Kare... Really!?

this is about my recent experience with some of the salons in the city, n they belong to CavinKare groups.

a Sunday noon n with 'v' visiting me over the week coming, i thought it was high time i got to do something about my messy hair.

Green Trends, the Unisex Spa & Salon, the CavinKare group companies, just half a km away from home, thought it may be a right place to try it out. i had visited them before several times for relatively smaller services n was satisfied with this lady who used to attend me. though i knew that they cost double for just a simple threading compared to the normal salons, i felt its ok. cuz i found the place to be pretty spacious. cleanliness is ok, i wouldn't say it is great, they don't keep mopping the floor or whatever, particularly the manicure/pedicure room inside - no comments about it.

being a Sunday noon, the salon hardly had customers. the moment i entered and asked them for a straightening, there were a bunch of gals around me, recommending me to go for rebonding.

For me all that matters then was the cost. A simple straightening costs around 3k plus tax (for medium hair), 2.5k plus tax (for short hair) and rebonding was like 3.5 + tax for short and 4.5+ tax for medium.

there was a female who does the receptionist + service work there and she went on stressing me to go for rebonding and that would give me less post process maintenance efforts. i did not really want to spend so much over it. and after a few mins of calls, discussions with friends etc i decided to go for straightening.

moreover, the length of my hair then was just an inch or 2 down the shoulders and they strictly told that they would consider it as medium length. half minded the service person started with the work, the first wash n now again she told me to go for rebonding. i asked her then that case consider it as short, i ll go for it and not medium.
having a razor cut already my hair was dense only on the top layer. she said she will trim it a bit and so they would consider it as short. i agreed n my so-called medium length became short with just less than half an inch of trimming.

the receptionist was not 'for' this infact and the attender spoke to the person on phone who is like the supervisor there i guess. I thought of the phone conversation what it must have been like and I'm sure this is the word of the attender "Rebonding short is still a profit for us compared to Straightening medium, almost around 500 bucks". the receptionist still kept cribbing over that lady for nodding to this whole deal of small-medium thingie and that's a different story.

after that she went on n the whole process took a whopping 6+ hrs to get over. but after all that, at the end i was happy with the way they've done it. its almost 2+ months now and still the texture is maintained. with straightening i don't think it lasts this long. the main difference that they say between straightening and rebonding is that the latter is a 5 step process with 2 extra creams being used. they use something called 'finisher' at the end which settles down all the minutest hairs that usually pop up and make it look ugly, particularly during travel or even after a small drive for that matter.

the best part was they said they will give a hair spa free after the first wash. and ya.. the first wash comes for free as well. whatever smallest amount of math brain that I have started calculating then, that a hair spa would cost anywhere around 750-1000. so if I'm paying 4K, it works out to almost around 3+ with the complimentary. but only after I went for the first wash I realized what they meant by hair spa. this lady first washed my hair applied a conditioner and washed it. then she brought a potful of cream and she applied that, left it for 20 mins and that's it the spa is over. how bloody cheating!! Did I ever ask for it!? so this is the effect.

this is one part of the story.

next comes limelite. I've seen an outlet in Jaynagar 5th block. but never felt like trying it out. it looked more like an art gallery rather than a salon for me. i must say Green Trends that case is better by looks, they have the decent posters, banners or whatsoever, which make us realize 'ok this is a salon which I can enter with some good feel and come out without it being spoilt'. when I got my rebonding done, i was meanwhile enquiring about Limelite cuz its again a CavinKare Group of companies. the guy there told me that its an executive parlour, when I asked the difference he told me 'the rebonding that costs 4K here would cost 8K there'.. darn.. what a lovely explanation that a supposedly Marketing person could utter!!

another thing is that, the newly arrived Barclay-Times credit card came along with 5k gift vouchers which could be used at different outlets most of which were carrying off of different %. one of them were limelite. i had a 250 bucks limelite voucher, now that i can work out something with that, I decided to venture there over a weekend.

went for a bleach which cost a damn 325 bucks.

the point is, i was told that its an executive parlor but i literally had to search for executives there, not in numbers but by carriage. the hair cuts all happen in the ground floor and they have every variety of human kind dumped in like what we see in internet cafes, there is not even a screen placed between two couches. thankfully i was put in a room, where the inside furnishing was decent, completely made of wood. the flooring, the walls, the cot and dark brown varnish on them was an added beauty. the attender was not at all friendly! again language problem. i just left it to her, let her do whatever experiments she wanted to do from her childhood. outcome was not all that effective. but i was happy she did not spoil my face at the least.

things that dug my heel:

1. suggest me what is good and what is not, you may tell me the benefits of going for a particular service probably twice and that is also for you to have the satisfaction that you have done your job. this is the true meaning of "stakeholder's delight" that you talk about in my pov.

