Silicon Valley Diary

Big Bad Wolves and the Lure of Lucre

Everyday at work I overhear people in cubes around mine calling up the 1-800 numbers of credit card companies and cable TV companies and many others and complaining about some extra charge or another. Over the past year I've realized that big corporations with these fancy slogans and mission statements and ethics codes so completely lack scruples. I'm beginning to wonder if there is even one company that I can truly trust.

I don't understand why large corporations care about increasing profits at the cost of good ethics. I have umpteen examples of this, some of which I want to go over here, with the aim of warning other people about it.

Best Buy
My latest episode was with Best Buy. I bought a camera about 2 years ago and was sold a service plan alongwith it. The salesperson at the time claimed that no matter how tiny the problem with the camera, I could get a store coupon to buy something else at the store. Today when I went back to BestBuy to hopefully get a coupon to buy another camera, they told me that I don't have a replacement plan. So it only allows for the camera to be repaired but won't get a coupon or anything.

Comcast
I signed up for a Comcast high-speed internet connection with an online specials provider. I am sure it is a part of Comcast itself because they don't really care whether the special was actually applied. Instead of being billed 20$ a month, the bill shows up as 45$ a month. After repeatedly calling their numbers for 3-4 days I was asked to go with a copy of the order online to a local store. Comcast then claims that the printout doesn't mention anything about the deal, which was happily excluded by the ComcastSpecials provider.

Correction: Comcast did correct this situation after the phone calls and store visit.

Cingular
When you sign up they claim the plan is 39.99 per month. Later they dab on some additional charges... Universal Connectivity Fee, Federal XXX Charge and what not. These are not taxes but fees that Cingular takes from you because the Government takes it from them. How convenient, and because they have a few hundred of millions of customers, this means Cingular gets that much money more.

Credit Card Companies
Don't even get me started. They are a little better because they quickly remove charges when you call them, but other than that they take every opportunity to sneak some extra money out of your pocket.

Why do they stuff like this?
Here's what I think. Just to raise the company's stock value at any price.

What can we do?
Be really careful. Read everything. Keep good records. Beyond a point there is alternative but to fight and make a lot of noise.

Sunnyvale, California India

Parimal calls Sunnyvale India. I don't blame him. There is a larger concentration of Indian people, Indian restaurants and Indian grocery stores here than India itself. Trust me I am not kidding! It is a sight to behold. This one complex on El Camino Real will just shock you out of your wits. It is as if you followed Alice through the looking glass and ended up on the opposite side of the globe. An ode to the businesses that you'll find next to each other here:

Lucky Dhaba - Basically a restaurant trying to make a quick buck off selling Indian food to the hungry single Indian engineers. Inside you get all the dishes commonly found at a Dhaba. What's more ZEE TV is playing in there on two flatscreen televisions, showing all the "K" letter serials you never wanted to see again, while a Punjabi uncle takes your orders in a gruff tone.

India Cash and Carry - The most successful desi grocery store around. Open according to one of the overworked cashiers at the store, 24 hours a day 365 days a year... well actually it's open only until 10 pm at night but that's quite an achievement in America. In there you'll find all things desi, utensils to Chavanprash to Hajmola, to Kulfi and Ladoos. You name it! Prices are wayy lower than other chain stores such as Safeway and Albertsons.

Raaga - Music stores, sells music CDs in all languages from Marathi to Telegu to Tamil to Hindi. I don't even know a store in Pune that could boast of such a collection. Ofcourse you can rent DVDs to the latest releases... Rang De Basanti!

Komala Vilas - Not an apartment complex but a South Indian food joint. Never been there, but been highly recommended by a South Indian friend as the place to get lunch. Apparently they have South Indian style thali with unlimited rassam and sambar and curd rice. Haven't found another willing person to visit yet.

Sari Shop - Forgot the name but yes a sari shop.

Kadam and Kadam Jewellers - Holy crap! Kadam and Kadam jewellers?!

Bay Area truly just feels like a cleaner better part of India. The number of people, the shops apart, even the weather is truly Indian, minus the hot summers. The hills could as well be a part of the Sahyadris too.

The only difference... it also has the highest concentration of tech companies in a 10 mile radius. Every company worth its salt has a major office here... from Intel, AMD, Google, Sun Microsystems, Nvidia, Apple, Symantec, Oracle.... There are tonnes of expressways and wide streets, electricity, internet and water supplies are truly uninterrupted. The perfect version of India. How can one ever feel homesick here?

What sort of a name is "Suri"??

Must not laugh!! TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes for the uninitiated) name their child "Suri".

According to the BBC
Suri means "Red Rose" in Persian and "Princess" in Hebrew.

Well it also means Knife in Marathi and fat hairy Sardar in Punjabi. It reminds me of a guy in Madison with that name, and many Punjabi sardars with that last name. Oh yes my Punjabi neighbours in Pune were the Suris.

