Tuesday, June 29, 2004

No Selling Involved!

Have you ever been in some store and a random dude comes up to you asking if you work in the area, or work for company X? Well, if you're Indian and live in the South Bay, you're probably quite familiar with this. Usually it's some Indian guy in his late 20's/early 30's asking how your job is. Now, if you're smart, you say as little as possible to the guy and go on with your business of buying of toilet paper or whatever the hell you're at Wal-mart for. Why? Because the brown dude across from you is casing you to see if you're gullible enough to become involved in the most popular "pyramid" scheme this side of Amway.

Now, flashback to two weeks ago. My wife and I were in Wal-mart buying towels or somesuch. A young-ish couple is talking in one of the aisles and the husband asks me if the stuff at Wal-mart is any good and what kinds of things they should buy there. Now, both my wife and I thought this question was kind of odd since even if you're fresh off the H1 plane (which this guy wasn't), you've probably heard of Wal-mart, and if you haven't heard of it, you'd figure out the level of quality at the place - cheap, but good enough to not worry about.

Anyways, we have a short conversation with the couple...turns out they come from Gujarat, the same place my family's from. So we take down phone numbers yada yada. Dude calls me a few days later and it turns out he's doing the Quixtar/BWW pitch on me - without actually naming the company. In retrospect, this is a pretty conniving way to get into someone's ear...strike up a conversation randomly, then call them to hook em in. And you know Quixtar & BWW teach their disciples these tricks of the trade.

Now, if you haven't heard of Quixtar, give 'em a hit and make 'em feel good about themselves. It's basically an online merchant, but instead of selling goods themselves, they line up gullible people to sell the stuff for them. Of course, as the pitch goes, there's no selling involved, no marketing involved, nothing involved except a few hours a week. Why anyone would want to buy the products from Quixtar, I don't know. They seem to sell the same stuff as Amazon, Wal-mart, and "finer department stores".

So when I'm talking to this guy, I know he's casing me for this shit, but I'm piqued because apparently he and his wife are a tag team. He wants to come by our house with his wife and "talk for 15-20 minutes". In my senseless state, I said, sure, come by Monday night.

Bad Move.

They come and talk our heads off for an hour and a half! The whole time I wasn't so concerned with Quixtar, but with the selling skills of these people. To be honest, they weren't very good. It's a barely worthwhile scheme to begin with, but these two would hardly be able to sell me fertilizer for my new backyard.

Anyways, I've now got this folder of marketing material sitting on my dining room table. And I've gotta see this guy again to give it back to him. How annoying.

Lesson for all you kids: When in Wal-mart, keep to yourself, lest THEY reel you in.

Lesson for all you wanna be (non)sales people: Hook up with Quixtar so you too can learn how to talk to people with a sorry sales pitch.

Question for the floor: Why the hell are so many random Indian techies involved in this shit? For every Indian that started up a dot-com, there's gotta be 20 of these fools pacing the aisles of your local convenience store.

Anyone out there got a Quixtar story of their own? Been pitched by these guys? Are YOU one of these guys? As my homie Fabolous would say "Holla back youngin" I wanna hear more.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Let Freedom Reign!

As I was listing to NPR this morning I was surprised to hear that Iraq's PM Allawi had been given the reigns of Iraq a couple of days before the original Jun 30th deadline. Well, this is great news that they finally have formal control of the country and that the handover occurred without a huge wave of more violence. I can only smirk at the sort of PR the Bush admin gets out of this, but I won't really comment on that since I don't want to be too cynical about this event. I'm sure the memo from Condi to Bush will be featured prominently in the re-election campaign and in W's presidential library. But that's his right.

In any case, I've read a couple of good articles in The Economist regarding the challenges which PM Allawi faces now that he's running the country. If you have subscription access to it, here's a rather detailed article and here's another shorter free article which summarizes based on today's news.

