Aircraft Layout

Solve this case

Case study:

On a lazy day in office, you dont have much to do and you staring at the Brownian motion of the leaves on the tree you can see through the window of the office building. You wonder what you want to do this weekend. You check the movies online after a 360 degree turn of the head to confirm no one is looking at your non-official work. After some 5 min, you are done finding the theater and the time of the show you want to see and where. Now what?

You start thinking of a weekend vacation and how long it has been since you had been somewhere of some significance. With some memory recollection, you remember how your colleague had talked about the great things of a nearby town - a 3hr ride by bus. Whats wrong with checking out some details? Where is this? Whats there to watch? How to get there and back? Timings of the bus, etc.

Again looking around that no one is looking at you and glancing into the boss's cubicle to confirm that he is not yet in office, you start finding details of your potential next trip.

Twenty min have passed and you have found valuable information on the place. Now, to plan the bus trip. So, you open the popular top of mind site for bus travel, www.redbus.in

And you have entered the locations and are about to enter the dates, when suddenly, you hear a faint voice. It is not readily identifyable but slowly you realise that you recognise that voice. It is coming from behind and the loudness of the voice is slowly increasing. This is processed by the brain after your nerve cells communicate with each other by synaptic pulses as the subject is approaching nearer to you. This realisation gets your heart to beat faster of impending situation. You then realise that the voice is that of your dreaded boss who already doesnt like you and will get furious seeing you wasting time instead of doing office work, surfing sites and making travel plans. Your heart is now racing at the speed of Ussain Bolt and you are not sure what to do. Closing the tab on your browser will show the other travel sites that you have open. Closing the browser will show your desktop with no work on it. What do you do? All these scenarios are running through your head in a fraction of a second and you are sure either of two things: A miracle to save the day or to embrace the impending disaster. What do you do?

Answer: you click the link "Boss is watching? Look busy." :D

How to drink coffee aboard a flight

Indigo:
Step 1: Order the cabin crew a coffee or a cappuchino.
Step 2: Pay Rs.60
Step 3: Receive hot Nescafe Cappuccino - Ready to drink in a paper cup stirred with hot water by the cabin crew herself.
Step 4: After drinking, give cup to cabin crew while they come to taken things to discard.

Jet Konnect:
Step 1: Order the cabin crew a coffee.
Step 2: Pay Rs.60
Step 3: Receive a (puzzle looking) box bigger than a pack of 52 playing cards.
Step 4: Receive a big paper cup with plenty of hot water (to drink or drown oneself?) and a stirrer.
Step 5: Struggle opening the cellophane tape on the box.
Step 6: Discover three small sachets inside - one everyday whitener costing Rs.1?, one sugar packet costing another Rs.1 perhaps and one nescafe instant coffee power definitely costing Rs.1.
Step 7: Open the sugar packet and pour into cup.
Step 8: Open the dairy whitener and pour into cup.
Step 9: Struggle opening the plastic pack of instant coffee at one end. Try another end. Finally, it opens.Pour into white solution.
Step 10: Stir, stir, stir!!!
Step 11: Drink extra-diluted warm by now coffee.
Step 12: After drinking, pick all the stuff and give back to cabin crew (total of ten items including pieces of sachets [3 sachets and their respective 3 opening bits], stirrer, the box top, box bottom and paper cup)

Differences:
1. A well known brand of Rs.15 worth superior 3 in 1 cappuccino sachet is being used by Indigo. Jet uses clearly evident Rs.3 worth of material for the same Rs.60 coffee. Premium feel to Indigo. Feel being looted by Jet Konnect.
2. User ordered to drink coffee in flight. Indigo served ready to drink coffee. Jet Konnect asked user to make his/her own coffee (with no real customization options) and then drink it.
3. "Order-Drink-Give cup" procedure of Indigo. "Order-Mmmaaaakkkkkeeeeeee-Drink-pick all pieces and give"  procedure of Jet Konnect.