2. why do you have to go on telling me to go for the one which I have decided once that I'm not gonna go for it. the problem comes when this particular thing which you suggest is of higher cost! I only tend to think that you are simply greedy and making business out of me. ok.. That too is not a problem with me unless until you make such strong statements on consumer benefits.

3. needless to say the cheating part. spoiling the brand name. I agreed for something and if you are not happy with it, just tell me it doesnt work this way. what non sense! you tell me something and not do it. better they take care of the people whom they post at such important positions! otherwise you stand too good a chance to get your brand name spoilt overnight!!

4. the beauticians there are not that great! somewhere close to the mark, but not there absolutely. i have seen a couple of people who runs their own and do a fairly good job. 1st and foremost thing: they don't speak English. and even if they speak its pathetic! the lady who attends me can talk tamil, so i'm saved.

CavinKare.. they do so much of branding, have the highest ever pricelist, talk so much about quality and quantity, but things just stop with words is what I could observe.
they don't get quality people to work for them, the plain reason I could imagine is the pay that they should offer to hire people of such grades. stingy guys!Both Green trends and Limelite need to improve a lot infrastructure wise. cleanliness is ok compared to the other local/non-branded ones, but its in no way upto the mark.
price, as one of the points above suggest, just 1:2 ratio, but this 1 here indicates somewhere close to 10.

And if we have to pick the better one out of the two, I would say its Green Trends and not Limelite definitely.

hang-over!

title makes you get high.. is it!? :p thats how it should be!!
this is just gonna be the continuation of the prev post, the 3, 4 and 5th day @ planet I.
after getting the overdose of the tech stuff, i was already at this 'oh!-is-it-not-enough!?' state.. so the 3rd day had to be different, otherwise they gonna make no difference. now to add up to the gang 3 of k's friends arrived. this day had the Ashwa finals + a lil bit of 'ghoom'ing the city etc etc.. did quite a hefty shopping, a pair of Puma shoes (swept off v's pocket :D), some more at our favourite Globus outlet + the one n only McD :) 'Y' joined in the middle. Rushed back to the campus wanting not to miss the Ashwa finals. It was a time worth spending there. Then came the 'werz the paaaudyy tonyt!!'. I was almost dozing off, back at room after Ashwa, but somebody woke me up and pulled me on to the dance floor.
Omg!! Wat an environment! Nobody was 'self' there. The beer guzzling competition was an add-on to the already prevailing heat. 5 great girls against 5 dumber guys!! how could u ever be ready to compete against girls mann.. huh! n the gals lost just in a matter of seconds! i wonder.. 'dare' n 'guts' for such things, is it meant only for Frenchies!? to save the 'maanam' there was a punju gal in the gang.. n they rocked!!!! it was so much fun and lotsa giggles around.
So many of em enjoyed the F-Ks. V n D dint give up too after which 'v' got some Kick-a$$ shots from me. thats a different story. (for now i'm leaving it; but u knw me, someday day u gonna mess up wit me and thats when u'll c the real impact of it, bugger.. just take care haan! :p) but i must admit, if somebody has missed it tat day, then u ll never knw wat 'haute' means!!
the hips n hops went on till 5 in the morning!! that was the night!!! whatever i missed over the 4 years of my dumb college life.. made up for all that. it was a sooper night!
i was up by 10 again.
n the prev day purchased 'bloody' puma shoes had manufacturing defects!! i decided this is the last time I'm going for this brand in life! .. so had to run to the city again today to exchange it.. not to miss the McD burger ;) they are just so great yaar, c'mon..
lunch was at a rest called 'celebrations'! i never expected the pizzas and garlic breads to be tasting this so great in a place outside 'Pizza hut'! no doubts, they had them greatly made ever! hope one of these stupus from this IIM gets into their marketing division, i'm sure they have a great future for their quality.
then this day had the silkroute band coming in and a few minutes of ramp up show from BIG fm. the gal who had done the anchoring was a food to those bunch of geeky eyes out there :) 'D' went n participated in some of the word game which they were doing and won it! Cool fella!
by then the roaming quota for my tiny foot was already exceeded, it was badly wanting to take some rest. went to the room after which 'y' called for dinner. it was a lovely time, those 2 hrs, dinner and post-dinner. when in the mess, another prof made an entry and took everybody's attention. boy, this man was again in his 40s and the enthu he could show, ultimate!! i got a lovely chance to pull v's leg n along joined 'y' n 'd'. but then it was not a tat-so-happy-time wen i went to bed tat night cuz i had to leave the next day :(
by this time i have a bunch of friends. who knows no difference, all the fun, care n affection!
its been a great time with all of them! i sure miss them all.. the next morning i may not be meeting everybody, they wud be rushing for classes. the flight take another damn 3 hrs to put me back on my crazy land + no 'v'. crap! it feels sick somehow!
but then most of them made sometime to say a 'bye' before they left. these 5 days in my life was upside down. it wont make up if i say i never experienced such a life. a great break i could get before my new job.
the next morning went a lot drowsy. k + 3 of his friends were the company, obviously, the 4 hindi-walas, wat can i expect. time anyway flew. v bunked last class and dropped me @ the airport. then the same kingfisher, the same window seat, the same boring time n finally the same old land, but i can never get bored of it! the damn volvo took 2+ hrs from airport to put me @ home. i curse that person who decided to have the Airport so far off from the city. such a dumber!!
anyways.. its over! pude pude..
P.S: the 'pude pude' meaning is left only for those who were @IRIS. hahah.. another new term in our vocab.

