The B World

2007-03-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

realization

2006-05-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

As a part of the orientation program at ISB, the students were taken to a couple of Govt. schools in Hyderabad. The trip turned out to be more than a stress releasing exercise. It was amost like a walk down the memory lane where I could relate myself to the trust kids show on you as a mentor/teacher. If someone would have told those kids that the earth was flat, they would have accepted that. Then it struck me whether it was pure trust or was it the need that was driving their behaviour. Would a kid from an affluent background be so docile. Does need change our reactions to things? Maybe the kids would have the means to take care of the rest of parameters in his her life.

So as a learned individual whats my responsibility? Maybe I can design a plan for the kids where their education is funded by one of us. Maybe a study loan acepted by a school from an individual?

saw rang de basanti

2006-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

This is the second time I came out of th movie hall ....all silent..nothing to say....the first time was after watching Swades. The best part abt the movie is its editing. The movie converges two stories that are seperated by almost 80 years in such a nice manner that one feels a bhagat singh or a Rajguru in each one of us. It asks us a very simple basic question, how many times have we served a cause that has been larger than ourself?

When I came out of the movie hall, I had this strange thought ....."let me achieve something and then probably I would be ready to give back to the community". Maybe I do not have the right means for effecting a change. However, a group can make a change. Our popluation can always provide such a critical strength. At that moment, I remembered two bactch mates of mine from IIT, Bharat Sundram and Chandrashekhar. They and 3 undergraduates from IIT Bombay have started a political party that aims to represent the under-represented middle class in major metropolita cities. All accolades for these people who plan to turn the tide in real life and hope that people like me do get inspired from the reel life!!

Lets hope tomorrow brings new hope in life!! I plan to change something around me (for good of course!!) on a daily basis ..till then I plan to think as I sleep...

India's bravest kids - 2005

2006-01-26T01:28:00.000-08:00

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1387526.cms

Windows notebooks at risk

2006-01-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/01/windows_feature.html

Invention disclosure for a noise cancelling pillow

2006-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

Background

DAY 1: A frustruatd wife gets up at 3 AM and goes to sleep on a couch because her husband snores

DAY 2: She slips out of her house at 3 and goes to a pub for a drink

DAY 3: She meets someone at the pub

DAY 4: She sleeps with the guy she met at the pub comes back home at 6!!

Need

To prevent your wife from sleeping with someone and let her keep you happy at 3 !! No marks for guessing how!!

Novelty

A noise cancelling pillow in the form of a headphone that has noise detection and cancellation sensors. The pillow is made of soft material to facilitate easy sleep. The speciality fo the pilow is that it has a hammer that is activated in case the decible level of the snoring becomes higher that that can be cancelled by the pillow. The pillow may also have additional plug-ins such as an alarm clock, and a reminder machine. ...will add more as I develop this idea further!!

My first cartoon - online

2006-01-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

WW - 2 and Secularism in India

2006-01-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

While watching the movie "Adolf Hitler - The rise of evil" a very strange question struck me - as to how important it is for a leader catch the emotions of people. The german population after WW 1 was almost begging for survival, while it was a rich and easy life for the Jews. People wanted someone to speak that Jews were responsible for their misery, and Hitler did. He made a propoganda that the Jews were a threat to the integrity to the nation and should be considered as a national problem. This sentiment cought on and helped him to execute his so called evil plan of mass genocide.

Isn't this situation similar to what communal parties are trying to create in India? People somewhere within cannot relate to the customs of muslims and are afraid of those, who actually are not capable of causing any harm to the nation. The misdeeds of those who have bad intentions is born by the rest of the community. The alienation and the ignorance to their culture gives leeway to communial parties to create sects who follow their ideology and act as their permanent vote banks.

Easier said than done, what is required of the government is to educate people about the customs of the diverse religious sects present in India. History and Civics lessons at school were a good means for teaching these basics till they were corrupted. However, those who teach too do not seem to be convinced about what is written. I remember, my teacher teaching the lessions in the history class in a hurry, because she was herself not convinced about what was written in the books about contribution of the Mughal empire to the consolidation of India.

I think the problem with India is that there are too many people to orient. If we try to orient one faction, there would always be another major chunk that according to this article would be disoriented. Either we follow the chinese approach and restrict the freedom people, to create a billion believers in communism....over and out from my side .... till I find a better idea!!

