A loss and a gain

We've lost our first employee today. Ravi decided to start something of his own, uncomfortably close to our location unfortunately. To be fair signs were there, and we did try to keep him. But we're happy that he's trying out something closer to his heart and wish him success.

However he provided us a very short notice. Since we've just started and are operating well below capacity, we can absorb his departure. However this could have put us in a spot in other circumstances. And its important to the continuity of the business that employees provide sufficient notice of their intention to quit so that planning a transition is possible. We did have an understanding to this respect with our employees, but nothing formal. So while there was nothing stopping Ravi from leaving on one day's notice, there was nothing stopping us from holding his salary back either.

It could be a dilemma. What do you do? Should you penalise your employee for not sticking to the terms of employment? Or should you accept the fact that employees are not bound to work for you and can quit when they please?

At this point it is a no brainer. He was not contractually obliged to work for us. So we have to pay him what is due to him.

And it is only fair to do so. There may be a counter argument that putting a penalty will deter othe employees from taking similar steps. However I don't think it holds much water. There must be better ways to make our employees loyal to us and ensure that the business' success is aligned with their well being. We need to find what these ways are, but we are certain that penalizing is counter productive in the long run. Soma says it best 'Kisi ka bura kar ke mera koi bhala nehi hone waala'. Besides, penalties need to be contractually binding, and at this point there is no contract between our employees and ourselves.

Anyway, so we lost Ravi today, but we do not have plans to replace him yet.

Also I've made a few changes to our website http://www.pinkandbluespa.com/. If you type the url or if you type 'pink and blue spa' it does come on top of google results. So there is some definite progress there.

I also tried to put some meta tags etc to the pages for SEO. The main reason is that it is important to have a better search ranking when searching for the hobby classes Soma conducts. Right now, we're nowhere in the search results, so that means we're not ranked yet. It could be because Google may have not crawled these pages on our site yet. However I am confident that once crawled, my work today should improve our Google ranking. So the first priority is ensuring Google continues to crawl our site. To effect this we're trying to leave a link to our site wherever possible (which basically means our blogs and facebook profiles). Don't know how far it will get us though. Any help from readers are welcome.

Pink and Blue Spa

Its been a long time since I've written. I'd almost forgotten that I had a blog:)

But yeah, today I decided to try some credentials out and try and access my blog again. And voila success. Not sure what to write though. There is so much to update since I've last posted.

One of the biggest things we've done however is to start a spa in Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore. Its called Pink and Blue. We've got a website as well for it http://www.pinkandbluespa.com/. Its been a month and a half since we've started. In addition to the spa Soma also conducts hobby classes there. She teaches soap making, candle making, terracotta making and other hobby classes in a workshop that we converted out of a room in our spa. To be fair the workshop/classes are much more popular than the spa has been so far. However occasionally we've had decent responses for our spa services as well.

It'll probably be nice to track the progress of the spa and hobby classes through this blog, if of course I keep posting regularly. I intend to, honestly. I don't know if anybody reads this blog anymore though. If you do, please drop a note.

Also a request, if you have a blog or some other website, could you please link/refer to our website http://www.pinkandbluespa.com/ in someway. Desperate to get this into google search results. Its a very crude website right now though, I'm updating it in whatever time I get between meetings and work in office. But its a challenge to drive traffic to this, since we intend to use this website to market/book our spa services, hobby classes as well as sell some stuff (good stuff if I may say so myself) through this website.

I intend to write to see how that progresses as well.

Surrender of Swat

Not satisfied with the imposition of the shariah in the Swat valley, the Taliban has extended its campaign to extend shariah to the rest of Pakistan. Pakistan, the land of the liberal muslim, whose electorate has rejected islamic parties in general elections, atleast till now. It will be interesting to observe whether the mostly silent, liberal muslim majority can hold fort against the fundamentalist minority intend on tarnishing reputations. Will there be further concessions, or a complete surrender, or will the great majority actually fight back to preserve what they hold dear.
What happened in Germany can well be repeated in Pakistan. A few Germans may have been fanatics, but the entire nation was complicit in what ensued. The world was brought to war. It will be fun to see how this drama plays out.