the fest!

I'm here @IIM-I.. for this fest IRIS '08

the whole trip was a lot of fun and enjoyment.
few of em would be worth mentioning..

1. met Anil Kumble in d onward flight from b'lore to Indore on Thursday! boy believe me, this guy seemed to be one of those coolest chapos on earth. wat an attitude! whoa!! Der was a stop over at Nagpur and he got down there. ppl say, he must be visiting Dravid. anyways it felt a bit drifted up inside :)

2. campus is not like the A/B campuses. pretty far off from the city.. crossing all the villages, plains n fields it took around 25 minute to be inside the campus by car. the typical north Indian villages which i haven't greatly observed during my Calcutta trip (Oh sorry, its Kolkata.. somehow i don't like to get adapted to these kinda new names, Chennai-Mumbai-Kolkata .. n d most horrible Bengalooru!!! :x) seemed to be a treat for the eyes.

3. Thursday noon-eve wasn't much.. meeting friends, walking through the campus. i must admit the campus has some great buildings which exemplifies the real IIM feel.. hihglight the dinner with his 'gang' here, at 'Mashaal', they said that its one of 'the' restaurants here. but only after i landed there i could weigh the real standard.. prolly of the entire city's :p yep .. n d dinner went with the usual questions. 'tell us something about 'v'', 'where do u see urself (both of u tog) 5 years down the line' and such typical MBA Qs :D n then came this b$ Q: 'how can u ever go for tis.. tis.. after al tis face'. n tis smart 'D' came wit an spontaneous reply 'cuz of course, she dint meet me before him' vevev.. when i told em, 'mann.. its such a tough q to take' 'v' came back with an immediate damn 'was it so tuf' :p.. but then, to talk it over. particularly people who are of pretty higher standards is kind of tough and being the typical Southie we are not really used to such things, at least tats not my cup of tea.

4. ok.. now the real fest experience:

mann.. i must tell u, this place is al lit up, alive n running only after 10 in the night. the real participation, enthusiasm and to a greater extent partying all sees a mid night oil being burnt heavily on the floors. when they say 'chalo.. lets do tat in the evening'. it simply implies that they would start it at 12AM n that's their evening.

alright.. my day as well started at 12PM just like the other junta here. me n 'Y' went for the guest lecture. some senior manager from JP Morgan was there talking about 'slowdown- opportunity or threat for the Indian IT/ITES industry'. the guy concluded saying, its an opportunity when you look at a long term. still i couldn't gather a great deal of info out of it.

