Train Ride from Kandy to Colombo

	I have traveled by train to different places, but for some reason or the other the train journeys I have had between Colombo and Kandy are almost always memorable.
Foreigners are usually surprised to find this sort of trains in operation still.They might have seen these machines either in vintage films or portraits. Usually the condition of the train is not the best. The seats are not too bad, but very often the train is over packed by more than double its capacity and seats made for two people for two will have around three to four people and you might find another few people almost about to climb unto your back. Don’t expect the windows to have automatic controls, you need to put your mechanical thinking hat on to make out how to lift the lever and open the windows.
	It can be funny if you try to compare this with the facilities in other countries. Singapore MRT usually keeps on replaying the message “be aware of the gap between the train and the platform” when ever a train is ready to load passengers. Plenty of safety announcements are being made there while having less than a half an inch of gap, but ironically here you would find that there will be a foot gap further people should climb down a fragile ladder, but still no safety announcement or for that matter even not a single notice to educate about safety, but still life goes on and more than that people still have wide smiles and travel around happily!
Given all these circumstances still I will assure you one thing – taking a ride in one of these trains is worth it. The sceneries are just breathtaking; especially from kadigamuwa to kadugannawa it’s simply amazing! The train line, which is a British architecture carves through the rocks and makes a steep rise within a short distance! You just get seduced by nature and the shades of green on display. Its one of the pleasing sights you can come across. The bible rock stands at the center of the attraction and it makes you feel if you are taking a ride around it. The train rides on the edge of a rock while a collection of mountain ranges are far at display. I for one don’t have that vocabulary to put the beauty of it in words. So instead I present it in pictures! Below you can find an aerial view of a train winding its way through one of the tunnels in the route	Bible Rock

Unlocking an uncontested market space for the Telcos

Today throughout the globe Telcos are locked in a fierce battle in a “Red Ocean”. Typical as in any “Red Ocean” they face a great challenge in ensuring a profitable growth. Fighting a price war by differentiation and somehow retaining existing customers had become the mantra of the decision makers. At the same time Telcos are faced with a huge challenge of keeping up with cutting edge technological innovations while keeping the capital and operational expenditures under control. Adding to the Telco’s woos is the complexity in differentiating white elephant technological innovations from the ones which the market is ready to buy.

It might look as if I had made it to sound scary but when you listen to the Telco decision makers when they are in total pouring the heart out mode, you get to know that they all face a similar dilemma.

hSenid being a vendor for Telco grade service delivery platforms wanted to break out of the Red Ocean and unlock an uncontested market space for the Telcos. Hours and hours of brain storming by the hSenid team have yielded Soltura, which is a bundled solution encompassing both technological and business process innovation.

Inspired by the work of W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, hSenid team crafted the product strategy for formulation and execution of Soltura using some of the tools and techniques prescribed in their book Blue Ocean Strategy.

Soltura’s New Value Curve

Using the four actions framework hSenid decided to focus on creating a new value curve and set the priorities clear for the product.

As shown in the four actions framework above, Soltura creates a new value curve for the Telco by providing the following features.

a. Cost Perspective

· Irrespective of the sophistication of the Service Delivery Platform the incremental cost occurred for each new application in the form of both development cost and the operational cost from the Telco side in the form of NCS configurations, testing and management has traditionally been taken as an inevitable cost. Soltura differs from this currently accepted wisdom.

· By making each architectural decision in a cost conscious manner hSenid has managed to come up with a Service Delivery Platform which can be deployed at a Telco without any initially outflow of capital expenditure. One of the important features that are presented by Soltura is the raise of a new industry standard of providing SDP as a hosted solution on the cloud and thereby greatly reducing the Total Cost of Ownership of the platform.

b. New Market Segment and thought leadership Perspective

· By eliminating the incremental cost per application, Soltura creates an opportunity to house thousands of applications and discover a totally new market segment which was not reachable with the existing set of tools and platforms.

· The concept of giving an opportunity of allowing everyone to become a content provider and giving a paradise of choice to the subscribers gives rise to a totally new way of looking at Telco applications – this is what we call as “Socializing the Mobile Network.”

Stay around to see the strategy canvas of Soltura!!!!

Looking away but why?

