Is this the end of affordable flying in India?

The Indian airline industry went through explosive growth for the last 4-5 years. Not long ago, Indians had to deal with only one state owned airline (Air India) to fly around India. With the free market reform of the Indian economy by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, back in the late 90s,  a lot of private air lines opened shop.

Flying has historically been relegated to the rich and influential in India. But with the opening of these private air lines a lot more people could suddenly afford to fly. These air lines initially offered cheap rates to grab market share. They were so successful that the state owned Air India had to start getting it’s act together and a new air line was opening shop ever day. There was King Fisher, Air Deccan, Go Air, Indico, Sahara and the list goes on..

Cheap Rates, Explosive Coverage Growth, Competition.. what more could the Indian customer ask for? Life was good :-)..

The Government finally got off it’s back end and started building new airports (they should have done it back in the 70s) and privatizing them.. India was going to enter the group of “developed” countries.

And then came the fuel cost increases of 2007/2008 and the credit crunch that is currently affecting every economy on this planet. These airlines have started to raise prices, merge with competition and lay off people (gasp!!) And customers, being the fickle ones :), are going back to the cheaper and trusty railways [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7669301.stm]. This is a crucial period for this nascent industry in India. They just showed ordinary people the joy and productivity of flying. They created a new customer base. But if this economic slowdown continues for another year or so, I am afraid, we are going to go back to the old way of high prices, bad service and monopoly..

P.S : I followed this interesting story about some lay offs at Jet Airways and wonder if we are are moving back from capitalism to socialism in India..

While I am happy for the folks that got their jobs back.. I don’t know if this will allow the company to tighten it’s belt and survive the economic slowdown.

October 17, 2008 by Politics Rantings Uncategorized 1

I realized that I am not superman!!

I successfull completed the 2008 Chicago Marathon in 6 hours and 57 seconds. My worst time so far (2004 was  04:46:01 and 2005 was 05:14:41), but boy am I so glad to finish it. It was hot (lower 80s) and humid, two things that I cannot stand. Despite my lack of consistant training, I thought I could finish the marathon in < 5 hours. By the time, I got to the 14th mile, I realized that I wasn’t superman and had to start walking :-). It was all downhill from there.. my walks got longer and my runs got shorter. By the time, I got to mile 22, I was ready to give up.. but then I remembered why I was running the marathon and picked myself up. Not to mention, my personal cheering squad (my sis, brother-in-law, Sri, Hafsa, Ravi, Deepthi, Achi, Madhavi, Sujana, Byna and Joy) were there to keep me going.

Thanks to everyone that supported my cause and provided moral support. You guys are the BEST!!!

Although I might have come 28472 out of 45000 people that ran the marathon, I was the ONLY guy (as far as I could tell) who ran with the Indian flag :).

I have to thank the wonderful folks at Team Asha, for putting together a great program for a worthy cause.

Finally, thanks to the folks at CARA for running a great training program. I was confused througout the program on what my pace group was, I kept jumping from 12 to 11:30 to 11:00 to 12 to 11:30 :).. but that was my issue :).

This is how a grown man cries in pain after running 26.2 miles!! 🙂

October 13, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 6

Insipirational text..

Got this from a colleague

Subj : BUTTERFLY

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly! – So embrace those struggles that come your way, become stronger and soar higher.

October 9, 2008 by Fun OverHeard Uncategorized 0

Week 16 training and my first outdoor camping trip

After the rough 20 miler last weekend, I was not able to run any of the mid week runs this week. But I did manage to run the 12 miler weekend in the hilly (compared to flat arse Illinois) roads of Wisconsin. Looking back at it, I don’t know, if it was prudent to run on a county highway at night without any visual alerts (reflective dressing, LED etc) on me. It was a tough run, but I took it one hill at a time and I have two proud bleeding nipples to show for it!! :).

I was in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Dells to be precise) over the weekend on a camping trip with the good folks from Team Asha. It was great to see all the runners at one place and it was my first outdoor camping trip. I did stay in log cabins before, but this was the first time I had to pitch a tent. And for those that haven’t done it before.. it is NOT so difficult :). You just have to spend a hour of so, figuring out what the hell you are doing, or take a few minutes and read the instructions :).

