Coming Back

A few weeks ago, I registered the domain milcom.in and promised here that I’ll be blogging there. However, that obviously hasn’t happened. It’s the way life has been lately. I’ve been just going through the motions without any real purpose. I haven’t been doing the things I enjoy doing. I haven’t listened to new music, I haven’t read anything, I haven’t learnt anything, I haven’t been working out. In short, I’m a mess right now.

Before all this happened, I was trying to bring the orderly into my life. I started reading about how to proceed with that on reddit. Read success stories, motivated a few people and things seemed rosy. And all of a sudden, the severity of the Delhi pollution got to me and Boom! I was back to square -1000. It’s going to take a while coming back to what I enjoyed doing.

Amidst all this, I realised how easy it is for me to get distracted. Another lesson I learnt is how I’m a good beginner, but a very pathetic finisher. I seek to rectify that as well.

I hope that writing this here keeps me to my word.

PS : I may end up using that domain to set up something interesting later. My initial focus is on getting back to what I enjoyed doing.

Why I choose Flipkart for E-shopping

Online shopping has been pretty heavy on my bank balance lately. I do most of the things on impulse and when I see that there is something which I like and see that it can be bought in India, I just go for it. I have used 3-4 shopping sites in India to place my orders. However, the site that I go back to all the time is flipkart.com. I have bought a lot of books. audio CDs and a couple of gadgets from the site.

The percentages of discounts that they provide has gone down from the initial days. That doesn’t stop me from shopping there. Here’s why:

• Prompt Delivery : Never once has an order been delayed. In fact, if I place an order for an in-stock book on a Thursday evening, it would be there at my deliver address on Friday morning. This when the expected delivery date is 2-3 days after placing the order. Once, my order was arriving on a Saturday. The delivery person called me up and asked me if he should wait till Monday for the delivery. In fact, his first question before that was whether he can deliver it at my apartment when the delivery address was my office’s
• No excuses about non-serviceable area : I’ve heard this excuse from premium courier services which were to deliver parcels to places within the city. With Flipkart, I’ve never faced this issue. Of course, I don’t approve of their outsourcing the delivery to big shot courier services who deliver on the delivery date according to their mood. One day, the address would be within restricted entry area. The next day, there would be no issues!
• Quick response to Customer Concerns and Requests : I had ordered for an expensive set of earphones(Klipsch s4 if you are wondering). In my excitement at owning those babies, I forgot to do a basic colour check and ended up ordering the white ones. The website was down soon after I placed the order, however I quickly sent them an email and also tweeted to them with the order ID. I got a response in 4 minutes. I only had to send a YES for the order to be cancelled and the money credited to my “Wallet” so that I could make the re-order as smoothly as possible. This also meant that I wasn’t going elsewhere to place that same order.
• Caring about Customer Opinion : I had posted a harmless tweet about how orders with expected date of delivery after 7-14 days of placing the order always end up at my delivery address, my office address, on Saturdays. Within 10 minutes, I received a call from them. My bad that I don’t remember the name of the lady who talked to me. I was given the suggestion that I can send an email to them to suggest that my order be not delivered on Saturday.
• That extra attention to detail : I remember reading a conversation which @flipkart was having with someone. The person asked them to make their parcel a little more un-boxer friendly. However, their explanation was that no reader likes a brand new book with its edge bent. My respect for them went over the roof.

There are multiple things that contribute to the success of an e-commerce site. Flipkart has been an amazing experience so far.

A brief update

Been a while since I last logged into wordpress to comfort my ego by seeing the stats graph which shows 3-5 hits per day. My life has been out of control lately. Haven’t had time for rest, relaxation, music, reading etc. I tweeted a few days back about the lack of work life balance at the moment. It has only gone worse after that. I thought that a music player could be a solution to the lack of time to listen to music. Now, I face a lack of time to sync it with the latest in my collection.

I’m getting easily distracted which is killing the reader in me.

Glad to be writing only non sensible bull s**t on this blog because THIS happened. And thus, my morning has been ruined. I get disturbed by things happening around me.

If you read this post, Thank You.

Pseudo Activism

A lot has been written about activism and how people do their bit of shouting and slogan chanting and go back to their normal lives, soon forgetting what they had demanded while they were doing it. They were giving their 2 paise towards the cause. I would like to give my 2 paise worth of opinion on the same thing.

