From Chennai you can buy affordable Air tickets for international destinations including return (two-way) to say Singapore (Rs.15,000 with Indian/Jet) or Kuala Lumpur (Rs.21,000) or Bangkok (Rs.19,000 with Indian/Thai). These fares are still kept cheaper despite the fuel hikes due to the heavy competition and high load-factors. But travelling within India especially to Non-Metros (where you to do a hop from another Metro) tickets are phenomenally expensive. I knew about this but didn't realize the magnitude on how costly they can become until I started booking the tickets for my vacation to Jaipur and Udaipur from Chennai.

From Chennai to Jaipur, only viable options are to do a transit either in New Delhi or Mumbai. The normally recommended option (because of more flight choices) is to fly to Delhi and then go by Road/Train to Jaipur. I didn't want to go by Road as it will be little tedious and since I had only a week time I couldn't get the tickets in Train either. I decided to go with Mumbai as MAA-BOM is shorter taking only One-and-Half Hours, compared to Two-and-Half Hours for MAA-DEL and hence a little cheaper. After few tiring hours of browsing all Airline websites I booked myself for this itinerary MAA-BOM with Jet Airways and rest all with Indian Airlines (as they had more comfortable timings) - BOM-JAI, JAI-UDR, UDR-BOM, BOM-MAA. I normally don't prefer low-cost airlines for family vacations as their flights tend to get enormously delayed, with the only exception for this being Paramount Airways.

As I said earlier the tickets for this travel was very expensive. For one person Onwards (MAA-BOM-JAI) costs around Rs.13,000 and Return (UDR-BOM-MAA) costs around Rs.12,500.

For Jaipur to Udaipur, I thought I can go by Train. Surprisingly the trains between the cities run at odd hours - not convenient with a small kid. So I was left with going by Air even for this sector with one person ticket costing around Rs.5000. You can't drive from Jaipur to Udaipur as it is more than 450 Kilometres. We don't realize how big is Rajasthan (I had earlier assumed Maharashtra to be the largest state in distances between cities there)  until you go and see for yourselves. The Aravali hill ranges (one of the oldest in the world) there has created diverse landscapes, so in Rajasthan you have Deserts, Hill stations, Rich fertile valleys and rivers.

Having done all the Air tickets I thought I was good to go. On landing in Jaipur on 27th (Saturday) I got a SMS from Indian Airlines saying the 4th (Saturday) October flight from Udaipur to Mumbai is cancelled. So I started my vacation with first redoing my return ticket from Udaipur to Mumbai, this time with Jet Airways. That was not all, yesterday when I called to tele check-in in they said the Mumbai to Chennai flight was postponed from 5:55PM to 8:30PM (combined with this flight). With my earlier experiences I knew the Indian Airlines 8:30PM almost never leaves before 10PM, so I went ahead and cancelled it. Redid my Mumbai to Chennai as well with Jet Airways - this made it easy in transit as the baggages could be through checked-in to Chennai.

I find it really surprisingly how Indian Airlines is able to get away with these changes and cancellation without worrying a bit about customer satisfaction. It can't be load-factor as the only reason, as even the Jet Airways flight from Udaipur to Mumbai was only 50% full but still they flew and nearly on time. So next time you are travelling with Indian Airlines (Air India) have back-up plans ready (or) fork-up more money the first time and go with Jet Airways or Kingfisher.

Note: For government (AAI) owned Airports that too Non-Metros Jaipur and Udaipur airports were both clean and good looking. The Udaipur airport was the best with its newly done exteriors and modern interiors & rest-rooms.

With Dasara holidays for my son from today for a week, we wanted to go somewhere for a small vacation. My initial plan was to go to Bangkok - idea was to combine it with a business conference there and then extend it for next few days for vacation.  Unfortunately that conference got cancelled a week back and I was left scrambling for options. With only a week left, the usual international locations got mentioned and dropped due to lack of time to plan and book - including Nepal (may be next time I will do this), Malaysia & Singapore (we have been there), HongKong (I am going there for few days this month-end) and Dubai (there is no sightseeing apart from shopping I was told). So it has to be within India.

