Notes on the Chennai Open 2010 visit

(Yes, most of these are sweeping generalisations from a limited set of data points. Sue me.)

• The impossibly obtuse, grumpy and obnoxious folks over at the Hotel New Woodlands had 'lost' our reservation. This meant heading towards the extortionate "deluxe" rooms of Hotel Palm Grove, where the 'bellhops' expect to be tipped for any number of activities ranging from acknowledging your existence, looking at you, and horror of horrors, even smiling at you! One of them who accompanied us till our room after forcibly yanking the Strolley out of my hands refused to leave till explicitly asked to GTFO. Later, yet another helpful soul would expect a palm-greasing for having performed the incredibly complicated and delicate manoeuvre of folding the hotel bill receipt and handing it over from across the counter. Steadfast resoluteness in not responding to such evolved signalling mechanisms would result in a stream of glares and dirty looks from bellchaps unfamiliar with the "Sticks and stones..." axiom.

• The most benevolent auto-rickshaw drivers felt that the 1.5 jiggabillion light years (JBLY) of distance between Palm Grove and the SDAT Tennis Stadium in Nungambakkam could be, with some effort, traversed for a measly 40 cowrie shells (CS), down from 60 CS for us unwashed masses. After marvelling at the generosity that enabled such fantastic discounts, said unwashed masses (who hailed from lands where rates on lowly clones of similar vehicles ranged from 5 to 7 CS per JBLY) undertook the decidedly arduous journey on foot, which took an excruciatingly long 8-10 hojillion millenia (HJM). (Pedants who insist on standardised measures can refer to end of the post for a conversion table.)

• Nothing can quite rival the resolution of the human eye. No amount of pictures or videos or HDTV viewing will quite match up to the awesomeness of watching a game court-side. Also, no Charu Sharma. Almost. He did some post-game chats which were thankfully barely audible due to the spectators.

• Indian tennis spectators are hooligans in general, and downright boorish when Indians are playing. The number of kids squawking and random dudes hollering mid-rally and at the ball-toss was staggering. Seldom have I wanted to strangle children so much.

• The ballboys (some of them qualified as ball-mamajis - absolutely no trace of ballgirls) were singularly the least enthusiastic people around the stadium. Easily the laziest ever set of ballfolk in the ATP tour, they waited for the players to knock over the stray balls to them! The listless shuffling around was embarassing - I have seen (and been) bored backrow students during "Thought For The Day" and "Param Pita Ko Karo Pranam" recitals in school morning assembly sessions more alert than this bunch of stragglers.

• The linespeople had collectively decided to share about 40% of their workload with the Chair Umpire, who had a LOT of over-ruling and covering up for late calls to do.

• I am not too sure what happens at other ATP events, but the scheduling for this one was beyond terrible. The entire stadium, including television and media crews, seemed to wrap up and go home after the Devvarman-Sanam Singh duo were ousted in the first doubles semi-final (which itself saw - surprisingly - poorer attendance than the singles semis), resulting in an eeriely deserted atmosphere for the second semi. Much pomp and circumstance marked Marin Cilic prevailing over Stanislas Wawrinka in the final, following which Granollers-Ventura were left to savour their victory over Lu-Tipsarevic in relative anonymity. Santiago Ventura sent down a couple of unreturnable serves. Ace Ventura jokes were made. Loudly.

• Dudi Sela - Best. Name. Evar. For cheering, that is. What A Dudi, Sindbad the Sela, international best-Sela, four of us yelling out a syllable at a time, Sela Sela How You Said It To Me, Pothy's Pattu Sela, Kannagi Sela. All this and more.

• Janko Tipsarevic seems to be the new most popular tennis chap in Chennai, going by the number of yells of "Come On Janko!" and "Go Tipsy!". Helps that he is tres cool.

• Sanam Singh might be next in line for Great Indian Tennis Hope.

• Cricket-type armchair criticism in tennis matches trumps bawling babies as single biggest annoyance.

• Players' Box seats are next best seat in the house, after Chair Umpire Chair.

• Limiting daily ticket sales to one per head to folks spending upwards of two hours in queues, after doling out truckloads of donor/sponsor/corporate passes that never get used, is Not Cool™. Claiming a sell-out crowd then, with swathes of empty seats starkly visible, is just plain disingenuous and dishonest.

