Our weekend at Coorg

It's been a month we've been to Coorg, on 8th August 2013. I am writing it down so that these are never forgotten. It's like we've just been there a few days back. Everything is so easily being recalled. Every moment on the trip was lived and enjoyed. Well we have a few reasons to go back to Coorg, again :-)

We struggled a bit to get inputs and information on the places to visit, in which order, etc... which was one of the other incentive for me to write this. I hope you all find it interesting and useful.

The Journey Begins

The journey to Coorg for us began on 8th of Aug with the start of premier show of Chennai Express at 21.40 hrs at Q Cinemas, Whitefield, Bangalore; along with +Neellohit and +Tamal.

The Cab, which was pre-booked came at 0.45 hrs to drop us at Majestic Railway Station. We had to return to mall again to collect the refreshment deposited at movie entrance. Then we had a cup of tea along with the driver :-)

We reached station at 2.00 hrs which was very much ahead of time. Our train, Cauvery Express was at 4.15 hrs. So we stayed for an hr in Cumsom, had some snacks and then one was talking over phone. Not to mention with whom :p another was listening to music and I was completing my pending office work. It was then when we realized that I left my lapy's charger at home :-(

Tamal and I were strolling on the streets nearby. Finally we hooked up on the train "Cauvery Express" which was late by 30 mins. As all were tired we went to a deep sleep (term coined by Tamal). In the morning, person next to me, on the upper birth, told me to switch off my alarm :-) We all woke up and then suddenly everyone was rushing out. We were wondering as to why people are in a hurry as this was the last stop. Then one of them said that the train will start soon to go back to Bangalore. We all ran out and then took a Rik (Rickshaw) to Mysore bus stand. While we were talking to the driver to get more information, he suddenly accelerated and stopped in front of a bus saying this is the last morning bus to Coorg. We rushed and took the bus but we were not able to digest all these activities happening in a jiffy.

Finally we reached Coorg. Now the next thing we did was finalizing a hotel, had lunch and then we had to plan our day's schedule for site seeing.

Places to Visit: DAY 1

1. Abbey Fall

We hired a Rik and then went to one of the most popular place for visit, Abbey Fall. It's 9 Kms from Coorg. All the 5 spots were next to each other of which starting spot is Abbey Falls.

The breeze and mist from the fall were pleasant and the climate was cold. It felt awesome. As it was mid August, it was drizzling but we were lucky that no heavy rains were encountered.

2. Gaddige (Raja's Tomb)

This was the next place of our visit, between Abbey Fall and Coorg. It had 4-5 tombs. The specialty was greenery and the major area of the Madikeri was visible from this place because of its altitude.

Nice Place to take snaps and the weather was pleasant.

3. Omkareshwara Temple

The next place we visited was Omkareshwara Temple. It's situated within the city. The driver was a bit upset with the time we were taking at each place and he threatened to increase the rate we agreed to.

We told that we'll be back and soon and then pierced into the gates quickly to get it moving.
Temple is good. I went in with Tamal and offered prayers and did parikrama. It's a silent place with sound of Om being played making the ambiance more soothing and pleasant.

4. Fort

On our way to The Fort, the driver was firm that this will be the last spot as were taking more than 30 mins at each place. When we entered Fort, there was nothing much to see. We climbed the stairs and saw whatever maximum possible.

We came down in 5-8 mins and then went to last place to visit for this small package.

5. Raja's Seat (View Point)

The driver told that he'll leave as this place will take time, there's light show at 6.30 pm and the bus stand, close to our hotel, was near by and we could take another Rik to return.

We arrived at Raja's seat, the last place in our list which was included in the package. It started raining after we went int and we had to be under the shade of a tree for 10 mins. It was at a good height. Mountains being visible and then hiding themselves in cloud, along with the mist made our eve. It was very pleasant.

Unfortunately the rains began to create havoc and the light show got cancelled. We were in wet cloths and had no option but to return to hotel. 

We changed, did photo-shoot and relaxed. Only Tamal wanted to go out to see God knows what. We all relaxed and finally went for dinner, well on time. We were tired and had to sleep to recharge our body; our souls were charged though :-)

DAY 2

Next day we went to Kushal Nagar, via bus, for Jungle Safari. As the bridge was damaged in between, so we had to walk a little and then take another bus.

The Cauvery Nisarga Dham, situated on the way to Kushal Nagar, is known for its jungle safari. Due to rainy season, this was not available.

