Bangkok - Siem Reap - Phnom Penh - Bangkok - Overland Simplified

After a lot of research online, reading numerous blogs, travel forums I concluded that making the overland trip would be, to quote an unknown source, 'a journey to be undertaken only if you are a masochist'. Numerous reports of touts, cartels of taxi & bus drivers, corrupts officers at checkpoints more so on the Cambodian side, made me expect the worst. At some point I was even confused whether I would make it all, whether I should just book an expensive direct flight to Siem Reap.

I'm listing down my experience to help future travellers understand how easy it is & not believe the outdated reports on many travel forums.

Bangkok to Siem Reap via Aranyaprathet (Thai border town) & Poi Pet (Khmer border town)

Bangkok - Aranyaprathet
There were multiple ways to reach Aranyprathet from Bangkok, cheapest being a direct train for THB 48 that takes 8 hours leaves twice a day once in morning and then again in afternoon. Accounts of multiple travellers I met at border confirmed it was comfortable & not prone to delays. Morning train is advisable as immigration offices close at 8:00 pm and you might have to spend the night in a hotel at Aranyaprathet.

Another option was a bus to Aranyaprathet which is what I took. They start leaving from Mo Chit Bus Terminal every 30 minutes from 3:30 am at cost about THB 209. Duration of journey is 5 hours.

Joint - Combine - Multiple Country Visas

As someone who cherishes solo travelling, I keep looking for information that can be helpful for my future travel plans. One of the most daunting task for any traveler is getting the Visa. If you have planned a multi-country trip on your own, you would have spent hours reading about all the requirements/documents for obtaining the Visa for various countries in the itinerary. It is a major hassle.

But there are these joint or combined Visas that can really reduce this headache. Knowing about them and utilizing them can save a lot of time and help you have the peace of mind while travelling. I googled multiple times to get an exhaustive list of such joint offerings but couldn't find one. So I decided to create one myself. Do send me any information that you've come across in your own research.

Totems of Indian Youth in 2015

Cashback Toh Banta Hai

It’s no more an ingenious marketing campaign for an upcoming brand to accelerate adoption. Cashbacks have become the new normal. From cabs to self-drive cars, groceries to gadgets Indian Youth today expects deals every time they take a buck out of their wallets.

Pampered by startups that have splurged their Venture Capital for customer acquisition, Indian Youth’s thirst for cashbacks and deals has even affected established brands. They do not want to compromise on quality as well. This new all demanding customer segment knows a bit too many price comparison sites for a marketers liking. The segment has an attention span of a goldfish. They’ll download your app to get that lucrative cashback deal, but don’t expect them to ever use it again unless you delivered Customer Delight in that one tiny interaction.

­­This new customer segment is taking competition to another level, wafer thin margins, absolutely cutting edge service levels and flawless customer service are just hygiene factors, companies will have to innovate fast to survive and delight the Indian Youth every time to succeed.

Looking beyond stereotypes and generalizations!

I was onboard Aeroflot flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Had dozed off and woke up with a start as the plane landed. As it taxied through the runway, instead of standing up and reaching out for their baggages as they do in India, to my surprise passenger on the flight started clapping. I was clueless as to what just happened.

Had it been just few weeks earlier, I'd have formed some opinion about this event and moved on. But today I'm an enlightened man. After attending the Cross-Cultural Management course, I know its important to know, why does it happen? Peculiarities of each country, their eccentricities, whims and fancies! It all happens for a reason.

Why are Indian always late? Why do Saudis treat women.. erm so badly? Why are Danes known for innovation?

All these and more can be explained. Cultural dimensions. It is possible to analyse each and every country's DNA using these dimensions and understand the nuances of their cultures.

Youth can have political aspirations again

As Arvind Kejriwal swore in as Chief Minister of New Delhi today, I could feel something changing within me. I knew million others of my age would be feeling the same change.

India is young. People talk about the country's demographic dividend. It has been benefiting us in some many spheres of life, the shiniest beacon of this success being the IT Services industry. It has grown at an unprecedented scale in recent past. One field of life which was nearly untouched by this energetic youth was Politics. The most crucial part aspect for any country's growth. Young people like me have been skeptic of joining politics. The reason isn't because they wish to play safe, or because they were no willing to serve the society/country.

