The Tipping Tip

So this one is a quick tip and a social service message for all my friends in India (and in other countries where the labour laws are not that strongly implemented in the unorganized private services sector).

I belong to a generation of restaurant goers who use credit cards to pay bills when they cross a certain mental threshold of the bill. And then we generously tip the servers/waiters for the service that they provide (irrespective of whether it was good or bad). Such tips are typically paid by rounding of the amount on the bill.

The message of this blog post is – it is bad to tip the waiter through your credit card. You should ideally just pay cash. Here is why -

Time value of money – Cash in hand for the waiter is better than cash written in the tip amount of your credit card payment. Not only is it a big administrative hassle for the waiter to track and get it back from the restaurant owner, but also the value of the money goes down as the waiter receives it only at the end of the month or quarter or when the owner things she should give it to the waiters.

Unfair distribution – Depending on what rule the restaurant has – the tip amount might equally get distributed across all waiters (or split based on seniority, number of hours worked etc.). But when I tip, I tip for the service that was provided by my server, not by the servers at other tables! Besides, if the restaurant has a policy of quarterly distribution of tips, and your waiter leaves the restaurant midway, she might not even get the tip that you gave her!

Credit Card Transaction Fees – Every credit card gateway charges a transaction fee. This fee is typically in the range of 1.5% to 2.5% of your total amount. So if you tipped the waiter 100 rupees, the poor person will only receive – 97.5 to 98.5 rupees. The rest of your tip goes to Visa, MasterCard or Amex.

Owners might get creative – I know of owners who charge administrative fees on tips, or just outright pocket the tip amount without giving it to the waiters. In poorly regulated labour markets (like in India) there are no strong labour laws for waiters.

So next time when you are tempted to round off your credit card bill and pay the waiter a tip, just put a “0.00” there. Then reach for your wallet and keep a few notes for the waiter to get instant gratification and continue to provide service with a smile and satisfaction!

The Omniscient Bai

There is a phenomenon called “Bai” (or Kaamwali bai to be precise) in India. Technically she is just a maid. But calling her a maid is like calling a Ferrari a transportation vehicle. Every Indian household has one. And she is the one person that the entire household is dependent upon.

The bai that comes to our place is no different. She has been around since the time before I was born. She has her own set of client houses that she visits everyday.

Now, not only does she take care of the cleaning stuff, but also she is a free advisor, consultant, fortune teller and a gossipmonger amongst all the homes that she visits. She is the one person that has answers for everything under the sun (and beyond). So be it politics, inflation, health problems, property problems or just a bad hair day – she will necessarily have a remedy to fix everything (Mind you – it doesn’t necessarily work, but she would get offended if you argue or not listen to her). Kinda like the garbage-man from Dilbert.

Besides, she will make sure that she gossips about every other home that she visits. I practically know the nuances of each of her clients. Someone’s kids are dirty, some are lazy, while others are plain rude. Of course she takes care that she would never praise anyone. So everyone is bad, evil, ugly or dirty. Also she goes to great extend to graphically describe the bad physical attributes of everyone she knows.

I sometimes wonder what she must be saying about me to her other clients. My profile would probably something like – he is lazy (cause she always notices me sitting in front of the computer), healthy (Healthy is an Indian euphemism for – fat), dirty (yeah my room is not amongst the best places to visit in our house) etc.

And since she visits everyday, she practically knows what goes on in the house. Who comes, who goes, what gets bought and what gets disposed off. Sometimes I feel like she is a part of a government agency with the sole purpose of keeping a watchful eye on all citizens!

Bad foods

So we got health warnings on Cigarette packets to deter people from smoking (I always thought that Singapore had the worst images, till I saw what Brazil shows!). The general intention is to warn people of the bad effects of smoking each time that they buy a packet and then psychologically induce them to reduce or quit smoking. Scientific evidence has indicated a higher probability of cancer with smoking.

