They stayed in Anabond Guest house. After reaching there, I went for a small trekking with Prakash. We went in the dark and everyone in the guest house were restless. It was a nice trekking and we came back at 7:30 pm. It was completely dark and there was current cut intermittently.

We had campfire in the night and we played anthakshri. It was fun night and we played Chess for some time. We went to bed at 10:30 as we wanted to go for trekking in the next day morning.

Nest day morning, me, Guna Annan, Kirthi, Prakash, Deeps went for the trekking. It took Two hours for us to reach the top. As it was very early we never felt tired. We stared from there after 45 min. The climate was very pleasant. We enjoyed the trekking. We came down in 45 min. The guest house was very near the trekking place.

We took bath and had the BF. Sunday was Athai's birthday. They wanted to go to a temple. We went to the Murugan temple, And two other temples. We came back to guest house at around 12:30 AN. We had Lunch (NV) and packed off from there. We reached Chennai around 9:00PM. It was a nice trip and everyone enjoyed. Amma alone was not happy as I drove continuously and walked both the days.

Trip to Vellore, Elagiri & Okanekkal

It is a second trip for the AU group in May. We (Kodi, Sekar & Pazham families) started from Chennai in a van. We reached Vellore around 10:30 am. JPS, Prabhakar and Sugi came there and we met in vellore hotel. Had our breakfast there and went to Vellore fort and temple. Had darisanam and went for boating. We have enjoyed the boating under hot sun light.

We were waiting for Mani who came all the way from Madurai. Sudakar was supposed to join Mani but last min. He canceled his trip. We had lunch at Velore (Prabhakar's family frieds hotel) and went to Golden Temple.

Mani joined us around 3:00 pm. in the temple. We went to the temple. It was very big temple. There was not big crowd but we have to walk a lot. The path was like a star and the temple was at the center. The Golden roof was shining in the sun light. We had good darisanam and started to Yelagiri at 5:30pm.

We reached Yelagiri around 8:00 pm. We had dinner and played games for some time in the hills hotel. Masha & Kirthi were conducting made for each other. They asked many questions. It went upto 11:00 pm.

Next day morning we went for Trecking. It was a nice experience. I thought only 50% will reach the top. But to my surprise, everyone except Mrs. & Mr.Prabhakar. Kids were enjoying it and they were very faat. Bala Ganapathy was really went fast.

We really missed Manoj. If he is there, he would have enjoyed the trip of course we too. There was a small mix up in arranging the BF. The hotel manager informed me that he will bring the BF to the hill top. At the end he didn't bring.

Everyone were tired and thirsty. Luckly, an old man brought water at the top. In normal days we will not get anything at nthe top. As it was a holiday, he expected some trekkers who visit the top. We bought few bottles of water (refilled all our bottles also) .

We came down and had the BF (Bread, Omlet, & Pongal). The food was very good. We went to the room refreshed ourself. We played games for some time.

Had lunch in the hotel and took rest in the AN. We have ordered normal food. Lunch was O.K. Evening we went to lake. We took two boats and went for a ride. It was very normal and there was nothing special. We came back and played in the park.

Everyone enjoyed the slide. One of the slides was very steep. It was risky in having a ride. Almost all took risk including kids. I landed improperly and luckily nothing happened.

We have arranged dinner in the hotel itself. We asked them to arrange camp fire. Everyone danced and enjoyed the night. As usual, Kodi was the star dancer.

Dada dropped !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a great come back performance, Dada was dropped from the one-day triangular series in Australia. I am a BIG fan of Kolkata Prince. I admire him as a successful captain and I love his square cut. In the last one year+, he proved that he has the good game with him even at the age of 35. He was able to fight with the youngsters, and very few had better average than him in both the test match and one-day matches (during his come back period).

It is time for him to say good-bye to one-day matches, as we have to give chance to youngsters. I feel this is not the time to do the experiment, but at some point of time senior players should give way to youngsters.

Kolkata Tiger showed his talents both batting and bowling. He took some critical wickets in the last two series. He has introduced the fighting spirit to the Indian team. The aggression in the field, the command and the control over the game and the tactical decisions during critical stages made him as the most successful captain of India.

Will he come back again to One-day matches? It is a big question. The answer depends on the youngsters like Raina, Rohit and Uthappa for whom the selectors given a big chance.

Yahoo layoff

Yahoo is going to lay off 10% - 20 % of their work force. It was expected some time back itself. The previous CEO Terry Semel took charge in 2001 and during his period Yahoo last its value and importantly Google grown to the peak.