I have a lot of talented friends, who are natural leaders. Who have the will to serve the society, but they don't want to join politics. They volunteer for NGOs. Teach in slums, orphanages. Do all sorts of things but do not have political aspirations. Even when they know that, it is the avenue to trigger the biggest change. I

When I turned 18, I was excited, I could vote. I could participate in electing the next government for my state, my country. I went to the polling booth, I was confused. There was no one who I could vote for. None of the contestants were pursuing an agenda which I was interested in. This is the reason why a lot of young people still don't vote.

There has been a buzz in the media. In next general elections there will 120 million first time voters. It is a huge number but wouldn't have been take seriously by the political parties hadn't it been to the turn of events in last 2 years. (An unintended revolution)

Before I delve deeper into what has changed, I would like to enumerate reasons why I couldn't participate in the elections when I was eligible for the first time to vote. There are a large number of political parties in our country, but they have been contesting elections of issues which were relevant back in 1980s. Some parties do stand up for things that look beyond the political horizon, talk about growth and progress, but their are other factors that would hinder an aspiring young leader from joining them.

• Congress is the undoubtedly the single largest party in country, with a rich legacy. But today it has degraded into a mediocre undemocratic organization, which bows before 'the chosen one'. The excellent cadre system destroyed, you need to know more about 'chamchagiri' than politics to rise through the ranks.
• BJP the only other national party, cannot distance itself from the fundamentalist sister organizations, VHP & RSS. The ideological narrow mindedness means that it will never have the country wide acceptance.
• Regional parties like RJD, BSP, SP who cater to a specific target group, generally identified by a caste.

In this political scene, a person would have to make a compromise with himself before actually entering in the fray to do good. I personally registered for membership two times, but couldn't do that.

Nitish Kumar in Bihar seemed the only person who didn't have these vices attached. Maybe a few others in Southern India.

In this environment Arvind Kejriwal has broken boundaries. There is a brand new politics, which focuses on contemporary issues. A person of middle class has reminded us again, that you don't have to belong to a particular family or caste to become a politician. Something which was lost after independence, sons & grandsons ascended constituencies from their fathers.

I'm hopeful again, that politics will once again become a passion, it has been a profession for too long.

This gives me hope: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lal-bahadur-shastris-grandson-adarsh-shastri-leaves-job-at-apple-to-join-aap/articleshow/28022852.cms

It was not just another HR course

Second day of the second quarter it was the second lecture of the day. The time table said it was time for Individual Dynamics in Organization. An HR course! I had had an experience of HR courses in my engineering days. They were always theoretical, always monotonous, always boring. Whether it was Industrial Psychology or Industrial Sociology, most of them would look appealing in the beginning but after the initial few lectures there would be mass bunks especially planned for them. Not that they weren't interesting, but usually because the class would fail to see what value they would add to an engineering student. Credits and marks for these subjects required just a lot swotting, the last night before the exam.

On these lines were my expectations from this new course. At-least two credits would be easy to earn, one sixth of the quarter was only done. I expected myself to doze in the lectures.

With such stereotype already built in my mind I sat expectantly to see who the professor was, what would be her grading, was she more focused on end-quarter exams or there would be assignments? Will there group assignments or the boring individual ones.

The class started, the professor swept in with a smile on her face. Asked us to form groups of eight. We were to discuss about the best and worst class that we had ever attended. Focusing on those two classes, we had to recall what the professor had done, and what the students had done in those classes.

An end and a new beginning.

Last few weeks have flashed past so fast that I hardly remember any of the events in detail. A journey that began of September, 14th, 2009 ended. Everything that I put together in the period of four years in engineering fell apart in a flash. There was no time for emotions. The world was now glaring at me, it isn't too kind to a graduate. I was well prepared for this moment. I've been hunting down every opportunity that I could lay my hands on, preparing for this moment of realization.

I had secured a job at Tata Consultancy Services Limited through the campus recruitment process. So I wasn't gonna be jobless. But fours years in a private engineering colleges had already taught me one thing: never settle down for what you have. Once you're satisfied with your life; it is finished. This hunger wasn't there when I had finished schooling. At the point of time, I was content. But this time I was ready, I already has decided that before even appearing in the interview, that if I get selected in TCS, I wont join. The offer letter was supposed to be a trophy of my first kill.