The good thing about these articles is that they aren't too cynical or unduly-optimistic about what needs to happen in Iraq. As usual, The Economist points out the facts and leaves you with an "oookaayyy, so then?" feeling. You can decide if that's a good or bad thing :)

The basics of these articles: Most Iraqis believe they can cope without too much help from coalition forces. However, Allawi has a lot of work to do around security and proving to Iraqis that they indeed live in a better place than before with Saddam in power. Allawi has very little in the way of resources to enable this security so he'll be relying on American bankrolling to be successful. Coalition forces have operational control, however Allawi directs the overall military strategy. Not sure how that will play out or what it means to Allawi if he doesn't have operational control. Also, Western Contractors have a lot of say in the way Iraq unfolds since they are being paid to secure strategic sites and maintain oil pipelines, etc. Additionally, these folks are not subject to Iraqi law. None of this is really new. I think we've all known that a lot of work has to be done in Iraq, but these articles definitely help provide some more detail into just what has to happen and some of the hurdles in the way of accomplishing those things.

So take it how you want it. There's much to be cynical about, but there's also much to be hopeful about. This doesn't change my opinion about where W should be headed after November 9th, but that's a whole other story.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Domesticated....

So can I just say that buying a home means there's no going back to being cool? Man, my ass is so domesticated! We're getting our backyard done right now with concrete, etc. Normally, a backyard isn't something I think too much about. We used to rent a big home before and we didn't give a damn about the backyard until we wanted to BBQ. Now? I'm coming home from work everyday and checking on progress. That's the first thing I do! Help!

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Recycle MuthaF...er!!!

photo found at http://www.zepfanman.com/So a follow on to my recycle at home thing...here at work we've got recylce bins everywhere you turn. I'm surprised they haven't put bins in the bathroom stalls. But I think the overabundance of these things has lead to negative returns.

When I first started here, we had different bins for paper, plastic, aluminum. Heck, we've got special bins for batteries and acheivement certificates too! I guess that was too complicated for us lame brains so they simplified it to recycle and trash. The battery bin is still in the copy room, but I don't know who uses it. And achievement certs? Bathroom stalls.

Anyways, the problem here is that the trash bins have taken mini-sizing to the extreme. It's one thing to put recycle bins right next to the trash and make the trash bin a little smaller than the recycle bin. It's another to ask 20 people in a conferance room to push their lunch boxes through a trash opening the size of a postage stamp. Suffice it to say, bins overflow, and conference rooms got stank. I feel sorry for the custodial staff since they have to deal with this stuff after everyone's gone.

Of course, since I'm a perfect citizen, I take my trash to another bin that actually has space. Unless it's on the other side of the building :P

Recylcing and the art of exceedingly small trash cans

You know the best way to get someone to recycle? Provide a trash recepticle which is way too small to fit trash AND recycle-able goods. And provide a recycle container which is god awful huge.

Never mind the fact that one could simply fill the recycle bin with trash. Let's assume the parties involved are "good citizens" and willing to do their parts to help reduce landfill trash.

So now that we live in our own home, we have to pay for garbage service. San Jose city provides various sizes of trash cans - the larger the can, the more we pay. I understand the basic logic: The more trash you have, the more it costs in terms of landfill space, etc. And, of course, the extra cost is passed on to homeowners. Makes sense.

I've always been one to recycle when (easily) possible. When the recycle bin isn't presented to me alongside the trash bin, I'll look around, but if I don't find the recycle bin close by, that Coke can goes in the trash. Of course, since I'm now paying for every bit of stuff that goes into the trash bin, I think twice about whether that bit of stuff is actually trash or recycleable. On top of that, our recycle container is 3 times larger than the trash container SJ City gave to us. I could get a larger trash container, but I'd have to pay double. So not only is SJ City passing landfill costs onto the homeowner, they're encouraging homeowners (in a round about way) to recycle more and trash less.

Suffice it to say, I'm now a huge recycle freak. I've put a separate recycle bin under our kitchen sink so we think twice before throwing items directly into the trash. And you know what? We're managing to fill that sucker up more than the trash!

Now, I just need to start my compost bin and buy a hybrid car and I'll be thoroughly green...should I start wearing hemp clothing and get some birkenstocks too?