There is substantial scientific evidence linking obesity to death. Also there is enough evidence linking sugar and (wrong type of) fats to higher incidence of obesity amongst individuals. Besides there is also enough evidence linking sodium in processed foods to cardiovascular diseases and kidney damage.

However it is interesting to note that none of our processed foods or fast food restaurants are mandated to carry any warning signs whatsoever (think Pizza and deep-fried patties in Burgers and those sugary colas that we drink to push them down our throat. And then don't forget the pastries and Indian sweets that we saviour). Ironically, though it is  mandatory to show nutrition facts labels on packaged foods in India not many manufacturers put them on their foods.

Considering that incidence of coronary heart disease in India is expected to increase many folds in the coming years and Indians too are progressively becoming obese, it is high time that we start warning people against consuming unhealthy foods. Foods high in bad fats, sugars and sodium should carry a health warning just like Cigarette packets do today.

Directions

Before the advent of online maps and smartphones we still could go to unknown places with ease thanks to good Samaritans sprinkled all over India. As long as we knew the general direction, the right city and some landmark we were good to go. You just hop into your car and then on your way stop and ask people.

Now, choosing the right person to ask for directions itself is an art. Without sounding biased, I generally keep away from well dressed people (yeah they are clueless), people who look like they don't belong to that area (for this, you have to remember Little Tiffany from Men-In-Black video provided below) and people too old to respond “ah?”. The best people to ask for directions are necessarily the roadside paan vendors and newspaper stalls. They generally not only know the area extremely well, but also they know the people (and their history as well). “Oh so you wanna meet the old uncle whose 3 daughters are in the States and his son is always in a state of intoxication?”, they ask. “I just saw him go home after running errands from the neighbouring shop. I think he bought some chips and a bottle of coke! At this age also he eats junk food!”, they provide additional information.

I once had a over zealous guy sit in my car and take me to a the place that I was looking for because he said “giving directions would be too complicated for you to understand!”. Learning from India, I once did the mistake of asking for directions in the US (yeah some 6 years ago). The guy was so rude that he asked me to strip naked and stand in the middle of the road so that the police pick me up and then they drop me at the right destination. it was a cultural learning for me to never ask for directions in that country again!

Now, I tend to walk a lot in the area where I live (not because I am health conscious, but because I have nothing much to do in the evenings and driving around in the traffic is not an option!). I get approached by a lot of clueless people looking for directions. Going by my explanation above that means – I am shabbily dressed and I look like a true native.

Now, most of the times I am pretty okay with my directions and I kinda guide people to the right place (or I think so). Today was one of those unlucky days when I actually guided a person to enter into a one-way lane and see him get stopped by a policeman. I am sure the guy must be very angry for me to have lead him there. So this is more of a guilt-laden blog post. Anyway, I have had my share of direction bloopers before in which I accidentally told people to take left when it was right etc. But I think today’s was the lamest.

Indian Swimming styles

I have been observing various types of swimmers in my community pool for well over a year now. That makes me our resident expert at “types of swimmers”. So, without further ado, I take this opportunity to present to you – swimming styles of India.

The splashing Sham – Splashing Shams think that swimming involves splashing water with their hands and feet. They try to emulate birds to generate lift on water. Such swimmers are entertaining to watch and they get exhausted before they reach the other end.

The whale breath Wasim – These swimmers take in the pool water along with air while they breathe. Then when they breathe out they spray water like whale blowholes. If you are around them, you shall be showered with it.

The blind Bhushan – These guys think that backstroke is the best form of swimming and that the community pool is their own (in Hindi – baap ka pool). So they casually perform backstroke and go anywhere they like without bothering about who is in which lane. If you bump into them they give the look – “Cant you see I own this pool? How dare you not meekly submit to my whims and fancies?”

The exercising Eknath – These kinds of swimmers think that the pool is meant for doing stretching exercises. You can see them right in the middle of the pool stretching their arms and legs and generally causing inconvenience to other swimmers who are trying to do laps. If you ask them to exercise at one end of the pool, be ready to get a piece of their mind about no peace left in this world.