I had planned it all through, if I didn't get an awesome job, I'd go for higher education. Get a tag from an Institute of National Importance and bask in the glory of being a part of it for the next two years. Life was kind to me, I fared well in the entire MBA admissions procedure, the CAT, the group discussions and the interviews. I hadn't left Lucknow for most part of the 20 years my existence. If I did, I was only to Allahabad.The whole process of B-School hunting took me to new places, alone. My parents supported me, bearing all the expenses of these trips to Delhi, the tickets, the hotel stays. This exercise gave me a lot of self-confidence. I always was poor in facing interviews in my college life, but those 30 minute sessions with the some of the best professors in country helped me get over this shortcoming.

Who Am I?

As an informal assignment the seniors from the B-School that I'd probably be joining shortly, asked us to create a fish-bone diagram or an Ishikawa diagram to answer the question 'Who Am I?'. Though I never submitted an assignment during my graduation, I decided to turn over a new leaf this time around.

An Ishikawa or a fish-bone diagram for 'Who Am I?'

I love it when a plan comes together

It has been a roller coaster ride since I got my CAT result on 9 January. In this period, I have been to about a dozen of B-school and job interviews where I usually feel nervous, to the dozen of B-school Group Discussion where I feel quite at ease. Interviewed about 50 odd students myself in the recruitment for my Drams club. Organized the Annual fest of my college. And experienced betrayals, success, loneliness, bankruptcy and whatnot.

After three months of doing stuff that I did because 'a man gotta do what a man gotta do' I was finally jobless again on April 15th. I had been busy, but something that was more important than all of this had been put on the back-burner. My final year project. Something that I'd talk about when I'm old and lose all my teeth. The glorious feeling of creating a software system. It took me 6 months to zero down to a topic. I wanted it to be something new, a project which had never been made before. My quest for a novel idea, was unfruitful. So decided to go on an adventure ride on a topic I had no idea about. I have decided to create the replica of Skydrive or the Googledrive. Though it has already been invented, I decided to create a cloud file storage system of my own, which I thought was sufficiently difficult.

The First Battle: down but not defeated

My life has been an easy one. I never had to try hard to get anything. You can say that I have been cruising through these years. Most of this comfort is due to the fact that nobody expected much from me. I've been better than average all through my life, but never the best.

After some odd 20 years of same life, one is bound to get bored. I also fell prey to the same fate. A dormant trait, ambition, activated itself. Now I was wondering how to pull myself out of the stream, in which I had been flowing along for all these years, and which definitely was leading me to a life of mediocre. So I started planning, with my graduation underway, there were two options. A better job or a better education. From my profile I could only land myself a software job, which isn't very hard to get in the current IT boom. Everyone has one. So it was better education that I needed. This path forked out into technical or managerial education. Here it was an obvious choice, management education. High return on investment and a degree that makes you fit for working in almost every field.

So it began, the war for MBA.

An unintended revolution

When Anna Hazare sat down for his anshan at Jantar Mantar, on 5 April 2011, he had an agenda on his mind. He wanted to uproot corruption from India. A nearly impossible task, corruption has mingled so beautifully into our social fabric that, that we all have a blind eye for it. When an officer gets a bundle of crisp new currency notes, it is termed as a gift for the family and children. It is never for him. When one has to cough up more money than what is legitimately payable for any government service, one never feels extorted or bribed, it is more likely to be considered as 'Suvidha Shulk' - (Convenience Fee) a small amount of money which one can afford and others cannot. It must really feel good to stamp their financial superiority on others as people cruise up the long line, get their work done while others sweat there for hours. Same goes with our administrators, politicians, representatives and other elected people of authority. When they cut their commission from the public budget, they feel it is morally justified. It is a small compensation for the years of public service, even the people running NGOs draw their livelihood from the donations don't they?

In such social atmosphere how could a person with no organizational support? How could he fight a crusade against corruption? Will people turn against themselves? Was the 'society' mature enough to introspect and clean itself from sins that the members of the society loved to commit?