Office Humor - IT standardization

2005-11-26T06:47:00.000-08:00

Event 1
Bug: Can you change the SMPS of my PC, its not working
IT Queen: For this you have to send an IT request.
Bug: (All muddled) How can I send a request when my PC is not working!!
IT Queen: (With a self proclaimed eureka) You see now, I had warned you not to download song from the Internet. The more you download the songs, the higher is the power consumption .. therefore your SMPS crashed.
And my dear friend had to delete his 2 gigabytes of songs after his data was transferred to a new computer. Needless to say, the SMPS was never even looked at for repair.
Event 2
Boss: Bug, why is my net connection so slow?
Bug (Inspiired by the fact that he can think atleast better than IT-Queen): Actually boss people put lot off viruses in the path of the data ...thats why the data can't go.
Boss (sounds like he understands what was just told him): But how does data go? Can't we stop this virus?
Bug (absolutely clueless): Actually boss, data goes in the form of 0 and 1, with every digit knowing whats before it. This way a digit follows the digit before it and goes in the right direction.
Boss (asks himself... beign a geek seems to be pretty simple!!): Then how does a virus affect this chain? Does it change the direction?
Bug (seeing a ray of hope): You seem have hit the crux of the issue, a virus basically replaces the first digit with its digit and takes the rest to the point it wants them to. So you know, how a data is hacked and made to go in wrong hands!!!
And then Bunny Boss asks Bug to add this knowledge in the fundamentals section of the report, dreaming about giving the client more than he wants...so much for client delight!!!

office humor - catch 22

2005-11-01T19:36:00.000-08:00

angel(has already packed her bag, before informing lunatic): can I leave? I can't stay for long.

lunatic (seeing he can't do much) : please do. However, am sending the project work to the client, if you can wait for another half an hr, it will be great.

angel(displeased, however quick to react): actually if I stay for long, I feel feverish.

lunatic (trying to show that he is concerened..almost like an angel): then you should go home and rest. However, you should try coming early so that you can finish work on time.

angel(gives the biggest bouncer): actually I can't even come early because if I have fever at night I can't even get up early...

lunatic(core dump)!!!!

Unsplendid Isolation

2005-08-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

This is a splendid article I saw on Outlook India....Readers may note that by copying the text in this blog, I do not have any intention of violating any copyright law. This text on my blog may serve as a piece of appreciation I have for the subject matter covered in the article. I give due credit to the owners of the article.

Unsplendid Isolation

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050808&fname=Bangladesh+%28F%29&sid=1

500 villages, 1.08 lakh people fall in a no man's land because Dhaka disallows India a fence on the Zero Line

"Welcome to Bangladesh! Grameen Phone wishes you a pleasant stay."This SMS flashes on your cellphone not on landing at Dhaka.
It sneaks in at Khirkidanga village, two hours by road from Siliguri. Technically speaking, the village is in West Bengal, India. But since 1999, for all practical
Life Of Loneliness
purposes, it has been cut off from the rest of the country. This is because this village of 19 families lies in the corridor between the Zero Line (actual Indo-Bangladesh border) and the fencing on the Indian side. It is in no man's land.The border fencing is 150 metres inside Indian territory since a pact with Bangladesh prohibits any fencing closer than that. India now wants to construct the fence along the Zero Line to save villages like Khirkidanga from becoming isolated. But it can't do so due to objections from Dhaka. Says Border Security Force (BSF) Inspector General, North Bengal Frontier, S.
Dhaka says the border fence has defence potential. BSF says it's only to stop smuggling.
R. Tewari, "The Joint Indo-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities that was signed in 1975 prohibits construction of any structure that has defence potential within 150 metres from the Zero Line. Bangladesh has been saying that the border fence has defence potential.
Our stand is that the fence is only to stop smuggling and infiltration and cannot be termed as a structure that has defence potential. But Bangladesh doesn't agree."And Khirkidanga is not the only village caught in this corridor of isolation. The barbed wire fence along the entire stretch of the international border has amputated 500 villages and 1.08 lakh people in West Bengal from the country not only physically but also psychologically. Raquibul Haque's plight exemplifies the predicament of nearly one lakh inhabitants of these villages. By rural Indian standards, this Khirkidanga resident is a very eligible bachelor: the 25-year-old undergraduate belongs to a family that owns 45 bighas of land that provides them enough to lead a comfortable life. But Raquibul's parents haven't been able to find a bride for him. The reason: no family in the "mainland" wants to give a girl in marriage to someone on the "other side" of the fence. "We are called Bangladeshis even by our relatives. There are many unmarried boys and girls like my son in Khirkidanga and the surrounding villages," rues Raquibul's father Shafiqul.
For people like these trapped between the border and the fence, it is like living in a prison. Outlook visited six of these villages—Khirkidanga, Antupara, Sipahipara, Bangalpara, Khudipara and Hindupara—to see for itself the plight of its people. The 700-odd residents of these villages can cross over to the mainland (or India, as they say now) through a gate that's manned round-the-clock by the BSF. The gates are opened three times a day: 6 am to 7 am, 10 am to 11 am and 4 pm to 5 pm. "Once the gates are shut, we are cut off from India and are at the mercy of Bangladesh. Very rarely does the BSF patrol our villages. We feel totally alienated. We are like stateless people without any identity," points out a despondent Dharma Deb Roy, a Hindupara denizen.Not just that, the daily routine of entering their names in a register, subjecting themselves to frisking, laying out whatever they are carrying for inspection and having to account for everything they carry across the fence is something the villagers find humiliating and annoying. Some even see it as harassment. "We are citizens of India and nowhere else will you find people having to account for their movements or being subjected to inspection and strict vigil like us. Is it our fault that our villages are located here? Even if we purchase an extra kilo of rice or sugar for a special occasion, we have to provide an explanation. All of us have been detained for long hours at the gate, interrogated and our credentials and identity verified.