A picture from my amma's garden

For some strange reason I like this picture! I am just trying to find the reason...

is it because it opted to look away?

or

is it because I am impressed about reverse perspectives?

or

is it because its seriously a nice picture? ;)

எனக்கு பிடித்த ஏழு பாடல்கள்

தமிழில் பதிவு எழுத வேண்டும் என்று அடியெனுக்கு நீண்ட நாள் ஆசை. எனுக்கு மிகவும் பிடித்த ஏழு பாடல்களை வருசை படுத்தும் ஒரு முயற்சி இது. உண்மையில் இவற்றை பிடித்த பாடல் என்று சொல்வதிலும் பார்க்க என்னை பாதித்த பாடல்கள் என்று சொல்வது பொருந்தும்.

1. பெம்மானே - ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன் பட பாடல்.
எலும்பு உருகி எம் மக்கள் விழிந்து கொண்டு இருக்கும் பொழுது வெளியானது. நூறு முறையாவது என் மனதுக்குள் கண்ணீர் விட வைத்த பாடல்.

2. கண்ணே கலை மானே - மூன்றாம் பிறை பட பாடல்.
ஒரு நாலு அல்லது ஐந்து வயது இருக்கும் போது மாமாவின் நெஞ்சில் தலையை புதைத்த எனக்கு, நடை பெற்ற தனிப்பட்ட கச்சேரியில் பல முறை "once more " கேட்ட பாடல் இது. அருமயான குரலில் அவர் பாட அவரது இதய துடிப்பு பக்கவாத்தியம் வாசிக்க நிலா முற்றத்தில் முழுமயாக ரசித்த பாடல்.

3. நினைத்து நினைத்து - 7g rainbow colony
இந்த பாடலில் எதோ ஒரு மயக்கம் சரியான காரணம் சத்தியமாய் தெரியாது, அனால் ஒரு காலத்தில் தினமும் winamp இல முதலாவதாக இந்த பட பாடல்களை தெரிவு செய்து கேட்டது உண்டு.

4. நறுமுகயே நறுமுகயே - இருவர்
தொடக்கத்தில் வரும் மிருதங்க ஒலியும் தொடந்து வரும் சலங்கை ஒலியும் ரகுமானின் கைவண்ணம். எனினும் இந்த பாடலின் நாயகன் கவிபேரரசு தான். சங்க தமிழில் ஒரு பாடல், காலம் கடந்து என்னை அழைத்து செல்வது போன்று ஒரு வியப்பு இந்த பாடல் கேட்கும் ஒவ்வொரு முறையும் வரும்.

5. என்னவளே
உன்னி கிருஷ்ணன் குரலும் AR ரஹ்மான் இசையும் என்னை கட்டி போட்ட ஒரு பாடல்.

6. நிலா காய்கிறது - இந்திரா பட பாடல்
ஹரிணி இன் பிஞ்சு குரலில் கேட்ட்கும் போது பாடசாலை காலத்தில் காமிலோ மற்றும் ஜெகவந்தன் கலை விழாவில் பாடியது ஞாபகாம் வருவது உண்டு.

7. ஆராரிரோ நான் இங்கே பாட - ராம் பட பாடல்
தாய் பற்றி வந்த பாடல்களில், இந்த பாடலும் தீயில் விழுந்த தேனா (வரலாறு பட) பாடலும் வித்தியாசமான பாடல்கள்.

Why do I write here?

During the past few weeks it has been totally uncharacteristic of me to keep away from all sorts of writing which includes blogs, diary….. I was trying to analyze my self to find out the reasons for this. Some probable excuses which came to my mind included,

Tied to work? Still caught in the obsession that I have with the new camera? Postponing the day to writings, so that I write something “monumental” than the usual grumbling like this post? Desperately wanted to write my first Tamil blog entry?

Whatever the excuses I tried to find deep inside I knew one thing for sure – something was wrong somewhere. Usually when I skip writing my diary note for too long I know that “sayanthan is out of his mind” (some may say that usually that’s the case always).

Being an introvert, I had always looked for energy in doing my scribbling. It’s not actually written for any audience. It’s more a way of pouring off some thing in the mind. It lets me think in a more systematic way and gives me some good time to question my own self, often the writing produce is controversial hence the majority of them end up in the dustbin/recycle bin after I had read it for a few times, only a few which doesn’t make little or no controversy end up here.

In any case if you have read this blog you would have realized that it’s a sense less post without anything interesting, that is because my posts are not written for an audience other than myself. ;)

Discrimination of women – Who’s responsible?