Ajmal Kasab

Is the Shiv Sena affilaited to the Taliban/Pakistan? Or is Ajmal Kasab a Marathi Manoos?
Else why will the Shiv Sena help Kasab by delaying his trial? It just doesn't make sense. Earlier when even lawyers, who you know, were supposed to be educated and some even know the law, decided to refuse to defend terror suspects thereby either impairing the validity of their trials or delaying them indefinitely, you had to wonder what was going on. The legal system has also been compromised by terror sympathisers?

I doubt there has been a proper closure on any terror acts in the recent past. It was only last year that the 1994 blast accused were convicted. In others cases like Godhra, rest of Gujerat, Maligaon, Samjhauta express, IISC, 7/11 in Mumbai, Jaipur, Guwahati again and again, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai taj etc all we see are the common smokescreens. Foreign element allegations, a shameless SOS to uncle Sam, alleged police encounters, alleged this.. alleged that.. by the common suspects, political rallys by rightwing groups followed by a morality lesson, another debate on anti terror laws, another on police and intelligence incompetence, lawyer tamasha, legal hurdles and finally tragic apathy on the case, the victims and the victim families by various state institutions.

Maybe we should be invoking the right to information act on the progress on terror cases. One feels that the state is going cold on cases once the initial public outcry subsides.

4 years

To this:)
Wow! Couldn't have imagined that what started out as a small bus ride changed our lives completely. While I was a aimless drifter, I now am a family man. The young girl so completely lost in her small world of thesis, friends and aversion to carbonated drinks has now become my partner and guide in life. The house I lived in is now a home. Furniture, neatness, show pieces, kaam waali bai, small and big fights, inquisitive neighbours, our own private space.......we have it all. We have goals, and reasons to acheive them. We have each other's families that we love, and love to talk about. And most importantly we have each other.

So for all that, thank you love! I know you weren't too keen on marriage when we first met each other. I know that I am not all you would have wanted in your husband, neither am I not all that you did not want in him. But I promise to cherish you and love you for the rest of my life.

SriLanka

Is a splendid country with miles and miles of a coastline. The entire country is a coastline. And has some awesome beaches. Just as awesome as the ones in Goa and Kovalam, although with fewer people. Much fewer people. So when I ended up in Colombo last week, with "Important" work to do, I had much less time for less important work. Like visiting the beaches. Luckily I was put up a quarter of a kilometer away from the Mount Lavinia beach.

The only pictures of SriLanka I have now are the early morning snaps of the beach. Unfortunately they look just like the early morning snaps I have of other beaches I visited. Very similar too to some mobile screensavers including my father in laws. The only difference maybe the fewer people on the beaches in SriLanka compared to say Goa. But that may be because its early morning and SriLankans don't jog a lot. Few do. Few need to actually. SriLankans I must say are and exceptionally healthy collection of people. Maybe because of all the Indian food they eat and Indian music they dance to.

One learning from this trip is that first time foreign travellers from India should not have SriLanka on the top of their wish list. You might as well go to your local beach in the morning and click some pictures there, go home and have some sea food for lunch, and visit your nearest cinema hall for the latest hindi movie in the afternoon. You can do all this at home and avoid the air fare.

Some of the best beach pictures my wife and I don't have are the ones we took in Juhu beach with the favorite camera that we don't have. It sucks to lose your camera during your honeymoon.

Musings

The US is the worlds largest consumer, especially China's. China in turn holds a quarter of dollar forex reserves. China lends this money back to the US and the US banks to its consumers who in turn buy 'made in china'. Now with the liquidity crisis, and some sort of economic realisation, if consumers borrow less and spend less, Chinese exports will take a hit. If exports drop sufficiently to weaken the trade dependency, China would sell some of its forex reserves for which it could call on some of its debt to the US.

With the current trade deficit, America needs debt to sustain its economy, and additional debt to service the initial debt. Till before this crisis the world saw the US as a credit worthy entity. If the worlds creditor nations see the US's credit worthiness drop, expect debt getting more costly.
If nations reduce their dollar holdings the dollar will devalue, which in the current climate will only accentuate inflationary pressures on it thus increasing the expected yields on holding the dollar, of course through treasury bonds etc.

Thus this flight to liquidity, where people are buying treasury bonds moving away from corporate bonds might be flipped right on its head. Treasury bonds will get cheaper, so there will come a time when one would want to go short on treasury bonds. The only issue is finding something to go long on.