Travelling by Jet Airways - A Bad Experience for Many?

I travel quite often to Hyderabad on my official visits. I prefer to take the Jet Airways early morning 0625 hours flight as I like to start my work early in Office. Today again I travelled by Jet Airways. The crew was quite polite on the flight. But I have a problem most of the time with their ground staff specially the people in the lounge and the food served in the flight. In the lounge, which is a facility only for the JP members, the service is really bad. The stewards manning the counter do not acknowlegde your presence nor do they feel it appropriate to serve you even a glass of water without you running after them. I think Jet Management really needs to do some mystery visits to the lounges and check for themselves the service provided to its most frequent fliers.

In todays flight, the quality of the breakfast was not upto the mark. To add to it, there were some foreign objects in the breakfast. The flight steward was really polite and apologised for the same, but the damage has been done. He offered me another platter of breakfast, but I had lost the faith in the quality of food served. Than Steward got me some cakes and cookies without even bothering to check that I am a vegetarian and might not take products containing eggs. Here again Jet management team needs to put some soft training in place so that they do not end up agonising the same customer again and again.

I really hope that the Jet Airways management checks on the quality of service been provided else it will definately loss out its frequent fliers to other Airlines.

Vacation in Tarkarli

View from the Cottage at Tarkarli during Sun Set.

I got the snaps for my winter vacations at Tarkarli a few days ago. I felt that other should also know about this place and hence blogging about the same.

Tarkarli is situated 6 kms south of Malvan and 546 kms away from Mumbai on the coast of Maharashtra. The major attraction here is the long and narrow stretch of clean, virgin beach, with its pristine water. On a clear day, you can see the sea bed through a depth of 20 ft. The beaches are very less crowded. During my 4 days stay, max crowd seen would be less than 200 people on the beach. During early afternoons, there was hardly a soul roaming on the beach.
Then, of course there are the forts, Singhudurg, one of Maharashtra’s more popular and an important sea fort, built in the 17 th century and the famous Padmagarh fort.

We took Konkan Railway train from Mumbai for Kudal in the night and reached our destination Kudal, the next morning. From there went to the local bus stand for bus to Malvan, which is around 35 kms from Kudal. It took us around an hour to reach Malvan from Kudal. Getting down at Malvan, we saw a Sugarcane juice stall. The stall was very clean, unlike the ones seen in Mumbai. The sugarcane juice was really amazing and I had 2 glasses of the same. Post that we took auto for the MTDC resort at Tarkarli. The fare 50 INR.

The MTDC guest house is located on the beach front and huts are beautiful. The stay is comfortable even though you might not find the staff to be to customer centric.

The food served in Malvan is just superb. Non vegetarians can freak out on the sea food. The "Sol Kari" prepared by the locals is amazing in taste and the taste of it still lingers on.
Have attached fews snaps taken during our trip. I do plan to visit this place again. Hope you will also visit it.

The view of the beach and sea from the cottage

Sky line during sun set at Tarkarli. The Beach Restaurant at MTDC Resort

The Beach at Tarkarli. In the background one can see the Sindhudurg Fort.

The Cottage in which we stayed

Nature at work. Water leaving its mark on the sands of time.

The Reception at MTDC Resort

Cottages at MTDC Resort






Men going for Fishing in their Boats

Coming back home with catch

Sewing up the torn Nets for the next day at Work

Clean Virgin Beach at Tarkarli.









Beach at Tarkarli


Can you see any people on the beach?

Visit www.maharashtratourism.gov.in to find amazing places to visit in Maharashtra

Winning over peer group must for big leap

Came across this amazing article and I think it does make lot of sense.

EVERYONE tries to impress his or her boss. The boss determines one’s raise, one’s bonus and possibly one’s promotion. It makes sense to literally “suck up” to the boss.

We all learn early in the game as to which are the boss’ hot buttons. We try to stay away from these. We try to put a positive spin to the matters that are close to the boss’ heart. And we are careful to make sure that the boss always looks like a hero in our words and in our written presentations, all the credit for any success is carefully ascribed to the boss who is capable only of brilliant insights.

The boss simply never does anything silly. The greatest of sovereigns are not immune to flattery. So there is no harm at all in letting your bosses believe that at least in your eyes they walk on water. I would only argue that a happy boss basking in your admiration is a necessary factor for your career to move in a positive direction.

But it is by no means a sufficient condition. If you really want to progress there are two very important constituencies which one ignores at one’s peril. The first group is one’s subordinates. They have to respect you. And respect is very different from fear or servility (usually driven by you guessed it. their selfish considerations!).

Subordinates respect you only if they see you as someone who can help them. They do not expect you to know all the details of their job, although such knowledge is definitely a source of respect. They expect you to be in a position to help them when they are in trouble.
Nowadays this kind of old-fashioned helping is known as “adding value”. If competition has cut prices and a salesperson cannot meet aggressive sales goals, you as the manager need to be able to intervene-argue for a price cut in your own organisation, deliver some promotion goodies or when needed renegotiate sales budgets. Subordinates dislike bosses who refuse help. “I know interest rates are up, competition is fierce, many things have changed that makes the budget goals virtually impossible to achieve, but these are your problems. As a boss, all I can do is to yell at you and goad you towards unrealistic goals.” Such an attitude is the kiss of death. Word gets around. You get placed in the category of a “zero value add” supervisor.

In the short run, your career might not take a hit because you are secure in your position with your boss. Over time, the whole organisation learns to distrust you and your special relationship with your boss actually becomes a negative. You ar an “incompetent sycophant“ and trust me you can forget about that brilliant career.

The second is your own peer group. This is usually more difficult as they are your natural rivals. But, I submit that even though they may not like you, you can and should earn their respect. They tend to respect deep technical knowledge and hard work. They tend to be harsh judges, but in many ways they are the fairest and the most useful ones.

From day one in an organisation, if you work diligently at earning their respect, it pays off in multiple ways. You can actually work on the “content” of your skills set not just its appearance. You can constructively take their inputs and over time they become your tough teachers.
Over the years as one’s career progress within one organisation or across different ones, the informal peer network keeps track of you and their words of praise however grudging becomes the best help for your own growth.

So boss of course; subordinates essential; peers...the real test!