Anyone with a sane mind would know that this was not even a possibility. Even Hazare must have known, because instead of aiming at corruption in society in general with a cannon, he targeted corruption in politicians and ministers with an sniper rifle.

India after Gandhi - Ramachandra Guha

Cover of the Indian Edition

India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy written by Ramachandra Guha. I would just like to thank the author for this great piece of Literature. It has given immense faith to me in Indian Democracy and its eccentric ways. It is a must read for everyone.

I've read books since I was a kid, a journey from Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys to the Classic Fiction of Jules Verne & H.G. Wells, to the fantasy of J.K Rowling and Tolkien, but India after Gandhi was my first venture into the uncharted waters of non-fiction. If it were to normal circumstances I wouldn't have ever come across this book. A lot of credit goes to PurpleLeap, a foe to the student fraternity of BBDGEI, who organized a Blogmaster contest and awarded me with a Gift Voucher of Flipkart to buy an Apple Ipod.

Uninterested in music I browsed through the site and decided to buy books, and bought all the box-sets and collections, and with them I also carelessly bought this book. I wondered if I would ever read whole of this book, which seems an epic of 900 pages.

As I started reading the Prologue of this book, it was literally a moment of awakening. In the opening few pages Guha explains why India is a peculiar nation, why it is an exception to most of the notions of a country. The ideas and facts presented are known to nearly every aware Indian, but when you observe them in the light of comparisons  with Europe, America, Africa and other Asian countries, it really makes you feel proud about India. Every page of this books fills the mind with nostalgia.

Guha brings about the best in everyone from the society in this book, the freedom fighter turned politicians are depicted as the founding fathers of the nation. The ICS servicemen who were the perpetrators in the crime of helping an Imperial power enslave their own motherland are also glorified for their services after freedom, which was necessary to bind the different states, with their own culture, language, and glorious history into a single Union of India. He really turns the post-independence India into some adventurous world, just like the Middle Earth. The first general elections after Independence is termed as the biggest gamble in the history of the world. He celebrates the democracy throughout the book, not only in India, but also in Indian National Congress, the largest political party.

The Paradox of Indian Politics

'There are two ways of making politics one’s vocation: Either one lives “for” politics or one lives “off” it' - the great German sociologist Max Weber once remarked.

In our case, we are today dominated by the later case. Our political leaders would face massive unemployment if they stopped being political leaders. Firstly most of them have businesses which would not be profitable if they do not control the state machinery. The ventures in real estate, infrastructure and liquor licenses do not require skills of entrepreneurship as much as they require favors from public administration. In order to get land allocated at dirt cheap rates or to get licenses and tenders within weeks, you have to be a relative of an MLA or an MP. To bring such prosperity in ones family, people do have to overlook interests of general public.

After independence, the old guard of Congress that ruled India for a decade, was one which lived for politics, they weren't in it for personal interests. Their ideology was defined by the examples of Tilak, Nehru and Gandhi. Austerity was a habit. Pandit Nehru didn't win every general election of his time by rigging elections or by spending more on his election campaign that his rivals. He was successful because of his moral authority. A leader of his stature would still debate with his opposition, accept their better suggestions over his own ideas, listen to his own party's leaders who, though lesser than him, still had their opinions. The famous Kamaraj plan, in which the chief ministers and cabinet ministers of Congress resigned to dispel the lure of power and work for their organization could only have been possible in that era.

The first scam of Independent India.

Today corruption is probably the most debated topic in India. It has its roots so deep, it seems impossible to imagine a nation which would be corruption free, an honest state working for the betterment of its people, a paradise where rulers may seek power, but do not seek wealth. A government that is uninterested in profit.

I always believed in goodness of our folks, it always intrigued me, how a country which was united against the British just 50 years back, overthrowing one of the greatest powers of history by practicing non-violence, degrade to such lowly state, where people who are supposed to be our brothers and sisters, exhort bribes from their own countrymen, steal the money for medicines of poor, sell-out their motherland's security for the love of Gandhi (printed on notes).

