Sunday, 5 July 2009

More tag, tag, tag ......

A “wicked” girl called The Thoughtful Train tagged me with the ‘Fours tag”. She did it with an “evil laugh of delight” – someday I’ll get even with her ! To his eternal credit, le embrouille blogueuer saved me from this tag – someday I’ll pay him back for it !!

I took the poetic license to change the questions to something remotely connected to business. Here goes.

Four places I have lived in because my company told me to

1. Haldia, West Bengal, India – Of the “ban”, “Cholbe na”, wide open spaces, rosogolla, Rabindra sangeet
2. Village Dalshapur, District Etah, UP, India – Of the karanjas and paranjas, the gun, no power, no plumbing, cow sleeps with you
3. Bangalore, India – From heaven to an awful place. Deve Gowda has made sure this lovely city more resembles Dharavi now
4. Guangzhou China – Of the lovely slim girls, nice people, incomprehensible language, vegetarian nightmare

Four wonderful conference venues I’ve been to

1. Golden Palms, Bangalore India – Simply because we started something game changing there and had lots of fun doing it. Bumped into Sanjay Khan and asked who he was !
2. Bordeaux, France – Was charmed, even though I don’t drink wine. Forget the name of the Chateuax
3. Four Acres, outskirts of London, UK – virtually in London, but nicely “away from it all”.
4. Goa, India – Has to be.

Four interesting cities that I have been to on business

1. Casablanca , Morocco – Wildly evocative. Went searching for Rick’s.
2. Karachi, Pakistan – Oh, how much like India. Same people, same food, same look and feel – why did we go our separate ways ?
3. Greenville, South Carolina – Of all the places in the US. Still can’t understand why I came here, but I did
4. Sindri, Bihar, India – The only place on earth where the sole restaurant closes for lunch

Four places where I starve on travel, because I’m a veggie

1. Lagos, Nigeria – Hopeless, except if you go searching for an Indian restaurant
2. Anywhere in China – Hopeless, full stop
3. Jakarta, Indonesia – Eeks. Run to an Indian restaurant
4. Krakow, Poland – Not so bad as everybody speaks English and you can find something, but they believe grass is for cows

Four business websites that I visit daily

1. FT.com – Love the newspaper, hate the website, because they charge
2. WSJ.com – Same problem
3. economictimes.com - No problem
4. economist.com – Love the website because its free as I buy the magazine

Four places that I would rather keep going to on business

1. Durban, South Africa – a lovely city I am in love with
2. Adelaide, Australia – In my book, the prettiest “business place” in Australia
3. Singapore – Simply for the efficiency of everything
4. Zurich, Switzerland – In summer, gorgeous

Four businessy things I hope to do before time runs out

1. Have a million readers for my blog (Ha ha )
2. Teach a MBA class and a kindergarten class
3. Run a not for profit organisation
4. Run a world championship event in any sport

Four business books I can tolerate

1. Barbarians at the Gate – the story of the takeover of RJR Nabisco in the 80s
2. The History of Unilever - for obvious reasons
3. Dash
4. Dash

Four movies with completely awful scenes on business

1. Jab we Met – Gimmee a break
2. Disclosure – Awful
3. Corporate – Oh God
4. One Tamil serial I was forced to watch one espisode that made me gag and thankfully I’ve forgotten its name

Four people, I have no other choice but to tag

Any volunteers ?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Finally Ramesh sees the evil side of me! ;-) "Of the karanjas and paranjas, the gun, no power, no plumbing, cow sleeps with you" - whatever was that??
I hope Sanjay Khan knew who you were - he better!!
Now coming to the veggie part,Sachin remembered an incident when an American was convincing a veggie Rajput guy, that once meat taken out of the gravy is veggie and that it was "safe" for him to eat!
I wonder what you will teach at the Kindergarten class?? ABCDs of Business?
Million readers on the way! Run for your lives!!
You watched out for business scenes?? Now I believe business is not in your blood, it IS your blood!! ;-)
Good one Ramesh!! Mighty impressed.