• Pondicherry is great this time of year. French Quarter - good. Beaches - better. Dolphins - best!

** Conversion Table for Units **
1 JBLY = 1 kilometre
1 HJM = 1 minute
1 CS = 1 INR or Re.1

Say it isn't so!

Is IIT-M going the way of IIPM? Or was this deliberate? One can never know. Found in the Super Manager event page for Shaastra 09, the rules & regulations read thusly:

I suppose if a manager is 'doing their undergraduate', then they REALLY must a super manager..

Getting to work

I stay in Chromepet, Chennai for the duration of my summer internship with Cognizant. (Not CTS – Cognizant it is) My office happens to be in this really far-off place called Navalur. A very commonly recurring joke is the appearance of many addresses ending in “Navalur, Chennai”. Navalur, in Chennai? Bah! :-)

In order to reach Navalur, I have to take the office bus. Every day. This is not mandatory, but the company does its best to make you believe it is, by conveniently keeping offices that are closer to Kancheepuram than Chennai. Nobody who lives in Chennai could disclaim knowledge of the Cognizant buses. The organization has so many offices in “Chennai” that it deploys a veritable Armada of buses to every conceivable corner of the city, and then some. This is ostensibly to cater to the commuting needs of the employee, but an ulterior motive does exist – ensure that the employee cannot afford to saunter into office late, or leave early. Well, at least make it decidedly inconvenient to do so.

Which is where I get to the point of this post – every time I am unable to (or prefer not to) catch the bus, I have to whip out the trust old Bajaj Discover DTSi (the 125cc variant) to get me there. With only a small hitch – getting me there involves traversing 27 km of weird roads, with confusing terrain. Yes, twenty-seven kilometres. In one direction. I must add here that I am exceedingly fortunate to be in Chromepet now, as compared to being in Kodambakkam earlier. In that case, my distance would have been closer to 40 km. Would you know it? Not being within city limits has its advantages :-)

I had always figured I could handle long distance bike rides. Hey, I did it for a year when gainfully employed with Verizon India (whose existence Verizon, Inc. will never acknowledge) – traveled 20 km at least, depending on post-work activities, in one direction. But I had failed to reconcile an important factor – boredom.

Every trip to or from Verizon had been with a Nokia 6030 in my pocket, tuned into Radio Mirchi (mostly) and earphones firmly held in place by my blue helmet (which some people take issue with!) The morning rides especially were quite the pleasure, owing to Suchi, and the more than decent breakfast that would follow in the Tidel Park Food Court. The evening/night rides were also tolerable, because of the (usually) kick-ass dinner that would have prefaced them.

In stark contrast, every trip to or from Cognizant, Navalur has been with a Nokia 6680, for which I was too cheap to buy extra storage, and too dumb to bring the earphones along. So no music. 27 km of silence. At least music-wise. Otherwise, there are always the trucks with their air-horns and other random idiots who believe the accelerator and horn are coupled devices. Thus far, I am ashamed to admit, the only fun I’ve ever had on these rides was racing with a female on a Honda Activa.

Add into all this, my paranoia about getting a flat, and you have a recipe for a thoroughly terrible ride, which I enjoy nonetheless, for it lets me use my bike, which I have foolishly brought with me all the way from Jamshedpur. And yes, I also intend to take it back. Sigh...

Friggin Hutch

Hutch - where rationality does not exist.

Hutch - where "Your complaint has been resolved." really means "Your complaint has been forwarded to the concerned department."

Hutch - where the systems screw up, gobble up my money, Customer Care accepts their mistake, and refuses to return my money.

Hutch - a major consumer court case waiting to happen.

Extreme annoyance

And that would be putting it mildly.

Not getting to eat at Eden (The Besant Nagar one) the previous night was bad, but the beach air and an LMC at The Fruit Shop has unmatched healing potential. But that's where the okay-ness ends. At least till now.

Woke up too late to be able to take the bus to Navalur, which meant another ~55 kms on the bike.

Enter office to find out that the A.C's turned up pretty high. In Chennai! Goddamn! It feels like 30°C in here!

Crappy lunch.

Hutch screws around with call rates. There's another big wad of money I'm never seeing again, for no fault of mine.

Got chewed out by manager.

Weather sucks. As always, in Chennai.

Sigh...Oh XL, how I pine for thee..