In the beginning of the great adventure of building a new country from the numerous identities of diverse princely states, linguistic identities, tribes and religions, the people involved were those who were real nationalists, who has loved this country more that their lives, people who had sacrificed their youth for freedom, people who had been lathicharged, assaulted, abused and massacred everyday, for centuries oppressed and enslaved, this soul of India had finally found utterance. For a decade everyone evolved in governance had been a freedom fighter, though now very good in administration, economics, management or statistics, they were guided by the love for their nation. Pandit Jawarhar Lal Nehru, guided us through the troubled waters of partition, the Kashmir issue, the tribal trouble, the communists, the right wing opportunists and other divisors. But after a decade there finally arrived peace.

But as they rightly say, with greater peace, comes greater prosperity. A country ruled for a decade by a single party which was virtually unopposed, meant that the entire government was running with full accelerator and no-brakes. No opposition brings great evils. And short-sighted communal opposition brings greater evils. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha and similar parties had just one agenda, Hindutva, such communal forces had to be thwarted at all costs, but a progressive modern opposition was the need of the hour, sadly though our country still doesn't have one.

The World of Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien's monogram.

As I watched The Hobbit today, I was intrigued by the level of grandeur and the expansive of the plot. It was quite different from what I had read in the book by Tolkien. I started googling stuff that I thought wasn't sure was a part of the original story, like the sequence about Thorin Oakenshield & Azog is depicted, it was not in the book. I didn't think that these padding could have been invented by Peter Jackson, just to stretch the movie series into a trilogy. On further research I found the there more to the children's tale of the Hobbit than what meets the eye.

Those who have seen the The Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been impressed with imagination of the parallel world created in the movies. The adaptation of the books has been done quite intelligently in contrast to what is usually seen when movies are based on novels, they usually leave the fans begging for more. But with this particular trilogy it is like watching imagination come to life. (I experienced this in reverse though, watched the movies and then read the books.) It is still a mystery to me though, that why didn't the fantasy fiction of Tolkien get the popularity and hype that it deserved. I presume that it is just because he never wrote for the sake of writing novels. Most of his books and literature has been salvaged from his letters to friends, and his notes, by his son Christopher. The father of modern fantasy fiction only published the Hobbit and TLOTR. But in fact he had created a whole new universe. The Middle Earth.

When everyone's a super, no one is.

Nowadays you could just throw a rock, and you're bound to hit a Software Engineer. I myself am one of them. So this is some kind of a confession as I am completing my graduation.

Today, a majority of Computer Engineers in our country don't even have a clue about what is happening inside a computer. The toughest computer problem that they know how to solve successfully is, finding the factorial of a number, or checking whether a number is prime or not. I could do them when I was at school, so I threw away all my college time, thinking I was way ahead of others, but now I realize, though its a bit late, that I never was even a peeling of a real Bachelor of Technology.

Memorable slogans of Indian politics

Even in times when the Bollywood has been accused of getting 'inspired' from foreign works quite frequently, there has been a plenty of room for authentic creativity in the Indian political sphere. The nameless poets of these witty, simple and memorable slogans popularized their causes using these catchy lines.
I've listed some quite famous and witty ones that I've come across.




Any story about Indian Democracy would be incomplete without these.

"Chini hamla hote hain, Menon sahab sote hain Sona hai to sone do, Kriplani ji to aane do."	चीनी हमला होते हैं , मेनन साहब सोते हैं  सोना है तो सोने दो  कृपलानी जी तो आने दो !
Against Defence Minister  V. K. Menon for complacency during the War in 1962
"Jana Sangh ko vote do, Bidi peena chhod do, Bidi me tambaaku hai, Congress waale daaku hain."	जन संघ को वोट दो, बीडी पीना छोर दो, बीडी में तम्बाकू है, कांग्रेस वाले डाकू हैं!
By Jana Sangh in the General Elections of 1967
"Janata ka dil bol raha hai, Indira ka singhasan dol raha hai"	जनता का दिल बोल रहा है  इंदिरा का सिंघासन दोल रहा है !
In JP's Revolution of 1975

India & Indians

Every morning, he comes to our home, rings the bell and calls out, "auntie koodaaa, auntie koodaaa de dijiye...". Someone comes out, still sleepy, "Arey chhotu jhaadu to laga de, gobar saaf kar de sadak ka, theek se kar sab ganda pada hai".

The kids gets just Rs. 30 from every home for a month. How can people be so apathetic?