They are having the higher traffic compared to google, their revenue has not gone up. The Yahoo finance is good, they have not done anything new there. They acquired Overture to compete with the AdWords. They were not able do anything in spite of their traffic volume (Even microsoft's AdCenter attracted). Innovation is dead in Yahoo!

Now it is a challenge for Jerry Yang (Present CEO) to bring back the value it has in late 90s. He has taken the first step by firing some of the workforces. He has to bring in more young talents and should do things creatively to compete with Google.

Development in TamilNadu

Yesterday I met one of my friends Ponsekar. He came for the pongal holidays from Bangalore by car. He was telling Chennai city drive is very comfortable compared to Bangalore. We were talking about the roads in Tamil Nadu.All the roads are very good and govt. is continuously concentrating on the infrastructure.

Many activities are happening in a professional manner like widening roads, developing highways and improving street roads etc. Also the Chennai planning is very good. All the IT industries are moved to OMR and Chengalpattu and the other engineering industries are developed in Sriperumputhur area. The planning is good not in City alone even we are planning to develop the other Towns. There are few corporation parks looks neat and maintained properly. The development that are happening here are really great.

We have eight municipal corporations in Tamil Nadu and we are developing all the corporations by moving business to all the places. Now IT industries are moving to other southern corporations.

Also we are having all the Govt. information online. Starting from school text books online to information about the various department (Education, Transport, EB, PWD, etc.. ) activities like the tender in various departments, completed tenders, etc... are available online. Thanks to "The Right To Information Act'.

The Right To Information Act, 2005

An Act to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

Tamil Nadu is following it and you will get all the details online. Looking at the development happening in Tamil Nadu, and if other states follow at least Tamil Nadu (There are few states far better position than Tamil Nadu) we will become "Super Power" even before 2020.

Pongal Varisai

Today my parents went to my sisters house to give "Pongal Varisai". In our family all parents will give Pongal Varisai to the married daughters. The pongal varisai will have two important things. One is Ghee and the thread (Thiri). This is used to light the Vilakku(lamp). In addition, they give fruits, nuts, and money.

I was wondering how these people remember and send it every year. My mother is still getting it from my uncles by post. This tradition is still continuing in most of our families. I was asking the meaning of this tradition to my Aunt(mother in law). She said that the girl should light the Vilakku with the Ghee and the Thread sent by her parents/brothers in her "Puguntha Veedu" (in her house).

Note: At the end my aunt said some sentimental statements and I was a bit emotional.

Perpetual vs Annual Subscription

Various on-line down loadable products are sold in the internet with different Licensing Model. All the products are only subscribed by the users. No one product is purchased completely. There are two types of licensing. One is Perpetual Subscription Licensing model and the other is Annual Subcription Model.

For Perpetual Subscription Model the pricing can be with the support and maintenance or the price includes first year support and for the subsequent years we have to pay the support and maintenance. Some products will have additional price for upgrades.

For Annual Subscription Model, we have to pay the same money every year (the pricing includes the support).

Book Exhibition 2008

Sunday I went to Chennai book exhibition with Don, Chithu and Ranjith. It is great to see more people are visiting the exhibition. There are more Tamil publishers displaying their books. It is good that more crowd in their stalls. I am happy to see more Tamil lovers in Chennai. We came to know there are so many publishers in TN. But many were unknown publishers.

There were lot of philosophy and Astrology books. Ranjith saw only one book on Astrology and moved away fast!!!!!! I thought he will see more books there.

Ranjith purchased "The 12 Universal Laws of Success" by Herbert Harris. I looked only Children book shops. Even that we are not able to complete 50% of the stalls.

I purchased books for kids and one book for me. I got two books for Krithi (Science experiments & Sudoko) and few books for Guru. I purchased "Execution" by Ram & Larry. This book I liked very much(I borrowed from Shailesh and returned the new one to him).

I saw today in News that Karunanidhi went there to release a book. This is a grand mela for book lovers and I am visiting there for the fifth time.

I was not able to visit completely. I have to go one more time there. It was boring for Don.

Get toghether - Annamai PG 1990 - Part2

I had a nice sleep for almost 8 hrs. Morning I walked on the road towards Walparai to check for any water resource to take bath. There was a canal, which is from upper Aliyar and store the water in the lower Aliyar dam. The canal was very narrow and the water was flowing in a high speed as the reservoir was few yards from that place. Chock annan, Sekar, MS, Manoj & Sugi joined me.