Bollywood movies

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment-/entertainment/business-of-rs-100-cr-films-who-gets-what-and-why/articleshow/15700710.cms

How to tax the Rich

An article by Scott Adams

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106164123424314.html

A regulator for everything

With the Coalgate scandal and people proposing a coal regulator

(http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/energy-quotient/entry/now-create-a-coal-regulator), I think we should create regulators and Appellate Tribunals in all sectors/industries.

With the creation of TRAI, TDSAT and AERA (Airport Economic Regulatory Authority), we have around 36 regulators and Appellate Tribunals in India.

http://india.gov.in/govt/studies/annex/8.1.1.pdf

Most consists of regulators for the small sector industries (Coastal Aquaculture, coir, health related) and some big ones (IRDA, PNGRB, SEBI,etc.)

Its time the Govt. of India creates the same structure of an Independent regulator and an appellate tribunal in all the sectors and industries.

This could have multiple benefits:

1. To look into the problems/complaints of customers/companies

2. The betterment of the sector through initiatives, policies and policing.

3. This focus on each sector may also reduce the number of cases going to the courts in the absence of such authorities.

The economic costs of obesity

http://www.businesspundit.com/the-economic-costs-of-obesity/

Dumb Charades

A simple game like Dumb Charades (sometimes if modified a bit) is a great exercise in thinking and communication.

It can be played beyond movies into other things like contradictory/funny/naughty phrases, and it is not just a source of good fun, but a lot more. To give the phrase, one has to think hard and creatively to find something that is not just hard, but funny too. Something what advertisers are always trying to do. The next is to put yourself in other person's shoes and judge whether the word/phrase can be decoded easily by the rival or not.

On the other side of the game, having a phrase/word, you need to think of multiple ways to get the phrase communicated by breaking it down and expressing it logically to the team mates. You also have to read into their minds and see if they can interpret your expressions (again, putting yourself in other person's shoes) and then guide them towards the word.

Dumb charades is a great way to improve lateral thinking.

Chicken Republic

It is ironic that the relation between many top Government people and the people they are ruling is almost equivalent to the owner of a chicken farm and the chicken.

The society's people are treated the same way as the chickens are. The mighty/owner can do what they please irrespective of whatever the chickens do. The chickens can keep clucking, eating, sleeping, shouting, but the owner does what he pleases. If the chickens irritate him too much, he can put them elsewhere, shut their mouths with tapes, jail them in small cages in unhygienic conditions without food or water and even kill them. What can the chicken do? Cluck again? Maybe poke/bite the owner. Well, next thing, the owner blunts the beaks of all the chicken with hot iron rods. Meaning, more pain for all the chickens, including some who didn't do anything in the first place.

From the perspective of the owner, the chicken's only reason to live is to serve the owner by laying eggs and giving its body to be relished on the owner's dining table. Much the same way, many politicians in many countries view their own public. They use and abuse the people only to make gains at their costs. The only human aspect of intelligence they use is worse. They lie to the public by saying that they are doing is good for the public. They further prop up their loyal corrupt breed in key positions and control all the news the people hear by owning the media. They further make profit by setting up companies for which they illegally give inherent advantages (mining licenses; spectrum at throw away prices; by blocking and losing other people's applications; by changing rules to favour their favourite company; make even more money on the side betting on the companies they are going to favour; buying out lands initially where they are going to have some development; by taking name of free market whenever it suits them, else favour socialism if that is the garb by which they are going to make more money; bribes for taking a decision and more bribe for the decision taken in someone's favour). The politicians are going to keep getting stronger as they work day in and day out on how to build competitive advantages over the public to keep them controlled. The same way the owner keeps so many under chicken under control.

P.S: By no means this post is trying to demean the public as having a chicken-ish attitude. Instead, it wants to show how normal humans tend to become powerful relative to the people who they rule, that the difference between them is more like the owner and his chicken.

What this means is that: The day the chicken are truly free and are no longer prisoned, killed and eaten is the day I can expect to find a way to break the reckless politicians' agenda and expect a more just, ideal world this planet to have.