Whether we like it or not discrimination of women still exits wildly. It ranges from occasional banter at the work place to the more criminal offenses involving the ultimate crimes. I honestly think and believe that women should not to be discriminated on any grounds. Woman like man should be given the opportunity and freedom as they wish to have.

Usually, any discussion about the reasoning for the oppression or discrimination of women with a girl or woman would almost turn out to be animated or emotional. At the very start itself all the blame would be placed fair and square on the men as a whole. But then with second thoughts they would dilute the argument to say that not all man are bad, but still at large they would conclude that men are the very reason for all this discrimination. Its funny at times the striking similarity they have when it comes to the style of arguments to vilify men. My latest discussion was with a fanatic feminist novelholic ( new term patented by yours truly ;)), she for one has been reading too many novels based on the Arab world and quotes all her arguments based on those books, which are all supposed to be real life stories. Unfortunately she always misses the point that some of this involves a certain element of dramatization, when it comes out as fiction. All though I do not deny completely the fact that woman are treated in notoriously bad ways in some of these countries.

Then of course I have had the “privilege” of having the greatest feminist very close to me from the time of my birth itself. She is a vocal critic and an expert exponent when it comes to handling the cause of discrimination to her advantage, all though in recent times, I see a more subdued approach from her especially after managing to prove her wrong at least a few times.

There are always a few points that I try to tell these ladies and usually they are in no mood to listen to this part of the story since they are with a preconceived idea that all men are chauvinist pigs. So I thought of putting it down on this blog and let them read probably they might start to see from the reverse angle too.

The first thing is that actually women are the enemies of women. Whether we like it or not women are at the root of discrimination of woman, in a very high number of cases. For example look at the cases of dowry, women who they themselves who would have suffered because of the problem of dowry when they were young haunt their daughter-in-law with the demand for dowry. Of course there is no denying that the man who is asking for the dowry is mostly acting to be a slave and clearly portraits his own weakness of being a vegetable without any self confidence of leading his life on his own. The main point missed by women in this cases is that discrimination is caused by a fellow woman.

Secondly, if you look at the cause for having so many men with superiority complexes, I would say that at home and at schools women are taught and shown to be inferior by women teachers and mothers. So these girls grow up with the inherent mind set of being inferior and then on the other hand the boys are bought up with the superiority complex. Its simple, "As you sow so shall you reap".

So atleast when you say women are discriminated please do not place all the blame just only on men, remember that women too aid and abet this crime and a larger proportion of the real power of eliminating the discrimination from the society lies in the hands of women.

Most importantly I hope and pray these feminist will not grow older to become the people who would sow the seeds of discrimination or use the word of discrimination to black mail the innocent men who get caught in there hands. Lol

The wake up call

I was just reading the book called as “The Monk who sold the Ferrari”, I was left captivated by the beauty of the flow of it and the easiness with each the author relates the pieces of wisdom.

It starts of with a character portrayal of a litigator, but I am pretty sure some of the IT people like me would see a striking resemblance to our own lives too, although we might have not reached such pinnacles or fame as of that character, we might have already hit the negatives. The book was successful in pulling some of the most sensitive codes in my system. I felt like it was timely reading when I was in a deep personal slumber and complacency!

The good thing about the author Robin Sharma was that he didn’t leave me with questions instead had left me with a lot of instructions and answers. I see it as a much diluted version of the Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda; I see this as a better reading for a layman like me to start with. He had made sure that the text is positioned in such way, where the noble pieces of wisdom from the mystic land of east is swallow-able even for a westerner. I loved some of the concepts he talks about starting from Loving ones self, Goal setting, Opposition thinking, enjoying the beauty of small thinking and of course training the mind.

I had read about design patterns – I mean the software ones, but reading this I felt as if the author was talking about the design pattern for once own life. Then again when he was talking about self – governance I felt as he was talking of managing once own life as a project. The good thing is that I didn’t get to read many things I didn’t know about but I was happy to get a swallow able dose of it at a single place. That is what I would suggest as the greatest strength of this book.

For anyone who wishes to read this, I would suggest to find quiet nice place where you will be alone. Ideally find a natural surrounding where your mind will be relaxed and open for exploration and then settle into a nice cozy place and start reading out the book loud. I am pretty sure that you will get caught in the charm of the sages of sivana and would end up reading the book from cover to cover and walk away with a refreshed and focused mind.