Yesterday, I ended up at India Gate, a monument which is worth a visit during the evenings for the sheer pleasure of sitting on the lawns and chill out, with a couple of colleagues and a good friend (was my client at one point of time) from Europe. It so happened that we ended up at the place at 8:25 pm. If someone didn’t know the significance of the time, it was a mere 5 minutes before a concept called Earth Hour. I was all excited about clicking the structure in all its splendour under the lights. However, as we moved towards it, we heard a count down. And kaboom! The lights went off. We heard slogans being chanted and a lot of news vans and journalists around it.

It didn’t take me a long time to realize that these people were observing Earth Hour. What I wanted my photo to be like was this

Image Courtesy : CC-by-sa PlaneMad/Wikipedia

 

 

What I ended up with, was this.

Image Courtesy : My SONY DSC H10

My angst is not because we missed out on some beautiful pics. What really annoys me is the self righteous stance that all these activists take. I think that it is a vocation for the jobless and the retired, who don’t find peace sitting in arm chairs. Agreed, all such movements are towards making the world a better place, but is that about it? Shouldn’t this be an ongoing process instead of simple spending a day of the year, in this case an hour.

I’m sure that the world could have done better without the slogans, which is as much a contributor to noise pollution as vehicles.

• Did the activists use public transport to come to the venue?
• Did they realize that there were burning fuel in the process?
• Did they know that candles released fumes which are harmful to the environment too?
• Were they trying to create awareness and not simply trying to be a part of the crowd?
• Were they doing their bit every day of the year to make the world a better place?

The pessimist in me thinks that the answer to all these questions is NO.

Pilgrimage

This past Sunday saw the giants of the metal scene, Opeth, from Stockholm, Norway(according to The Man himself) gave a demonstration of supremely brilliant musicianship at Bangalore. Watching them for the second time, I kind of knew what to expect, which was nothing but the very best. And they didn’t disappoint. Neither did the fans who did their best, given the small numbers that turned up for the show.

The opening bands were pretty decent. I missed most of Theorized. Eccentric Pendulum were good, the sound could’ve been much better. Nothnagel were good too, but the best of the four opening for Opeth was Suidakra. The Celtic metal numbers that they belted out were pretty nice and I am definitely going to check that band out in a few days.

Opeth started off with Devil’s Orchard from Heritage, the album which has split the fan base into two. Heritage is a wonderful record and they played the song to perfection. It helped that the section of the crowd I was in, knew most of the lyrics, which made it amazing. I was in the 2nd row for those interested.

They continued with I Feel the Dark. This is one of my favourite tracks from Heritage. The whisper and the transition in the middle is stunning in my opinion, even though it could be putting off for a lot of people. Mikael’s voice was perfect on the track. We got a sample of what was to come in the next few tracks by then. Mikael kept the crowd at their wit’s ends with some funny comments.

Face of Melinda is a poem and a painting and it couldn’t have been better rendered. The way Slither, a tribute to Ronnie James Dio was introduced, I shed a few tears remembering some of the losses I’ve had to cope with. A slight strain was evident in Mikael’s voice on the song, but the heaviness of the track remained in tact, just like in the album.

Credence is one of my favourites from My Arms Your Hearse and it was great to sing along to the track.

Martin Mendez played the bass to perfection on To Rid the Disease. I would’ve preferred Closure from Damnation, but I am not complaining because this is a very trippy track as well.

And the track I had been waiting for, all evening. Folklore is the best track on Heritage for me and I always knew that they would perform an extended outro for the track on live shows because the album version provides just a teaser to what could have been. Frederik nailed the outro with a  killer solo and I knew I had had a great evening already.

It was great on the part of the band to play heavy numbers just because they were touring India for just the second time, even though Mikael’s priorities had shifted to clean singing. This was the part where the beast in me was unshackled and I decided that my voice needed to get ruined.

Axe, who was very tight so far, showed us what he is capable of as a heavy metal drummer. The ending of Heir Apparent is one major Opeth moment for me and to listen to it for the second time was a beautiful feeling. Drapery Falls was performed to perfection. I couldn’t find any flaw in the rendition. Baying of the Hounds, from my favourite Opeth record was a treat for the ears.

I expected a longer encore, but the track they chose provided the ultimate ending to a brilliant show. Deliverance was delivered brilliantly. The outro is again, one of the brilliant Opeth moments for me and to hear them nail it was great.

Joakim looked like a pretty decent replacement for Per, though no one can compare to the brilliance that he brought in.

I left the venue feeling contented. The pilgrimage had been fulfilling. The music that I worship was elevated further. And I, am a few steps closer to liberation.