The standing Santosh – This guy swims standing in water. He makes sure that his body is not at all streamlined so that he exerts maximum effort to propel ahead. Such people are seen doing a lap or two and then waiting for eternity at the corner to recover.

The wandering Wahab – This style consists of starting swimming in a lane and then traversing the entire pool like a snake and ending anywhere. Such kinds of swimmers make sure that no one swims near them. If you dare to – be ready to get hit hard by a hand or a leg and then be frowned upon for coming in their way.

And before girls get all offended because I didn’t use their names (or rather didn’t observe their swimming styles) here is my excuse – I have hardly seen any women swim in my pool. Maybe because there is a separate Woman’s timing in my pool and everyone goes at that time or maybe because even if someone turns up while I am there, if I “observe” her swimming, I will be labelled a creepy old uncle.

Before I end I know you wanna know which style I belong to. Well well, I have written about my style before; it’s the – desperate swimmer.

One Suit Wonders

Mumbai is generally a hot and humid place. That means our formal clothing doesn’t include a coat and a tie other than when the westerners come to meet us (and we have to pretend to be formal). Having had ourselves ruled by them for more than a century, we have adopted some of their lifestyle into ours. Now that includes – wearing suits for our wedding receptions.

So certain section of Mumbaikars I know (yeah statistically insignificant) buy suits only for 2 occasions in their lives – first if they do an MBA and later when they get married (Yes I come in the first category). What that generally means is – every time thereafter when we have an occasion to wear a suit, we just reuse the same one.

Now, I had been using my MBA suit every where till I realized that I have many occasions I need to wear one. Then, my count of suits went up to two. However I know of many people who continue using their one and only wedding suit everywhere they go. Every client visit and every formal meeting I see certain individuals in the same suit oblivious of the fact that everyone in the room knows that the suit that they are wearing was the one they bought for their wedding. For any normal human being, wedding is probably the most photographed event of their life (and probably the most sweaty – those videography lights are hot). So boost the economy. Get the money flowing. Expand your wardrobe, buy more suits. And please dry clean your wedding suit.

Issued in public interest by a hapless guy who had to sit through a meeting next to a smelly man in his 8 year old wedding suit.

Water Bottle Day

22nd March is World Water Day. Nice attempt at making us aware of the importance of water! Now, I decided to do my bit towards water, by doing a product review of my favorite water bottle of all times. Its called the Nalgene OTF.

I am very particular about my hydration gear. I don’t believe in reusing empty soda bottles to store water. Besides hygiene, those bottles are not meant to be reused. And I don’t like my water tasting like a cola. Considering that we are expected to drink close to 3 litres of water everyday, we better be serious about our hydration gear. Besides it also helps measure intake and that way meet daily water intake targets.

 

So what's so special about the bottle you ask? Well, well, it is what I would like to call – a “perfect” and well designed water bottle.

To begin with – it is made of Eastman Tritan copolyster. That makes it – BPA Free (better than Polycarbonate bottles), absolutely clear, durable, microwaveable, odor resistant and impact resistant. To top it all – it is “Made in USA” (Okay – I know that the cap is made in China, but at least the bottom is American). In consumer durables only two things that I have ever discovered to be made in USA are – Nalgene bottles and Corelle dinnerware.

It also has a wide temperature range resistance ( – 40 F to 212 F). I like to take my water a little warm. I have damaged many of my earlier bottles by pouring hot water into them. Not this one. That makes it easier to wash with warm water as well.

The cap with its loop shape and a nice lock that can be opened on-the-fly (hence OTF) makes it easy to carry around and to drink water with only one hand (no need to wait and unscrew cap). It also has a nifty metallic lock at the top that makes it leak proof. So I can casually keep it in my bag knowing that the bottle wont open by itself and spill water.