n in the evening, went for an event 'cerebrate marketing' - a case study stuff. man, i felt like kicking tis fella's a$$ out who belonged to tis event's organizing committee, a pgp2 guy, listening to his intro of the chief guest, a marketing manager from Conagra. wat a poor compering skills one can possess. I just remembered a moment after my English recitation in my school competition, a teacher told me 'when u talk.. when u talk, the person who is dozing off should get up.. upright n sit back listening to u; shouldn't take the highly alive guy to a zombie mode'. the intro was as simple as the later part.

n then came the participants- 6 teams of 2 each. the teams had horrible presentation skills. like they had PPTs and i had to really go, search for the points there. many of them have written stories and were just trying to read out what was return, felt a lot lack of preps. and the English.. it sucked except for a gal from IIT-D and another guy from Great Lakes.. there were so many fillers, grammatical errors, so on and so forth. there was team from xl and these guys had done some great great analysis, a row of block/bar/Venn diags, a lot of strategies, so much numbers etc etc but the judge commented that the analysis-problem solving-agenda in isolation is good, but then they are not able to draw a thread through those 3 and get a conclusion for the actual prob stated. btw, one of this team members was an ex-colleague of mine!
i get highly irritated when people don't have even the basic communication skills, this happens a lot at my work too. i mean if u can't even talk it out properly why try all such stuff man, just be at home.. i actually doubt the whole Indian standard itself when it comes to this, i mean commo' man, where are we heading to! lacking even the simplest things, u gonna be a future leader, how many laloos the world would want going forward. it was highly disappointing considering such facts.
the best things in this (class)room were:
1. the seating, split AC
2. the neatly made curtains
3. the digital clock right opposite to the projector wall, so that the profs can know the time while in class.
4. the laptop cases etc..

now something on a good note.
we just came out of this room and took a walk towards the Audi and there was this game going on. Each participant will go on stage and they will be played a video. the guy will have to come up with a title and the idea behind it relating to the video shown. it was simple amazing, spontaneous and creative. i could see a lot of brains except for a real few crap. the prof who gave an ending note was worth a mention. this guy spoke and that's the standard. i could see the amount of experience and knowledge and the reason why are these instis put on the head everywhere still. he mentioned that he is an avid reader of historical stuff and going to such places. man, i could see it in what he spoke. Great!
n then came the CULTicon. this one was one of the most expected events among the auds.. the final round it was and the event is actually, people can show the talents they have and how much could they impress the judges and auds, with humour, of course. there were 4 finalists and each of them had done a good job. A guy from IIM-S took away the trophy and the prize money of 1L. cool bum :)
the part that needs a mention here is the prof who gave the ending note yet again. he seemed to be in his 40 something. and the enthusiasm he showed on the stage. hell. would such things too happen somewhere!? i have never experienced at least. like.. he sings a song from some 1960's and with so much of energy, passion and enthu.. the whole audi follows him, singing like the rhymes being taught.. ppl enjoying their a$$es out. cool show.
meanwhile there was a video competition, wherein ppl got to make videos and submit. 'v's junta with 'k' as dada took up this as 'k' is a man of video making ;) so the video revolves around how a highly frustrated guy taking up things ahead in life. they had a small shot where this guy should be rejected by his gal friend and that's where i went in. it was so much of fun and the video won the prize with 5k cash award :D
after which i was back to the room to hit the bed. cuz it was already past 12. n me and this mid night oil have broke up pretty long time back. 'v' had something going on til 3 in the morning it seems and these guys bounce back on the floor by 8 8.30. something really great. i mean once in a while thats fine. but tis is the routine, then its really not for me!
so.. overall a great experience so far.
I'm signing off with a lot of expectations :)

Diwali / Naraka chaturdhasi

This post is after a recent ( in fact a few mins back) 'big fight' with one of my colleague cum friend. He is a northi and just returned to work after his Diwali vacation. while we were discussing how/why is this festival celebrated, I told the only legend which I knew that 'Krishna killed Narakasura'. Bugger he started laughing on me saying 'how ignorant i can get'.
I was re-assuring several times that this is the actual reason atleast in the South. He was not ready to believe and along joined my manager as well.
He told a story that there is a faith after Ram killed Ravan (which is what is celebrated as Pooja), the day Ram reaches Ayodhy is celebrated as Diwali. That may probably be true which I'm not really sure of.
So now, as always, just did a google search and found this. what i told makes sense n I'm happy :)