Much fun was had with food, liquor and music!! 🙂

[The Gang]

[How many runners does it take to pitch a tent??]

[Cool new Asha Running Shirts]

[Important Stuff]

[Rohit showing off his volleyball skills]

[Sri getting ready to make killer omlettes]

[Is that fun or what??]

More pictures here..[http://flickr.com/photos/kudithipudi/sets/72157607569023137/]

September 30, 2008 by Fun Photography Uncategorized 2

Skyscrapers, McDonald's and weasels…

During dinner with a friend recently, we brooded on these three topics..

  1. Skyscrapers : My friend lives on the 34th floor of a 47(?) floor high rise and we were discussing if that constituted her living in a skyscraper. Both of us couldn’t remember how many floors a building had to have, to be designated as a skyscraper. Intrigued, I fired up my trusted friend, Google, and found out that there is NO precise definition of how many stories or what height makes a building  a skyscraper!! So in essence, if you are living in a 10 story building in middle of North Dakota (no offense intended to people living in this state), you are considered to be living in a skyscraper :-). Was proud to find out that Chicago had one of the first skyscrapers in the world!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper).
  2. McDonalds : The Rock N Roll McDonald’s at 600 North Clark Street in Chicago used to be one of the highest grossing McDonald’s in the world, before the one in Red Square, Moscow, Russia opened up..This used to be one of my favorite McDonald’s. You could always count on some fresh fries after a night of clubbing in the gold coast :). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_N_Roll_McDonald%27s)
  3. Weasels : Finally, we spoke abt Weasels and wondered why the weasels got associated with weasels!! :).. For an animal that looks so cute, I cannot for the life of me figure out why it got associated with such a bad meaning.. I haven’t been able to find the history of this yet. If any of you do, pls post a comment.
September 29, 2008 by Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0

HOWTO : Use find and grep together

If you ever wanted to search for a particular text in certain types of files in Linux, you can use the following combo of find and grep

find / -name \*.xml -type f | xargs grep -i “text_to_search”

I used *.xml (note the \ before *) as the mask in the filename to look for all XML files.. then I piped this to grep using xargs.

A colleague pointed out that I can do the same by using

grep -r o-i “text_to_speech”

September 23, 2008 by HOWTO Linux Uncategorized 2

A couple thousand more reasons to run the marathon

I was watching a recent episore of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” (sports show on HBO), which had a story about the plight of “debt” children from India. These children (in the cities of Meerut and Jalandhar) are forced into child labor due a debt their family got into. The terms of the debt so bad that the family never gets to pay it off. The children are then forced to work for nickels to stitch footballs. While the poverty of the family plays a role in this situation, an educated parent wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. If these folks had access to programs run by organizations like ASHA, they would have probably have gotten better paying jobs and their children wouldn’t have to be in this situation.

Running a marathon is a hard task, but nothing compared to the plight these children go through. I am proud to be helping eradicate such things from happening in the future. Help me raise money for ASHA, by clicking on this link (http://ashanet.org/chicago/teamashawiki/index.php/Runners/VinayKudithipudi) and donating whatever amount you feel is appropriate.

I have found my inspiration.. have you?

September 23, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Rantings Uncategorized 1

Week 14 & 15 training update

The last two weeks had been a bit crazy at work due to the recent hurricane hoopla we exeprienced here in the US. I was barely able to keep up with the mid week and weekend long runs. And I oficially missed the 4th race I registered for this year. I planned to run the Banco Half Marathon, last weekend, but wasn’t able to due to a hectic work schedule. I am so proud of the folks that ran it though. It was pouring all morning and I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to run in soggy shoes and clothes.

The 20 miler this weekend was tough. I started off strong and ran ~13 miles without any issues. Then the heat and humidity started to kick in and I had to literally walk the last 3 miles.

September 23, 2008 by 2008 : Marathon Running Sports Uncategorized 0