Adrenaline Rush...

I did a uphill training in chennai today. Wondering where is the hill in chennai to run, we run over the bridges and call it uphill training ;). I ran like hell today.t Initially I was running slowly till I reached the bridge and then I pushed myself to the limit. It would be the fastest I would have ever run. My fellow runners when they saw me sprinting were cheering aloud. I did the speed slow routine couple of times over the RK Salai bridge and the Alwarpet bridge. When I reached the endpoint and stopped, I could feel the blood pumping in my head. Wow.... that felt so good.

I remember when I was in school we used to play a game called Kings and Queens, where the player with a ball have to hit the fellow players with it. We used to run like hell to avoid getting hit by the ball. Usually at the end of the game, I used to feel the blood pumping in my head. After so long I felt that today. Feels great.

Amazing Rescue...

In today's high competitive world of media, once in a while there will be a real human drama that will make your heart warm and feel good reading such an article. I saw one such news today. A two year old girl, Vandana, fell in to a 45 feet unused bore well and survived for 27 hours before being rescued. When I first heard the news yesterday, I felt a twinge of fear, since I remember a similar kind of news in which a boy who fell in to an unused bore well died after 36 hours continuous rescue effort. But this girl seems to be a strong survivor. Indian army was called in for the rescue operation. A parallel bore well was dug, 1 feet apart for the rescue personal to go in and free the girl. The rescue team was able to keep the girl alive with gulgose, water and oxygen for more than a day. Truly amazing story for the girl for surviving 27 hours of ordeal and for the rescuers to take such a risky and complex operation to save a little to girl. Hats off to the rescuers and to the people those who helped.

Read the full story in the following link.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/twoyearold-rescued-from-45feet-deep-pit/62018-3.html

A tribute to the Immortal:

Everyone wants their hero's, idol's to be immortal. One such person to me is Rangarajan popularly know as Sujatha in tamil literature world and the cine world. He expired last week after a brief illness. An engineer by profession, he is a multi faced personality. He is widely respected in IT, multimedia, literature, cinema and many others. The depth of knowledge he poses in each of the field was amazing. He introduced sci-fi genre to the tamil readers in the 80's. One of his most popular work, "En Inniya Iyandira" was a story set in future where the world will be ruled by robos and computers. That was the first novel I have read in tamil. There are time when I have read magazines just for his article. Tamil cine industries most talented directors of this era, Mani Ratnam and Shankar both preferred Sujatha for dialogue's in almost all their movies. As I see Tamil literature world and Tamil has a lost irreplaceable genius. He is an immortal with his words and lives in the hearts of his fans.

Following is the tribute written to the great man by one of the writer friend of mine, reproduced here with permission.

SUJAATHAA... ....

My respects to the man.
Sometimes had his hands on my pen.
Sometimes had his words on my mouth.
Sometimes had his chair on my brain.
Sometimes had his laws on my books.
Goodbye, my man.

Natarajan Srinivasan.

Credit card Trouble

I had a shocking experience with a credit card company recently. I don't mind naming the company, it is SBI card. I have been using it for about 2 years till now, and though I was not happy with their service, I was using the card regularly. The problem started when one of my check I have given for the SBI had bounced. I had dropped the check for SBI credit card, well before the payment date and am really not sure of the reason the cheque bounced. But when I saw the next month statement, it was stated that my previous cheque had bounced and they had add some amount as a fine for the bounce and another amount as a fine for defaulting the previous month. The highlight is the reason they had quoted for the check bounce. It said, "Insufficient funds". I was totally pissed off when I saw that.

I called the customer service and asked why have you quoted the reasons "Insufficient funds", also, I said I wanted a copy of the check that had bounced. The customer service person said, she will dispatch the mail immediately. Since the person sounded as if she had dispatched the bounced cheque copy to me, I totally forgot about it for some time. The next week I got a call from a SBI person, inquiring why I have not paid the bill. Only then I remembered about the bill and said, I have not received any copy of the cheque I have requested, and asked what happened to that. The executive said, she will check up and call back. But she never gave a call back that day. I again made a call the next day to inquire about the copy of the cheque. I was bit frustrated by now, and was in a aggressive mode when I made the call.

The most surprising thing I found when I made the call was that the executive was talking to me with none of my history. When I asked whether they had dispatched the copy of the cheque, she said yes, and when asked about the address the copy was dispatched, she was telling some address. I was so pissed off and started shouting at her, and told immediately to transfer the call to the manager. Without even responding to my query, she had cut the call. The total number of calls they made to me and I made to them would be around 7 to 8 and none spoke like a professional. One lady even told me harshly it is not their responsibility to send the copy of the cheque, and I have to check with my bank.

I was not sure at that what to do. I dropped another cheque minus the fine amount of the previous bill. I am just waiting the another call from the company so as to tell them how unprofessional they are and cancel the card. I am not sure what should I do about this kind torture these company's give to customers. I was just wondering is there any law which will enable me to sue this kind of incapable company handling the operations? I will also tell them to learn some lessons from their bigger counterparts like Citi and ICICI. Not that Citi and ICICI are giving a great service, but at the least they are more professional than SBI credit card guys.


I felt relived and happy after cutting the card in to two.