Aren't we hypocrites? In restaurants, in shops, everywhere around us, childhood is being murdered, and all we have to say is how the f*cking government  is a big failure. It failed to implement the Right to Education, the Midday meal, ban child labor... stop playing the blame game friends, we are the reason of our collective failure.

Prologue

I'm a new to this blogging business. I've read a few, but writing one myself was never my plan. I wondered how people could waste their time writing such stuff as blogs, and yet there was an even more unimaginable class of men - those who'd waste even greater reading them. Yet here I am, with a blog of my own. This blog is in fact only to put in my ideas, before I forget them (I generally do), and also to straighten up my ideology, which is quite shaky (imagine a bin pendi ka lota xD). I get inspired too easily, sometimes a bit carried away, I have this feeling, that I always tend to have strong feelings; I feel too strongly about something or else, I don't feel about it at all.

Now you'd be wondering why does it matter what I feel about, there are a hell lot people, feeling strongly about a hell lot of things. Why should I be of such importance? Buddy, because I'm a professional inspirer (wonder if such word even exists) but I ain't boasting. When I feel strongly about something, I make sure that every around also shares my views, anyone within the reach of my tiny influence zone, has to bear with me about arguments, ideas and stuff until they agree (my friends would surely say aye to that). So you see its quite important that I be an unwavering, stoic, robust, remorseless... whatever, who clearly knows what his stand is about something. But this isn't the case I shift so much, take U turns, and then contradict anybody who'd point out to my previous ideologies as something that I could never ever have imagined. (This is the reason why I started writing this blog, because you desperately need some proofs against me :P)

I love debates, I can debate about anything, take either of the sides and still win.

You and I know its not true, but if someone would say it to you confidently and coolly, I'm sure most of us will believe him, and maybe shy away from a potential discussion, this is one of the first lessons that I learned in college, and that's the trick of this decade, especially in India, you can achieve so much with this trick believe me.

Oh well, we are getting offtrack and well guess you're starting to get influenced by me. lol. Anyways as I was saying that I tend to have strong feelings about stuff and I love taking stands but the problem my North and South poles keep swapping so frequently that, even I get frustrated. You'd be wondering what is the stimulus of the sudden change of hearts? Well, even a professional inspirer like me has a few inspirers. I read. By that I mean I read a lot. Yes, keep scrolling my mobile, browsing BBC, TOI, Telegraph, CNN, WaPo, PC World whole whole day (bless the Opera Mini 4.4) So when I read about the heads more, I stand up for the heads, make sure every one knows that I'm from one of the die-hard supporter of heads, but then gradually I   start getting curious about who the hell is Tails, why does he oppose Heads? Then I read all about the Tails, and yeah sure, in ninety percent cases, Mr. Tails gets a new die-hard man! 8)

Lets have an example about I then, shall we? because I love explaining with examples.

When I was a kid, about 15, I had no access to computers, well really, so one fine day, some how I managed to fool my dad into buying me a new Laptop. I get this machine and I'm excited, but I've nothing much to do with it, I could already watch DVDs and play games, what to do with it? (I had no internet connection :|, for those who're raising their brows about why I didn't explore the pword :P)

So I started reading the help files of Windows, I read it all about Windows Vista Home Basic help, I Vista met with its strongest fan ever. I couldn't believe how people could criticize Vista? Vista was the ultimate operating system. I could defend Vista against a dozen XP supporters, withstand their siege for months. And then this bright day dawns, I get the internet, I read about XP, and I'm one of the most ardent ally of XP. No issues eh, not really, I'm made half of those dozen Xp'ian install Vista :P When I took the U-Turn, I vehemently denied ever siding up with Vista, the most useless piece of software ever released by MS. Though there were several many obvious reasons why Vista was once my favorite, take Windows Aero for instance, but as I've already mentioned I forgot most of them.

So atlast I have a blog!

Its been a long time since I've been reading blogs of my friends and celebs, but I never thought I would create one myself.. but here I am!

Though, I created this blog just to get a blog URL that I needed to fill in a registration form, but now I might post here once in while, because it will help me to do some soul-searching to pour out my reflections in the form of words. A task which seems so simple that, even its simplicity appears to be complex!

Three Cheers for my new blog!!

Hip Hip Hurray!