BSNL Broadband

After the recent announcements I eagerly applied online to get a connection. Then I got second thoughts and thought I should followup with customer care or whatever.

I called the customer-help number given on the registration form and here's how it went - I swear this is all true !! This is a traslation to english, but the hindi version would have been better...

Me : Call...
CSR : Yes..? (huh, I was expecting more along the lines of "This is XYZ from BSNL Customer Care, how may I help you?)
Me : Hello ?
CSR : Yes ..?
Me : Is this BSNL customer care?
CSR : Yes.
Me : I want to get a BSNL Broadband connection, how do I go about it ?
CSR : Where are you speaking from?
Me : Hi-tech city.
CSR : Where?
Me : (Realising that she was asking for the city) Hyderabad
CSR : Oh, Hyderabad? But it has already started there.
Me : Yes, but how do I go about getting a connection?
CSR : What's your name ?
Me : Kalyan Chakravarthy
CSR : Oh, you are a Bengali !!
Me : No, I am not. I am a local.
CSR : Really(starts laughing)? I thought only bengali's had such names.
Me : No madam, we also have such names.
CSR : Really, I did not know that !
Me : Ok, how do can I get a connection.
CSR : Oh, you have to find that out from a local office.
Me : Huh.. Ok, if I apply, how long will it take to get a connection?
CSR : Oh, it will happen very quickly. (Hmm.. this sounds suspicious)
Me : How quickly?
CSR : Very quickly ! ( God !!)
Me : Will I get a connection in one week ?
CSR : Hmm.. we can't really say. It is possible, but it will happen quickly.
Me : Will I get it in 2 weeks?
CSR : Hmm.. we cant really say. I give up at this stage
Me : Ok, thank you. I will call the local office and find out.
CSR : Its all right. (No thank you for calling BSNL stuff etc. :) )

So, I found the phone no. of the local office and called again and here goes..

CSR : Yes.. ??
Me : I want to get a BSNL Broadband connection, how do I go about it ?
CSR : You have to come and fill up a form.
Me : Can I apply online?
CSR : Hmm... you can apply but if you apply online, we have to download the form no ? (oh oh)
Me : How long will it take?
CSR : Oh, we are not giving any dates as of now (Huh!!)
Me : Ok, can I submit the form in hi-tech office.
CSR : Oh, you can ! If they take it. (!!!!)


I give up at this stage. I really dont think they will get around to giving connections anytime soon - they are just not ready and dont seem to have the competence to do it. It looks like a date driven publicity stunt.

This is sad since all the other cable "broadband providers" here suck big time as well.

Rediff Bol

Rediff has released its alpha version of Rediff Bol. It is a cool messenger with indian themes, avatars, smileys and what not.

Well, what makes this special? It was done by my friends :). I discussed with them and they took around 3 months to do this with 3 ppl.

Imagine getting this kind of stuff done in a bigger company with all the overheads of legal, internalization, signoff, reviews, long RI processes, branding limitiations, integration stories (passport :) and hotmail), ding, dong and what not .... I wonder how long msn/yahoo took to get done.

It uses a different approach to communication, so voice works through firewall clients when yahoo merrily fails etc.. Pretty good stuff. More detailed review to come soon...

Interesting Puzzles - 2

Let f(n) = no of ones required to write numbers from 0 to n. Find the smallest n > 1 such that f(n) = n.

Updating with MN's addition:

Let S = {n | f(n) = n}. Prove: S is finite. Find: |S|

Ah, the good old college days :). If this seems vague or wierd, lookup CLR on complexity analysis.

Desktop search tools

Everyone seems to jumping onto the desktop search space - google, yahoo, msn.

The main download pages seem to be getting progressively better from the days of lengthy 6 page registrations (with forms which dont remember history if there is an error). Who do you think needs to catch up on their User Interface?

Interesting Puzzles- 1

Here's an interesting one I heard long time back:

There are 3 closed doors. Behind one of them you have a car, nothing behind the other two. Now you play the game as follows:

1. You choose a door (say door 1)
2. The game owner opens a door from the other two which is empty (say door 2)
3. You are given a choice of changing your choice (to door 3).

Are you better off changing your choice or not? The answer is pretty non-intuitive :)

IQ's dilemma
Towards the end of our Btech at IIT, we used to have a lot of the usual discussions about the future and where we are going to settle down, whether we are ever going to come back to India etc. IQ was one who seemed to have a clear idea of what he wanted in life. His strategy was simple:

1. Go to US for a Masters at a decent college
   
2. Get to one of the bigger companies
   
3. Save a sum of Rs 10 million over a few years
   
4. Return to India and live a life of comfort and luxury
   

I thought that it was a great strategy except that reality is very different from what it was then. IQ always had plans of coming to Hyderabad and joining a job of leisure and comfort :). He recently had a chat with me about this and I had to unfortunately shatter his dreams of living like the Nawab of Hyderabad. This followed from a few simple observations:

1. Being a megalomaniac IQ is not going to settle for anything below the very best.
   
2. The top end apartment complexes today cost around 8 million
   
3. A top car will cost a million
   
4. Other expenses from furniture... etc

So where does that leave poor (rich?) IQ?
I don't know. Perhaps he will be a victim of the x = x + 1 syndrome where x is the no of crores he will save before he comes back.