Why should we face all this? We haven't committed any crime," says Shahamat Ali, a resident of Antupara that lies next to Khirkidanga.To him and others, the BSF seems suspicious of them and even comes into their houses to inspect their belongings. If any villager is seen to even remotely defy a BSF jawan, he is beaten up. "My 12-year-old son, who studies in Class 7, was beaten black and blue by a BSF jawan a few days ago since he didn't dismount from the cycle while crossing the gate on his way to school," says a villager.Many of the villages are emptying out. Hindupara once was home to 30 families, but only seven live there now. Those who could find buyers have sold their houses and lands, and left. The exodus will continue. Says Samir Roy of Hindupara, "I'm also saving money and plan to leave. It has become impossible to live here ever since the fence came up a few years ago. Our relatives have to provide an explanation to the BSF when they come to visit us. It's all very insulting. Life has become hellish."West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has been urging the Centre to make Bangladesh see reason. "I've taken up this issue with the prime minister, the external affairs minister and the home minister a number of times. Negotiations are on with Bangladesh. The fence is necessary, but it is also cutting off villages and families. The only way out is to construct the fence along the Zero Line. Let's see if Bangladesh agrees," says Buddhadeb.

Many, like state agriculture minister Kamal Guha, feel that if Bangladesh doesn't accept India's position, it should go ahead and construct the fence along the Zero Line anyway. Says Guha, "Lakhs of people who stay on either side of the fence have to cross it every day through gates manned by the BSF. The BSF opens these gates three times a day and this creates a lot of problems. Free movement is restricted. Aren't these people Indians, and doesn't our Constitution guarantee freedom of movement? Why should these poor and innocent people have to face harassment and even physical abuse at the hands of the BSF?"The BSF denies the harassment charge. According to IG Tewari, his men do maintain a record of the people who cross the gate. He also admits that the villagers are frisked and any parcel or bag they carry is searched. But this, he maintains, is not harassment. "Our mandate is to check infiltration and smuggling. If we don't maintain vigil at the gates along the fence, the very purpose of constructing it would be defeated," he says.But it's not as harmless as the BSF IG makes it out to be. Ask Maqbool Islam of Bangalpara. He was detained at the gate for three hours a few weeks ago by BSF jawans and was released only after the village elders reached the spot and certified that he was a resident. Complains Islam: "We have to seek permission from the BSF when we sell our produce in the markets on the other side (of the fence). On our way back from the markets, we have to account for everything we have bought, be it cattle, poultry, salt or soap." Islam believes the BSF views the villagers with suspicion and takes them to be smugglers.The BSF admits to this scrutiny, but has its own perspective on the situation. Its officers point out that they have to ensure that people who cross the gates to come over to this side are Indians. It is not possible, they say, for a jawan to recognise the residents of the villages by face. "We never beat up anyone. We just question them if we're suspicious of their movements. We also have to check smuggling, and in order to do that, we have to maintain a record of everything that a person is carrying while crossing the gate," says B.S. Negi, commander of the A company of the BSF's 33 Battalion. He alleges that most of the villagers are involved in small-scale smuggling; essentials like sugar, grain and cooking oil fetch a premium in Bangladesh. So, if a villager takes extra rations, the BSF has reason to get suspicious.On its part, the BSF has been requesting the state government to issue identity cards to the residents of the border villages. Senior officers point out that this will make things easier both for the BSF as well as the villagers. The state government says that the process of issuing ID cards has begun. But government action is invariably time-consuming. The BSF would also like the villages on the other side of the fence to be relocated. But land is not always available at close proximity. The only solution, then, is to construct the fence along the Zero Line.Bangladesh is not likely to agree to that. The fate of lakhs of Indian villagers, then, lies solely in Dhaka's hands. Calcutta or New Delhi can do very little but pressure the Bangladeshi government. So far, they haven't been successful.