We have been to many places in South India including almost all the favourites. Our memorable once were those to Mysore (especially the Palace), Kabini, Hoysala (Hasan), Kumarakom & Coorg. So we wanted some other place, the only condition being it got to have something that interests a 5 year old (my son). So after many arguments between myself and my wife over the places (Sikkim, Shimla, Dargeeling, Andaman Islands, Gwalior, Goa featured in our deliberations) we picked up "Rajasthan" and managed to get rooms booked with "The Trident" in both places. So finally we have started our trip today to Jaipur and then to Udaipur.

I was surprised by the first page of Economic Times newspaper today. First there was no colour it was all Black, then the headlines. For about 15 to 20  minutes I was left scratching my head trying to make sense of the headlines I was reading and re-reading.

The headlines were:

- Sensex hits year's low at 2832 points (I even checked the latest stock market figures in TV after reading this)

- Now, pay your bills via ATM (haven't this feature been there for years now? )

- Infosys income rises 115% to Rs.98.43 cr (Something was wrong here, they do more than that figure in a week now)

- Incoming calls are now free and Rs.4 /min for outgoing calls (This is when I started becoming suspicious)

- Crude Near $10 (Now I know for sure this is a prank, looking up the mast-head I saw the date as September 1998)

It turned out to be a prank by Economic Times to "Commemorate 10 years of the Economic Times Awards" and the great journey Indian Inc. has made in the last 10 years. Very nice work by ET, kudos to their team who imagined and pulled off this coup.

Last weekend, I went to this much talked about Tamil Movie - SAROJA. Directed by Chennai 600028 movie fame Venkat Prabhu (son of Music Director Gangai Amaran) movie was certainly enjoyable. The story is all about what happens when 4 friends on a red colour van (Nice looking van shown above) get lost on their way from Chennai to Hyderabad. The whole story happens in one single night where they cross path with a kidnap gang and how they finally escape from them. The director has done a fabulous job in keeping the action alive scene after scene, you are almost left wondering what's going to happen next. Definitely a new kind of film in Tamil Cinema. Excellent performance by the relatively new faces to Tamil cinema with the veterans Prakash Raj and Jayaram also doing their roles well. I really liked the place where the main villain behind the whole plot is revealed only in the last few minutes and his background story is shown in few quick slides.

A must see for every Tamil movie buff.

My son was selected in his school (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) to participate in a fancy dress competition conducted in Chettinad School last week. The task of coming up with the theme and the dress was left to us parents.

The first was the theme (concept), after much wrangling between me and my wife, she came with the brilliant idea of doing Kannappa Nayanar story with the message on "Eye Donation". She said since I am an avid blogger I write well so she assigned me to writing the script (this is the downside of writing blogs I learned on that day ). Add to this she assigned me to write it in both languages - Tamil and English as we couldn't agree on which language our son will feel comfortable delivering. Here is the complete script in Tamil and English on Kannapa Nayanar story in brief with a message in the end on Eye Donation (Please feel free to use it if you have a need). 

The second was to source the costume. We needed a hunter dress complete with Deer skin (or like) bottom, Bow and Arrow, Cap, Beads Garland, etc. After some search in Internet I came across an article in "The Hindu" listing some costume hires. With that information and inputs from friends and relatives, we identified 3 shops in South Chennai. We went to all the three, all of them had the dress set we wanted for hire. On an average per day of hire they quoted Rs.100-150 and a refundable deposit of Rs.200-400. We went with the first shop listed below just because the dress looked slightly better than the others. 

1. K. Nathamuni & Sons (Theatre & Cine Hires & Suppliers), New #179 (Old #73) Kodambakkam High Road, Chennai - 17. Phone: 044-2345 5990, 4212 2229. If you are coming from Valluvar Kottam towards Vadapalani, instead of climbing the Kodambakkam Flyover, get into the small lane below (left hand side of the flyover, opposite to Murasoli office) after few shops you will find this one.
2. Nathrang & Co. (Hires of Cine & Dramatic Costumes of Historical & Social pattern & cartoon characters), Nathigam Press Building, First Floor, 97/55 Arcot Road, Chennai - 600 024. Phone: 044-2480 2489. 
3. Thangam Dresses (Costumes & Ornaments for Hire & Sale, Character Wigs, Turbens & Dresses, School Drama, etc.) 199 Arcot Road, Vadapalani, Chennai - 600 026. Phone: 044-2362 3467, 98415 53888, 98418 46888. This shop is exactly opposite to Vadapalani Police Station on Arcot Road itself, few shops from the Ring Road intersection.