Finally, the spout is big enough to fill water into it without unscrewing the top. It is also big enough to drink water in a hurry without pouring water all over yourselves. And it is contoured in such a way that water falls correctly off the bottle without sipping on it. That keeps it hygienic and multiple people can share the bottle!

I think I can go on and on and this is not a paid advertisement. So that's my advice for the World Water Day. Hydrate yourself through a well made bottle.

Off-roads

Indians are good at planning. Some great planner figured out that we are going to shit and pee a lot more in the coming decades (before your ideas run wild – its just because of population explosion) and its time that we put in bigger underground sewage pipes to handle the load! So far so good.

Though the work started a long while ago, it was progressing at snail’s pace. However, with the financial year end approaching, the work has been now sped up (to remain in this year’s budget). So now almost the entire area around where I stay is dug up. It is dug so bad that whenever a vehicle passes by there is actually a dust cloud and we got mountains of gravel everywhere.

Technically we now only drive through rubble. All we have is uneven surfaces that we are expected to drive our vehicles on. The fun part is, at places where they have already started resurfacing the road with tar, it has just become more uneven. We no longer have any thing called a “road” left. Combined with our insane driving skills all of us now go off-road adventure riding in our own backyard.

To capitalize on this state of affairs a daring Indian bike manufacturer also managed to introduce India’s first “trans-roader”. On road, off road bike. If we look through the marketing crap it is essentially a made for Indian roads bike!

Now, my dear rich kids, imagine riding your Ferrari and Lamborghini on these roads and cry!

The 29th February Post

I wasn’t intending to write anything today, till it dawned on me that if I don't, I wont be able to write anything on a 29th February till the next leap year in 2016.

And how special was the day for me? Hmm, I got up late (these days I have been ignoring my alarm with alarming accuracy!) then I scrambled to get ready for office. Reached office a little later than usual only to find tonnes of work waiting for me. Paced myself the entire day hoping to leave office on time. However, (like always) had to stay late to finish all the work for today! Then drove home. Got stuck in traffic. Didn’t do anything rest of the evening and finally I am writing this blog post. So much for spending a special day that comes once every 4 years.

So I went down the nostalgia path to see what I was doing 4 years ago on the 29th. Apparently, it was my last working day in the land of dreams – USA. Life goes on. Its been 4 years since I left Uncle Sam’s land. I have become older (wiser? naah).

I hope we all have a very rocking 29th February 2016. If I am still blogging till then, we shall revisit this blog post. Till then – have fun and thank you for reading!

The Low Suger problem

Yes. Most Indians like sugar in their caffeinated drink. I am no exception. Though I have stopped taking sweet coffees, I still completely enjoy my tea with a lot of milk and a little-bit of sugar.

We had non-sweetened coffee machines in our campus before. That meant that we had a self-serve container for sugar kept beside the dispenser for people to add sugar to their own tastes. But as a part of cost cutting measures, a big bad vendor managed to win our contract this time around and in one single day, all the coffee machines were replaced by this big-bad vendor’s new slender machines.

Now I am a caffeine junky. On an average I drink 3-4 cups of coffee everyday. The new coffee machines are designed to dispense sweetened coffee only. The vendor’s default setting makes the drink so sweet that it actually tastes like coffee flavoured kheer.

Desperate to get my daily dose of caffeine I actually toured our entire facility to find a place where I could get decent coffee. I finally chanced upon a machine labelled “Low Suger” coffee. Happy to find coffee of the non-kheer variety I poured myself a cup of hot vending machine coffee only to find that it was as sweet as the other “High Suger” machines.

Now along with the cups that need to be washed, the high sugar coffee has actually forced me to cut down on my coffee drinking habits. And I am sure there will be more people on the campus who must have faced the same dilemma. So, not only are we collectively cutting down on our coffee expenses, but also we are unknowingly caring for the environment (lesser use of vending machines means lesser use of electricity and lesser washing of cups!).

If you think hard enough there is a positive side to everything in life!