Dear park, paintings, Cauvery river and the sceneries were the highlights of this place. After visiting these, we had lunch at the restaurant.

Then we went to Kushal Nagar. We got a free lift :-) in a car. All three of us were staring at each other as the car started making noise as if the front left tire got punctured. We were afraid, also laughing as it could be our last journey :p.
The person driving was at a speed of 60+ and we were like fainting. After we dropped off from the car we saw that a part above the tyre was making that noise ;-) We were alive.

We sighed, laughed and then hurriedly took an auto to Golden Temple (Tibetan Temple) which was 5 Kms from Kushal Nagar.

Golden temple is a beautiful place to be in. The monastery, the people inside, who were residents, all felt like we were in Tibet (in short, it felt like we were outside India).

We took some snaps inside the temple and in the garden. Some shops were there on the entrance where people were buying some Bengals, Chains, Pendants, craft work, etc...  Opposite to these shops were buildings which appeared to be rooms where the local people resided. We thought we should come and take admission here to be away from the dreadful world :D

Next, we went to Dubare Elephant Camp popularly know as The Dubare Forest.
It's famous for Rafting and Safari. We took a bus from Kushal Nagar to reach this place. Well, the bus dropped us off at the stop from where the forest was 1.6 Kms, as visible in this board.

By the time we reached in, it was 17.15 hrs. The ticket counter for Rafting had closed. The last group of people were standing for their turn. They were lucky enough to make it before the closing time of 17.00 hrs. We were a bit depressed.

Then we saw people seating in boat. It was not boating where we can enjoy and drive. Rather it was group of people taken on the other side of the shore where the Jungle Safari takes place. It felt good and we took the ticket instantly. On reaching the other side, we were told that safari is also closed as the Elephants need rest. It was really frustrating and we felt sad again that we missed another happening thing. When we asked about the timing from the person in charge, he said, it closes at 11 in the morning. Ahhhh.... It was too early and was not possible for us to even imagine that.
We planned to stay in the lodge, available in there in the forest, but we were not having enough stock (money and clothing's). No ATM near by :-(

Well as I mentioned earlier in the post, there are couple of incentives for us to go there again ;-)

On the way back to the bus stop, we got a lift in a loading Rickshaw. We took a bus from there and came back to Kushal Nagar. This was the most adventurous journey I've ever had. We had dinner, at bus stand, after reaching Mysore. From there we took a bus to Bangalore and reached in the morning at 2.30. We had to wait for the bused to start from Majestic.

Finally we reached our home at 4.30 in the morning.

All pics have been added at: Weekend Masti at Coorg.

Please do write your feedback on the blog, your questions, your comments. We definitely have not visited all the places, but we did cover most of them in 1.5 days trip. You can also suggest places which we can visit on our 2nd trip to Coorg.

Thanks +Neellohit and +Tamal for this wonderful trip.

A new threat called - "Stuxnet"

Stuxnet is a computer worm which is made to destroy industrial control system. It was first found in the month of June in Belarus (Eastern Europe) by VirusBlokAda, a security firm. A computer worm is self-replicating malicious software which causes congestion in the network by spreading in the system. They can delete files, send unauthorized mails and can encrypt any data into an unknown format, thus rendering the data meaningless.

Stuxnet is not an ordinary worm. It is designed to perform some very specific task which can cause damage of higher magnitudes than caused by other worms. It has been found by Microsoft that more than 45,000 computers were affected by Stuxnet of which 60% were in Iran, 18% in Indonesia and around 8% in India. It seems that this worm has been created specifically to attack nuclear facility in Iran. It is because Stuxnet has been found in its Bushehr nuclear plant, and few of the centrifuges were dropped last year in its nuclear refinery at Natanz.

It is good that this worm doesn't target all the industries, as 15 plants around the world had been infected, but it didn't stopped the proper functioning of the systems and the worms were removed, according to Siemens (a German Engineering conglomerate). On the other side - they target to specific project, plant or an organization. This worm enables its creator to change the control mechanism, stop the plant, increase or decrease the rate of injection of nuclear elements; and make many undesirable changes. If this happens, it would be a great threat to the whole society. Moreover, it can not be determined from where the worm was originated and who controls it. 

It is believed that creating Stuxnet has been supported by a strong financial and a big know-how of some government. It is not the work of regular hackers or any cyber-criminal who do it for money, curiosity or pleasure.