We went towards the upper Aliyar along the canal bed to see a safety place to take bath. We had a nice bath there. The water height was neck level. We swim in the canal for some time. It was really a new experience for all of us.

We went to room and went to Vethathiri Maharishi temple. It was calm place. We spent one hr there and went to Aliyar dam in the van. Took some photos and started towards Kerela. On the way we went to Masani Amman temple. It was almost noon.

After having the Dharisanam, we went to Malampuzha dam. We had lunch there. It was not so good. The we went in the cable car ride. In Malampuzha, there is a water game place. Kids were very much interested in going there. Especially Kanmani, Manoj, and Krithi. Some of us not interested in it.One group went to the water games and the other group went to the dam park.

Guru, Sathish and MS went for a ride in the toy train. Praba, myself, Mrs. Sekar, Aruna and Geetha went inside park and also visited the hanging bridge. We started from there at 7:00 pm and reached Pollachi at 9:00. Mrs. Sugi and Masha joined us in the hotel. Chock annan cut the cake (get togethar cake) and we had some fun. Mani arranged a buffet and every one enjoyed the dinner. It was a nice dinner.

MS. family and Sekar family left to CBR as they have booked the return ticket for Saturday. Mani and Chocks requested them to stay back every one until Monday. But they wanted to go back home. They also convinced Kodi to stay back until Monday. (As we have booked the rooms in Top Slip on Sunday night). I told them if I get flight for Monday, I was ready to stay.

We gave send off to MS and Sekar families and took rest in the hotel. Next day morning I tried ticket through yatra.com and I booked flight for Monday Noon from CBR. Prabakar planned to return on Sunday morning, said he will come with us for the Thirumoorthy fals and from there he will go to CDM. We went to Thirumoorthy falls. We walked for 20min. (2km.) and reached the falls.

Thirumoorthy hills was not too steep and the height of falls is normal (it is betterthan the monkey falls). The water was very chill and great force. We took nice bath there and went to Thirumoorthy temple situated at the foot of Thirumoorthy hills. The temple has a Amalingeswarar Idol, which looks like a nacked kid doing sirasasanam.

Prabakar also decided to stay back and decided to come with us to Top Slip. We went to Pollachi room, had lunch and vacated the room. It was almost 4:00 pm so we have decided to send one van back. We started in one van and two cars.

I went with Prabakar in one car to get dinner (Sungam Biriyani). One van and a car left to Top Slip. They reached there in time. On the way Sugi called his brother and arranged for accomodation. It was realy great that Sugio got a dormatry for us. We had only two room booked before that(32 people!!!!!!!!!!!!).

After reaching ther we saw Elephants, Deer. Kids were playing throw ball for almost two hours. Then we went to the room to finish our dinner as the night saffari was delayed. We went for night saffari at around 9:30 pm. It was a thrilling experience in the night. We saw elephants, bisons and deer.

We went to bed around 11:30pm. Morning we got up at 7:00 am and started in JPS car to CBR. It was a pleasant tour organized in a short duration and every one enjoyed it. Thanks to Mani, Prabakar, Sudhakar, Mani, Sekar, MS, Kodi, Sugi, Chock Annan for making this trip grand success. We will arrange similar trips at regular interval so that we will relax from our routine work.

I was telling my friend Shyam(he is now in India) that we can go for a family trip during Dec. end. But I made a different group trip and I missed to meet him with family.

How to Terminate Employees

http://www.restaurant.org/legal/law_termination.cfm

I was looking for a document to get to know how I can handle a situation like this. This doc clearly explains when to terminate an employee, how and what to talk to him and how to handle the post termination.

When to fire an employee

The first step is to know when to fire an employee. You must know for sure that all other options have been taken before going ahead with the termination.

• Be sure you have given the employee all of the advantages that you promised in the hiring process. If you made no promises or promised no job security, then the decision to fire is much easier.
• Warn employees of unacceptable behavior and the likelihood that it will lead to termination if continued. Then document the warning on the employee's file and have the employee acknowledge the warning in writing.
• Never fire employees on their birthday, anniversary or before a holiday.
• Never fire employees on a Friday. The best day to fire them is early in the week, to give them sufficient time during the work week to seek other employment opportunities.
• Avoid terminating an employee on the spur of the moment. An angry attitude by you will provoke an angry response by the employee.

Once you have made the decision to fire an employee, you must choose your words and actions carefully in the termination meeting. The next step will help you get through this difficult time.

