Coin collecting - the pain and the pleasure...

Coin collecting - the pain and the pleasure...
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My liking is for collecting coins from circulation.

I buy my newspaper/s against daily cash payment, just so see what
coins I get.

However on most days I prefer to give change to the newspaperwallah, empathising
with him, knowing how difficult it is to get change. However he manages to give change every time.

Today I had Rs. 3 in coins and was about to give it to him, but however changed my mind and gave him a ten rupee note instead, thinking I would part with the coins if he so wishes.

Well, I got a 2 rupee coin and a 5 rupee 2010 Asian Games coin (in battered condition).

Getting a commemorative coin is once in a blue moon. Maybe once in a month or two.

No pains, no gains! But pain for whom?!!

Adey! Enna Engae nee kooti pora?

Hey man! Where are you leading me to?

The man: Sid Sriram from where else? From the States.

He puts his heart into the soul of the song.

And to know what I mean or rather what is meant by the soul of a song,
it is not really necessary that one should know tamil (b'cos music has no language!).

Step one:

Listen to a young talented singer Aravind singing the song Adiye from the movie Kadal in the Super Singer contest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1KbaxCtGso

(Towards the end you can see Malgudi Subha explaining the soul part of the song...

Step two:

Now listen to the orginal singer (one wonders how A.R. Rahman zeroed to Sid) Sid Sriram singing the very same song in a guest appearance in the same Super Singer contest a few days back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4A0XGNoHaY

Well, you got it! No explanations are needed!!

Any guesses what one would like after listening to the above two?

Yes, of course. Sid singing in the company of none other than Stephan Devassy.
What else!

May their tribe increase...

ISO and all that...

ISO and all that....
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Why go for ISO certification and frame the certificate and hang it?

All we have to do is have an ISO attitude.

Yes, ISO.  In Search of Orderliness.

We used to go to a scan centre for our annual medical check-up. The place is spic and span. The staff are courteous. They give a check list with us so that we are sure that all the necessary tests have gone through. Very good indeed.

This year we went to another branch of the same scan centre which is closer to our house. Well, the place is spic and span.

But, what about the other things. The staff were quarreling with some customer, fighting between themselves....  They didn't give any check list. Their feed-back box was in place. However it was full of feedback slips! Nobody had cared to look into them. I can go on. These are of course small things....

In life, if we take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves. Yes, figuratively!!

Well educated and well mannered...

Well educated and well mannered...
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Some are under the impression that an ill-mannered person is ill-educated and vice versa. Nothing can be farther from the truth than this.

But then very rarely we do come across well educated persons are are also well mannered.

We happened to come across one such person today.

This elderly gentleman lives in a house behind ours. In their backyard they have
a drumstick tree which is infested with hairy caterpillars (kambili poochi). These often invade our apartments in the hundreds and cause inconvenience to us.

A few days back I went to his house to request that the tree may be removed. They were away and only the house staff were there, who asked me repeatedly what I wanted. I told them of the issue on hand. They promised me to inform their master.

Today morning as we were driving down we saw him standing in front of his house.
I slowed down my car and when I was about to get down, he says smilingly, "Don't worry, we shall remove the tree. I could not get the men immediately".

What can I say? We have never met. But he might have seen me in my terrace from his house. He understood why I was slowing down and without troubling me too much he comforts me.

Can anyone among you give me one such incident in your recent past?

Don't just give an ad...

In business or otherwise, don't release an ad if you are not serious about it.

You release an ad to do business and you must be ready to grab any opportunity
that arises out of the ad.

I wanted to let out an apartment on rent and released an ad. An elderly person spoke
and he wanted to know how to reach the place. I asked him the nearby landmark he knew.
Then I offered to pick him up from that place to ease the situation.

I rang up a person who had advertised for selling an apartment. The day he had released the
ad, he says the place is locked and his supervisor is somewhere else. I advised him that when
he had released an ad, he has done that expecting some customers. Is it not his duty to be there
or ask someone to be there from 9 am to 6 pm to receive any customer?

After all in this case all he needed was just one conversion to sell that one apartment!

Alas! Is this not a waste of effort?

Remembering exemplary Service

Yesterday I went to Murugan Kalyana Mandapam (Murugan Marriage Hall) to attend a
wedding of a relative.

My memory went back a few years. In 2007, I had fixed this hall to celebrate my daughter's
wedding.

Due to certain circumstances, the wedding date has to be postponed. The hall was already
booked for the date which we wanted.

We had to search for another hall. I had already paid a hefty amount to Murugan Kalyana
Mandapam.

I requested for a refund explaining the circumstances. They replied that if someone else wanted
the hall on the date, they would refund my money. They also promised to phone me on this.

Without any further follow-up from my side (I was too busy searching another hall), within a few
days they rang me up to inform me that their hall was booked and that I could collect my money
any time.

They returned my money in full. Also, learning that I was in the air-conditioning field, they placed
an order with me to fix a new split air-conditioner in their office room and paid for it.

Trying to find another service provider like them would be like searching a needle in a haystack.