office humour - Telephonic Interview

2005-07-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

Lunatic: Hi Diksy, can you briefly tell us something about yourself?

Diksy: Yes, sir I am a PHD. in statistics.

Lunatic (completely zonked...as stats is the last thing he would want to ask about): So why do you want to join our company? How does the work we do fit with your experience?

Diksy (has already switched on her computer to read out the answers she has made last night): Actually sir, statistics can be applied wherever you have large amount of data, so since there is so much IP, statistics can be applied there.

Lunatic (Wakes himself up, and rubs his eyes, and tries to change the topic ): OK, diksy so what are your long term career goals?

Diksy (turns the pages of the notes she has made and repeats): Actually sir, statistics can be applied wherever you have large amount of data, so since there is so much IP, statistics can be applied there. Therefore there is lot of scope!!

Lunatic(turns off the speaker and holds his head between his hands): Can you tell me about the work you have done in modelling of an earthquake?

Diksy (with a triumphant smile): Actually I tried to estimate the intensity of an earthquake at its source based on the values at a predefined location.

Lunatic( with a triumphant smile..knowing that this is his domain): So on what all factors does this model depend?

Diksy: The year in which the earthquake has occurred!!

Lunatic(almost banging his head on the table): Is that so!!!

Diksy: Yes, see for example, an earthquake in 2004 should not be considered to compute the magnitude of an earthquake in 2005.

Lunatic (Eureka!!) : OH!!! You have hit the most important point first.

Diksy(all pumped up): And it is also directly proportional to the distance.

Lunatic(Dead by now..stopping his hand to hang the call): OK, so you mean as we go away from the epicenter, the magnitude increases?

Diksy (angry on Lunatic): Can't you understand even this simple thing!!! Obviously it has to reduce!!

Lunatic(concluding the interview): Any questions for me Diksy?

Diksy: What do you think about me? Joking haan.. I mean my interview....

Lunatic (Nothing to say)..............

Kapde dhulvane hain ki nahin

2005-06-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

Its one of those days that I don't want to get up in the morning and be disturbed. I realize that there is a knock on my door and believe me I am just not concerned about opening it. When the knock on the door is repeated, I reluctantly open the door, and to my surprize I see a blond girl outside my door. When I ask her whats wrong, and why lucky me, then she says that she is being chased by a cop and all that she expects from me is that I give her shelter for 30 mins. When I ask her whether she has committed a crime, she replies no. Moreover, after loking at her face, one could really not believe that a girl like her can commit a crime. I allow her to come in :-) and ask her to take a nap if she wants. Meanwhile, I do the same as an engineer would do . I am a bit skeptical on the gift god has given to me. Is it one of those days when whatever I want would come true? Anyways, when I enter my bedroom, I see that the blond has already gone off to sleep. At the same instance the door bell rings and I know who that is, its the police inspector. I have to choose between whats right and whats not, and I don't have a clue about it. Looking at the girl I decide not to open the door. I decide to help her for obvious reasons. The door bell rings again and I ignore the parrot like sound it creates. After the bell rings for the fourth time, I get out of my bed and see whose there from the keyhole. To my surprize, I find the inspector as equally intelligent and he has an eye-to-eye contact with me through the keyhole. I realize my mistake and again rush back to my bed. On my way to my bedroom, I see a bucket full of laundry clothes. I had kept them last night for the maid to clean. And surprizingly it strikes me that I want to get these clothes washed at any cost or I won't have anything to wear. I open my eyes and rush towards the door to stop the maid before she rings the door bell for the last time. I open the door and to my solace I find the maid, rather than the police inspector, asking "kapde dhulvane hain ki nahin". I stand there disapponted like a looser james bond who is not even able to save his blond!! :-)