It is believed that Stuxnet uses 2 compromised security certifications – one from the firms of Taiwan and the second from Windows when it had security loop-holes. This helps Stuxnet to gain access within the system without any permission and can breach the security easily. 

Sometimes companies and security agencies do not connect their systems to the Internet, but Stuxnet can spread easily through gizmo's like memory card, pen drives, PDA's, etc... It can also spread through the shared networks. It is very difficult to impose a check on it every time.

So, it’s the time when the government, firms, institutions, and security agencies keep a tight security check on their systems. I hope that Stuxnet doesn’t cause any catastrophe.

Why mangers overrun time and budget

You might have heard that mangers often run out of time and budget. It is not that they don’t know how to manage or they lack skills. It is often the uncertainty which comes in the way of the project being undertaken. 

Some major mind storming decisions to be taken are -

1. Ask a question to yourself – how much time it takes you to go home from your office. The answer you will give is a standardized one, say 20 minutes. Consider the following scenarios –

• You get a traffic jam way back home,
• You get a flat tire,
• It was a hot weather and you didn’t got any traffic
• You met an old friend and went to CCD or Barista

In such cases the time could range between 10 minutes to 30 minutes, or probably an hour. So, what you answered is correct, but a general one. If a Project manager answers this way and takes a project, then he would be able to complete the project with the grace of God!! The point is you need to keep some safety in between. How much safety is required?

    2.   Every project has a start date and an end date and there is one critical path (which takes the maximum   time to complete). Now it is the call of the manager, when to start the remaining tasks? If all the tasks are started simultaneously in the beginning then the manager would lose focus, and if all the tasks are started later i.e. at the completion of slack time, every task would become critical and delay in one task would increase the scheduled time and above all the manager would lose control over the project. 

Let us first understand what actually a project is. A project in simple term is a non-routine, complex task to be undertaken which is to be completed within a given time frame, resources, and budget; with the desired quality. It has a start date and an end date.

A project is not only confined to IT industry, it is viable for every service industry as well as manufacturing industry. There are some loopholes in every organization, due to which the problem of overrun occurs. 5 such reasons are listed below –

1. Student’s syndrome - Students take a week’s time to complete their work which can be completed in 2 days, and still fail to complete it. The 5 extra days here is the safety they have introduced.
2. Hierarchy of the Organization - The more the depth (no. of levels) of the hierarchy, more will be the safety (in terms of time) introduced at every level.
3. Ambiguous Scope - Many a times the scope, i.e. the base-lining the project is not done properly. As a result a clear picture as to what needs to be done is missing.
4. Dependencies - There can be many inter-links or relations between the tasks, which restricts the other tasks to start or complete without them.
5. Multi-tasking – Manager can plan many things to be done in parallel. Suppose project A and project B are to completed and they are being carried in parallel. Say A takes 20 days to complete and B takes 25 days to complete. If after every 5 days the manager works interchangeably, then Project A will be completed in 35 days and Project B will be completed in 45 days. So, multi-tasking has its own pros and cons.

 To eliminate these loop holes we should follow the following standard steps as described in the book – “The Critical Chain”- by Eliyahu M. Goldratt –

1. IDENTIFY – First identify the constraints or the areas which needs special attention
2. EXPLOIT – Try to eliminate and mitigate them as much as possible
3. SUBORDINATE – Find the substitutes available for the critical task to avoid delays
4. ELEVATE – If the task require more resources (labour, equipment, machine, etc…), then deploy them
5. ANALYZE – Check the system again for these critical tasks and follow the above steps again in order to solve the issue

Apart from these steps, a few more things could be done to improve the working efficiency and completing the projects before the due-date.  The following steps could be considered in some of the areas –

1. No fixed time - Often we tell the workers to complete the task in x no. of days. So the worker works at that pace and works slowly so that the work is not completed before time. Instead of fixing time, try to make them understand that the project needs to be completed as soon as possible and is critical. Then they would work at their actual pace and the task would be completed well before it is scheduled.
2. Negotiation - Try and negotiate with the local vendors on the time in which they could supply the raw materials or semi-finished goods or services.
3. Reward for early completion - Give rewards to the vendor for early delivery of goods. State the reward in the tender for early completion along with the penalty for delaying the completion of the contract.

"Smart people learn from their mistakes, while wise people learn from others' mistake".

I hope this blog describes some of the major problems faced and some measures taken by the managers to curb them. Please add more insights to add value to this discussion on Project Management.