It’s hardly been 3 months since I moved to the US, and I think I have experienced the worst “customer care” of my life. The companies in question include Chase, PSE&G, Comcast etc. My experiences with Chase totally deserve a dedicated blog post, which I will definitely write at some point in time.

Fonolo brings into my mind a question about how businesses evolve nowadays.
1) Some business minds get together, start a company.
2) Slowly as the company grows, the need for a good customer service through telephone increases.
3) As days pass by, you have to have more and more elaborate “customer care” menus on the customer care phonelines, and to “help” out customers reach the right people “easily”.
4) A time comes when innocent customers start getting pissed off because they have to spend 10-15 mins navigating those stupid menus when they exactly know whom they want to talk to, but your menu cannot take them there.
5) Some frustrated minds out of them get together, and start a company like Fonolo.
6) There you are! Go to step 2. Enjoy!

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Sachin Tendulkar spoilt us. He commanded that we sit in front of the television sets. He ensured we got late with homework, he took care of our lunch-break discussions. He was not all that much older than us, and some of us naïve schoolboys thought we would achieve similar feats when we were 16. We got to 16 and continued to struggle with homework.

Hats off Siddhartha, for a commendable articulation! Keep up the awesome work!

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“You’re fired !! “

“You’re hired !!”

Do these phrases sound familiar? If the answer is yes, then you are most likely one of the two:

1. A fan of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice.
2. Related to finance industry.

Donald Trump made these words (hired and fired) somewhat common in my life, but at the end of it all, its a competition and only one will win. So its fine – I was assured in some sense that real life is not that dynamic and risky. But, finance industry surely defies that.

As a “child”, I always thought of a full-time job as a secure, constant and satisfying source of income. I was wrong. These two words are more commonplace around me than they ever were, and I guess are for many of my friends. Unlike most of my classmates at IIT, I had opted against higher studies after my Bachelors so that I get a “feel” of the corporate world. I think I have got much more than what I was looking for!! (Yeah, trust me, I work(ed) with Lehman Brothers)

The idea of writing this post is the amazement – the words “hired” and “fired” have become so common that any emotional attachment to a financial firm is impossible. Till few months back, I used to attach immense emotion to these two phrases. But the finance industry in the last few weeks has changed all that. Perhaps, this is what they call “growing up”. Things just change too rapidly. I need not say a word about what happened on the wall street in the last month, because either it will be news, or speculation – either of which will be unnecessary. Firms having history of tens and hundreds of years collapsed in days, managements got restructured like crazy, businesses got shut, thousands went jobless, stock markets tumbled etc. Too much for a mortal to swallow.

I touched upon the emotional attachment aspect because I was involved in a big project which was used by almost every person in my team. One fine Monday morning, I find that all my work will be just a piece of code in a few days. On a personal note, I was going to part with a work on which I spent an year, and I was emotionally attached to. On a practical note, I was one of many thousands whose hard work of years was about to fall flat. Thankfully, now that Lehman’s assets have been bought by Barclays and Nomura, I am sure that my work will not go waste, even if I am no longer associated with any of these entities. Not that I do not want to, but anyway, that’s another discussion.

The post may feel incomplete, but I do not have anything else to say. Too many things going on in mind. I got to finish some critial tasks before I get to hear “You’re fired.”

You never know, it could be tomorrow !

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This is real interesting.. when you keep encountering a number again and again in life, you tend to associate yourself with it. That number becomes “your” “lucky number”.

My case is a no different.. but interesting. The number 19 has a good association with me. Well its not that often that i encounter this number, but it occurs more often than any other number.. Many times I have found myself pondering over exactly how many times and where all I encountered 19. So I jsut felt like writing out somewhere, and what can be better than writing as well as sharing at the same time : blogging

So lets start.. first encounter.. the most amazing one.. I was born on 19th August So 19 will be eternally associated with me in this way..

And now I start with the time when I actually started noticing it in the present. DOB can be noticed at any point in time so its not that special..

Everyone has this day in his/her life : The day when one makes his/her first email id. And while some are really lucky to get the id matching their name, some are not. My name isnt that unique, and I was in no way one of the first ones to make an email id, so I fall into the latter category. I tried some arbitrary number(dont remember now) with my name when I was asked for another email id(say pawanjainXX). That was sify(was very popular those days, around 1998). I press enter, and then it says that pawanjainXX is not available, and then gives some options which include pawanjain19.
And Aha! I chose pawanjain19 in no time and thats how my net presence became pawanjain19!

Hmmm.. there are more worth mentioning.

My roll number in IIT Delhi. Well everyone gets a roll number in a college. Mine is 2003CS10177. Nothing great. But we get a login id for our network accounts too. Thats cs1030177. I dint notice(probably you have already). But a very good friend of mine, after listening to my “19 story” (not many of my frnds know this story, which is one of the motives of writing this blog), that the numbers in my login id sum up to 19. Now that was interesting to me, because this triggered me into believing that, maybe I might be having 19 in many more things that go unnoticed to me. After this I try to find 19 in almost everything that happens with me.

And I do succeed many times

In my second year, on my 19th birthday(19th August), I gave a treat to 19 friends. Seriously. And I dont think it can get 19ier than this . This was real amazing

My sister got engaged on 19th of March this year

I am sure I am forgetting some more worth mentioning.. Real hard to keep all in mind at the same time
Shall do so as and when I collect/recollect

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