What to say and do during the termination

The key to proper employee termination is to be succinct and to have facts that justify the firing. Here is what to say and do:

• Give concrete examples of poor performance. Don't tell the employee, "It's just not working." Failure to give actual examples could be grounds for a wrongful-termination lawsuit.
• Tell the employee the effective date of the firing, whether it's today or two weeks later.
• Tell the employee the benefits, severance pay and unused vacation time that he or she is entitled to, if any.
• Limit the conversation to 10 minutes.
• If the individual being fired has access to sensitive information or computer files, terminate the person immediately and give him or her two-weeks'-notice pay. Consider changing passwords and codes when such an employee is terminated. Offer this employee outplacement counseling, if possible.
• Resist tears and begging from employees, or else word will spread that you can't fire anyone.
• Don't get into a shouting match with the employee.
• After the firing, call all remaining staff members together and explain the termination. Tell the employees how the firing will affect them, the responsibilities that will be shifted and when you plan to hire a replacement.
• If you hold an exit interview, focus on facts that led to the dismissal, not on the individual. Conduct the exit interview in private and at the close of business.
• If you suspect the employee might turn violent, arrange to have law-enforcement personnel on standby.
• Treat the employee courteously and do not publicly embarrass him or her.
• Don't sugarcoat the termination; your words can come back to haunt you.

Following these steps will make your job as manager easier. There are a few final steps to take to ensure that your firing is legal.

How to make sure the termination is legal

Botched firings can quickly escalate into a lawsuit against your restaurant. There are steps you can take to prevent an unlawful-termination lawsuit:

• Review your employee handbook and make sure it includes an employment-at-will statement, which spells out that the worker can quit at any time, or be fired at any time.
• Do not have statements in your handbook that say employees will be terminated only for good cause.
• Do not tell new hires that they will be employed for as long as they perform satisfactorily, because that is essentially a promise of lifetime employment.
• Establish clear position descriptions.
• Institute a system of evaluating job performance.
• Consider whether the employee is a member of a class or individuals protected on account of race, sex, religion, national origin, age or disability.
• Have a third party present at the termination who can serve as a witness, if necessary.

By taking these steps you can make this difficult act as painless as possible for you and your employee. In addition, following proper firing techniques could ward off a lawsuit and a decline in employee morale.

Get toghether - Annamai PG 1990 - Part1

We had a pleasant get together of Ten families in Pollachi between 27th Dec. and 31st Dec. Mani and Sudhakar organized the trip and everyone enjoyed it. It was planned in ashort duration and it was a grand success.

Ms, Kodi, Rajasekar and me stared from Chennai by train on 27th night. We reached Coimbatore in the morning. Sugi and his br. in law's son joined us in Coimbatore. I arranged a van there.

Mani, JPS, prabakar and Chock annan were there in pollachi on 27 th night. Sudakar joined them in the morning. We went to Pollachi and joined the group. We refresh ourself there and started in two vans from Pollachi to Aliyar. We directly went to Aliyar Dam. Everyone went to the dam top in the hot sun.

There we arranged the lunch. We asked the hotel person to give the lunch as parcel. But It was not ready. We went to monkey falls and sent back one of the vans to get us the lunch. We had a nice bath there in the falls. Geetha came out with the snacks and a monkey snatched the mixture pocket from her.

We spent almost two hours there and then started towards Walparai. On the way we stopped at 9th bend and visited "Lomes View Point". We had the lunch around 3:00 pm. The food was very good. We had a photo session there. It was fun in getting everyone at one place and take the photos.

It took almost one hour for us to reach "Balaji Temple". The road was very bad and we reached there around 4:30 pm. The temple was nice and calm sourrounded by hills. It is a private place. We had a nice dharisanam. We played throw ball for 30 to 45 min. It was really interesting evening. We wanted to go to walparai from balaji temple. The CBR driver was not comfortable in going to walparai as he felt it was already very late. He suggested to get back to Aliyar room.

Meantime we missed the route and at last we have decided to get back to the hotel. On the way we had coffee in a local tea shop. Mrs. Rajasekar liked the coffee there.(sekar was telling me that she won't take tea/coffee in local shops). We reached the room around 9:00 pm. We had the dinner (Paratta & fish) . Some went for a walk. It was not good climate. We expected it will be very clod but we felt hotter compared to chennai. JPS was telling that for the first time he is not seeing mist in the walparai!!!!!!!!!!