Raju Alluri’s Personal Blog

Got a new work laptop, the DELL Vostro 1400 (the one with T5270 and Windows XP). This configuration runs better than what I have with Vista. In the midst of meetings, configured this box with OpenOffice, VirtualBox and CentOS as one of the guests. The guest install of OpenSolaris b79a failed for some reason, during the partition selection and install phase. Need to debug it one of these nights. As of now, the current setup keeps me going.

Flew from Los Angeles (Ontario airport) to San Jose this morning. Got a ride from Ravi early in the morning to Ontario airport. The SouthWest airlines flight is on time, pleasant and there are no hiccups at either checkin or baggage collection. In fact, the Ontario airport experience is better than last year, in terms of time it took for security clearance and boarding.

Picked up by Varma at the airport and settling in San Jose office of NetEnrich.

This week, I traveled for the first time by Malaysian airlines to US. Their hospitality is good, but their logistics need a big change. I can quote several examples for the logistics issues. When I checked in at Hyderabad, they gave me a boarding pass to Kuala Lumpur, but said that I need to check in again at Kuala Lumpur for the onward journey to LAX. The flight itself is dealyed by about an hour, shrinking the transit time from two hours. Within that time, more than 100 passengers lined up to get new boarding passes for the transit. Our family of 3 are put up in the plane at two different places. I hat to make some adjustments by requesting the co passengers so that I can take good care of my kids during the long haul. Even their boarding procedures need to change and should be based on row numbers. Their flight from HYD to KUL has only a projection based entertainment system and it is difficult to keep kids engaged for about 4 hours.

Their hospitality is very good though. Really on par with Singapore Airlines, the best I have seen in the industry. I am very pleased with smiling faces and helping attitude of their cabin crew. At one point they are actually concerned that Spurthi and Surya didn’t consume much during the last meal of the flight. They offered a few alternatives including instant noodles. Overall, they made it a pleasant flight.

When I sit back and retrospect during my flight journey to US, up came these interesting facts.

• This is my first ever flight journey with Spurthi in about 13 years. She traveled with me last time in 1995, when I came to US for the first time.
• This is my first international travel with Surya. Last time I traveled by air with him is in 2001, for a short trip to Redmond-WA from Bay Area.

Having made umpteen flight travels in the last decade or so, these facts are really interesting. Latha traveld with Spurthi and Surya by flights more than I did.

I am on a business trip to US. Right now I am in Los Angeles area with Ravi and Sunitha for the weekend. Spurthi and Surya traveled along with me and are going to stay with Ravi/Sunitha for the next seven weeks.

I am heading to Bay Area on Monday. Will be there for at least a couple of months.

More for my US trip

• DVDs
• Seema Sastri (Telugu)
• Audio
• Jodha-Akbar
• Parugu
• A combination CD of Krishna, Swagatham and Vaana

Here is a quick list

• DVDs
• Yamadonga (Telugu)
• Don (Telugu)
• Sholay (The Classic)
• Qurbani
• Jab We Met
• Satruvu (Telugu, 1990s)
• My Friend Ganesha
• Audio CDs
• Jalsa
• Kantri
• U Me aur Hum
• Saawariya
• Taare Zameen Par (again)

Part of the travel shopping.

Two events from Sun Labs and Microsoft Research in recent times: The Sun Labs Open House and the Microsoft Techfest. Would for sure give a preview of the technologies we would see in future products from them.

Godrej’s Cinthol is my favorite soap for situations like hot summers and post sweaty activities. Godrej recently relaunched an improved range of Cinthol. I stumbled up on a well shot advertisement featuring Hrithik Roshan and Cinthol during my short TV time earlier this week. Despite being well shot, will this advertisement take the product range to the younger generation of consumers? Will it considerably improve the sales of this good product? We need to wait and see.

A short sidetrack from the techie side of me: They might have spent a few crores of rupees on the advertisement, but their brand website for Cinthol (linked from their product page) greets with Apache webserver’s welcome page. They should have spent a few thousands ironing this one out!