Ramesh said...

Oh you thoughtful train - all is forgiven since you write such lovely comments !!

I wouldn't be caught dead seeing a movie like Jab we met. Unfortunately parental duties include going through this torture. One nice song ; everything else crap !!

Adesh Sidhu said...

Goa is indeed an awesome place!

Million readers! cumulative or daily??? As they say beast is in details :-)

A journey called Life said...

b'lore- awful place?!! what ever made u say that..
run a non profit orgn- count me in.. ditto for wanting to teach a kindergarten class.. and i wish i can be ur student in an MBA class (i will warn u of my lack of intellect in advance)..
million readers- will happen very soon.. and i say this w/o a doubt

Ramesh said...

@Adesh - Standard trick in "targets" to be delightfully vague. Achieving them then becomes that much easier !

@AJCL - Took poetic license to be extremely harsh on Bangalore as its virtually my home city - I've stayed longest in that city and have to shed tears about how much it has deteriorated. It was easily the best city in India and short sighted politicians have allowed the infrastructure to crumble.

Thanks again for being so encouraging with your comments.

le embrouille blogueur said...

Ramesh .... in my eternal desire to get a degree in Business ... I shall be sitting next to AJCL in your MBA class .... as for the rest ....wow ....Greenville, SC is not the most picturesque location .... but it is not bad ....great list !!...as for the million readers .... they are on their way ..."can you hear them now"

Ramesh said...

@ blogueur - Greenville isn't too far from your dream place of Charlotte !!

Since I can't count, I think I just need four more readers to reach the million mark ! Lol !

Preeti Shenoy said...

Why does everything HAVE to be realistic? What about Romance and Passion and Feelings and Emotions and that elusive, hard to define thing thing called love which makes your heart go thud thud thud, Ramesh? :-):-) I am referring to your comments on movies.
I think you might enjoy a realistic movie like 'Chandni Bar' as opposed to 'chandni chowk to China' :)
Being an avid movie buff I could comment only on this aspect of the post :)
I did read it all though :)

Rika said...

OMG you have to write about business in tags too? This is so not fair...

Ramesh said...

@ Preeti - What have those wonderful words - romance, passion, feelings, emotions, thud, thud, thud, have to do with movies ??

Well, 99% of the movies. There is only one movie that has all of that. See next post of mine.

Ramesh said...

@rads - LOL ! What else do I do if I don't know anything outside of the mundane stuff - of the fair damsels, of romance in the air, of passion in the heart, of feelings that tear apart the sky, of emotions that pour out as boiling lava,...... as Preeti would no doubt say .....

Preeti Shenoy said...

Ramesh, Most of the great movies have these very qualities that I have mentioned. The human element and deep sensitivity and triumph of Human spirit above all else.(not referring to only love and romance but it is a part of a movie--just as it is a part of life.
Do watch the following if you can
1.Shawshank Redemption.
2.The Bucket list
3.Good will Hunting
I am sure you wont regret watching them.

Cheers
Preeti

Ajay said...

In continuation of Preeti's comment above, while you're at it, watch "I am Sam" and "Forrest Gump" too if you haven't already watched these :)
Of all the cities you named for all the different reasons, I haven't been to even one!! And I thought of myself as a traveller :)

Ramesh said...

@ Preeti & Ajay - Thanks so much for the recommendations.Will slowly work down the list. Have seen none of them; but that's not a surprise at all.

Emma said...

Ramesh, you have been to Sindri!!! Thats a place very close to my heart. I grew up there. :-)

Ramesh said...

Oh - didn't know that Emma. I use to go there in the early 80s. The dhaba outside the fertiliser factory actually closed immediately after the worker's lunch hour, which for some reason ended at 1.00 !

Blog Archive

Featured from the archives