I have never been good in free-hand drawing or colouring. Other than Plays and oratory competitions, Arts and Crafts were always distant skills for me right from my school days. In fact I hated Biology classes in School and Engineering Drawing in Graduation just because they required me to the draw. I could getaway without drawing from my teachers, but I couldn't from my son. Two weeks back on a weekend he wanted me to draw Tractor Tom - how much ever I tried to convince him that I can't draw he didn't agree.  So here is what I managed and below that the original image of Tractor Tom (as seen in DVD):

In the afternoon there was a lively session by TV fame (Cricket Commentator) Harsha Bhogle. He was representing his management consultancy firm Prosearch Consultants. The talk was on T20 Cricket game and the differences of the format with One-Day / Test cricket. The title was very apt as the Microsoft Event was also titled "Together To Outperform - T2O". Harsha drew brilliant parallels (in a extremely light manner) between T20 as a sport and situations in today's corporate world.

He was extremely hilarious, throwing many funny punch lines, few of them below:

- All Good Lines are Unfair (including whatever I just now said)

- He didn't have time (came that fast) to drop the ball

Amongst the points he covered:

- The T20 format demands that "Performance on the Day matters, not reputation", "Shape up or ship out", "Any team can win, no underdogs", "No time for course correction". In T20 you need Wartime leaders and not Peacetime managers.

- When you have right partnerships, the sum of 1 + 1 can be 3. Like Paes/Bupathi, West Indies Past bowler pack including Malcolm Marshall (they hunted like a pack, it was We over Me), Cycle champion Armstrong and his US Postal team colleagues who went before him uphill and he rode on their slipstream

-Unlike earlier formats in Cricket,  in T20 you had to go after audience and advertise. You have to excite people on their second identity (apart from an Indian) which was of their city/region. This was a litmus test, which IPL passed. 

- Players in IPL T20 were not needed to be trained, you paid (bought) for them - just like in business with 30% attrition rates today why will you want to train, you will only want to hire from others . You could source talent not locally but from around the world, so your incentive for training got reduced in IPL T20.

- Another thing that IPL T20 did was to put world champions and unknown local players in the same team. They had to get together and work as a team nearly overnight. They didn't have any bonding glues - no common heritage, no common geography, no common in experience; still had to perform as a team.

- Marketing was new to cricket with T20. You had owners from 3 diverse fields came together - Cricket, Film & Business houses.

In the evening today there was a Bollywood play "All the Best" directed by distinguished director "Feroz Khan". I was hoping it will be in English as my understanding of Hindi is extremely limited, and I will certainly not be able to appreciate a Comedy Play in Hindi. The play did turn out to be in Hindi, but since the play had a mute character there was lot of hand gestures and body language so I could understand it well and was able to have split laughs as well. The appreciation should go to the four excellent actors (Iqbal Azad, Kikoo Sharda, Kranti Redkar and Vikas Kadam) who performed brilliantly on the stage.

The play deals with three friends, one blind, the other deaf and third mute, who all fall for the same girl.

If this comes to your town, don't miss it.

For a Microsoft event I am staying here at Renaissance in Mumbai (A Mariott Hotel) and they allotted me a room in the newly constructed (nearly complete) Renaissance Towers - like in Software we were made to beta test the towers!.

In the morning when I got up and went for my bath - surprise, no running water. The housekeeping didn't even have an estimate of when they will have it repaired and they didn't even show a sign of remorse for their poor service. I had to do a "Luxury" act of brushing my teeth with bottled water, then with the help of perfumes and a set of clean clothes  I went for my breakfast meeting. I was feeling a little better that the person I met was also staying in the Towers and couldn't have his bath either

After an hour, water supply was restored but that too only Warm Water - no Cold Water!

For last two days I am attending Microsoft India Partner Summit titled "T20" at Mumbai. Yesterday there was a written quiz on Microsoft Virtualization , I attempted just for fun. Generally I am not lucky to win any prizes, but today was my day.

In the morning they announced my name as one of the winners for XBOX 360, I was happy to collect it. On my way back to my room I was invited to a game show where they had questions on Windows Live/Vista/IE 8 and were giving prizes up to 10 Grams of Gold. I played and answered a simple question on Windows Live (being a Windows Live MVP does help) and won a 2GB USB Thumb-Drive.

Since I got my prize, I helped the gentleman next to me to answer the next question and he won the 10 Grams of Gold