My good wishes to Suri, unforunately she inherited some cookie parents. Hope she comes out of that house unscathed.

Reaching for the Star...Asterix

Growing up in Pune I used to visit this library next door called Shabdashree (loosely translates to Master of Words in Marathi) Library. It was a private enterprise trying to cater to the needs of the local budding bookworms. Academician parents such as mine, also are constantly trying to inculcate a love for reading into their children, however meagre the resources of a library a short walk away from home. And I loved going there! This library was really small.... housed as many books as you could in a small room with every wall filled with bookshelves and magazines in the center. It had a limited collection... Hardy Boys, the Famous Five,the Secret Seven, Archie, Asterix and Tintin. Ofcourse there were a lot more Marathi books that I could never read at a fast enough pace. I know it's pretty shameful.

I did read the whole Famous Five series. I was a big Enid Blyton fan, although I didn't develop much of a taste for Secret Seven. Just seemed like way too many characters. On the Famous Five, I couldn't make any sense out of most of the things these kids were taking to their picnics at the time... bacon, root beer and many others. The daily "waran bhaat" (rice with lentils) was miles away from these foreign victuals. I tried root beer when I came to the States and boy that's the most horrible tasting beverage in the world. Sure beer isn't plesant tasting but that doesn't mean that you feed your kids liquified chewing gum! The worst invention of western civilization.

Soon after I started reading Asterix I noticed that my father took a strangely excessive interest in my comic books and finally it got the extent of competing with me for the Asterix-i. When I questioned him about it he said something to the effect that it's a comic book written for grown-ups. "They are not written for children at all." Just take a look at the names of the characters:

Asterix - Asterisk - The Star of the Series
Obelix - Obelisk - Shaped like an obelisk and a menhir delivery man too
Cacofonix - Cacofonic - Bard who plays discordant notes
Unhygienix - not hygienic - Fishmonger who sells fishy fish

The list goes on. Roman names also have a deeper meaning to them (Onus Balonus hehehhe). The satire ofcourse is something I would never understand back in the day. The best one from my latest read "Asterix and the Black Gold" was Dubbelosix - from 007 - a spy with contraptions befitting a 1st century Bond. What's more Asterix is translated from the original in French. Anthea Bell and Dereck Hockridge are supergeniuses!

So more recently thanks to my favorite local public library I've gained a way to take a walk into my past, meet Asterix again and this time with an adult brain and vocabulary too. Shabdashree put a limit of one book per day. No such rules at my local bibliotheque... I load myself with as many Asterixes as I can hold, much to the dismay of other kids frequenting the juvenile section. If I haven't sung enough paens to my favourite hang-out already, here's one more...

BBC News - Have your say

BBC Have your say

Check this out if you care, my comment got published.

Added: Thursday, 13 April, 2006, 06:06 GMT 07:06 UK

Give tax breaks to American companies that manufacture goods in Mexico as opposed to China. A more affluent Mexico is better for America than a more affluent China.

What's more imagine how much money and fuel can be saved just based on costs to ship goods from China to the USA.

If a lot of good jobs are created by American companies in Mexico, likely the influx of illegal immigrants into the US will be reduced and an outflux of some illegals back might increase.

Saket Jamkar, Santa Clara, United States

Inside Man : Not just other heist movie

AR Rehman is making even greater in-roads into Hollywood. The title song for "Inside Man" is Chaiyya Chaiyya from Dil Se (a huge Bollywood hit), although I don't quite see how it fits into the grand scheme of things. Most other aspects of the movie are very logical.

Heist movies like Ocean's 11 are good fun, though I wouldn't classify them as my favourite genre. I never recall them when I am penning down my favourites lists anywhere. Inside Man, however is an exceptional movie. Although one could arguably get just about the same effect by watching this one on DVD, I was so impressed by the whole movie, that I'd recommend watching it in the theaters just because those guys really deserve that money.

I don't know where to begin with the compliments. The cast is superb... Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Willem Dafoe. I haven't seen such a talented line-up in quite a while and all doing such a fine job.

I read on IMDB that Spike Lee movies (like this one) have a lot of political messages. Helping the cause of Sikhs in the United States is an important one in this movie. A Sikh character in the movie talks about how he gets identified as an Arab wherever he goes. Hopefully a successful movie such as this will help reduce any race-motivated violence against them.

The one problem with the movie is not being able to really describe it without giving out some of the suspense. The basics of the story are that a brilliant bank robber (played by Clive Owen) takes over a bank and holds some people hostage. Denzel Washington plays Detective Frazier, an NY cop, who fights a battle of wits against the bank robber. The story is very hard to predict. I think this is an amazing piece of writing and I'd be watching out for other movies by Russell Gewirtz. As heist movies go, this one is as good as it gets.