Me @ My village

2005-06-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

I had thought about writing this down somewhere however this slipped out of my mind. Its been around 4 months back that my folks insisted me to take two days off from my hectic schedule and visit my grandparents at my village. For once I was a bit reluctant about commuting so much and asked my folks to temporarily delay the same, though the plan didn't work out.

I started my journey at New Delhi Central and as expected there we found a rustic train ...called the Himalayan Queen!! The Hiamalayan Queen left the station as if like me it too was not fond of traveling. The journey was mostly covered during the night time, and to my surprise I found myself in a totally new world in the morning. It was like a magic spell that had just come true. I was woken up by the smell of sweet morning wind and fresh earth after the rain. I took the window seat and then started gazing outside the window at a view that was somewhat unnatural to me. My mind could not fit the view of a green field, a pond with buffalos and the like, in the perspective of the concrete city life. Though much less organized than the one found in the cities, the life there offered a peaceful and serene environment where things moved at their own sweet pace, and it didn't matter much to people. Life still went on without the need of what we defined as necessities in the city life.

This feeling was repeated when I reached my village. At my home I found my grandparents growing vegetables in their garden. The stock was sufficient for their survival and that for their neighbors (our relatives). Next day, my grandfather, took me to our fields and asked me to collect waste twigs for use in boiling water. Further, he also asked me to water one of our paddy field. All this while, I hadn't thought, even once, about how would people reach me, how would work happen without me, which project was screwed by the people working on it, and the like. These thoughts seem to be very trite in front of nature's virgin beauty in my village. Later, I sat in my field watching the sunset, contemplating what I have gained and what I have missed. At that moment I got a call from a colligue of mine.

Difference between good and bad

2005-05-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

Before I start the discussion on this topic, I would like to share what instigated this thought in my mind. Yesterday, a friend and I watched Star Wars- Revenge of the Sith, and surprisingly I could relate myself to the dilemma of Anakin Skywalker. After I came out of the hall I could not rationalize myself about who was good and who was bad, in context of the movie. When I tried to extrapolate this to society and religion, a big question that I had almost never asked myself arose i.e. is good and bad a perception that people carry? Just because people believe in doing good things, even a wrong fact can be converted to a right perception? Immediately I could relate myself to two examples where a deliberate attempt was made to differentiate the good from the bad.

Firstly, let’s talk about World War II. In world war two what the Axis did was always portrayed as evil and it related to the dark side of human nature. On the other hand what the British, the French and the Russians did is always depicted as good. If we look deeply into the issue that the two world wars occurred because the Allies were could never bear Germany to become a superior power. Post world war I, the treaty of Versailles almost crippled the economy of Germany to an extent that even bread was not affordable to the German population. Further, not to forget, the Red army, used to kill its own soldiers, if they returned back. This was done to ensure that the generals could impress Stalin with the commitment of their army in the war. Not to forget, that the German army were considered as a force that could bring freedom to the Slavs (Russians). In light of such events, the question that arises is that who is the lesser evil? Just because the atrocities by the Germans are less recent in time, their actions are still considered as atrocious. However, Britain, that enabled its colonial empire by force, is never considered a nation led by dark forces post world war two.

Secondly, our religion. If I have the liberty to express my views about certain religions, I would rather say that the bodies that are try to preach such religions act more like companies that desperately want to sell their brands and stay competitive, than bodies that can preach the right way of living. They try to impose the thoughts of some religious philosophers as the ultimate truth, when the main idea behind imparting these thoughts (by religious philosophers) was to bring order during their times. These ideas or thoughts no more apply to our modern times, and are old fashioned. As a result what we se around us is religious chaos and disorder. Therefore, what is required is a new way of living the right form of life, and that will definitely come from independent thinkers of our times than those who preached 2000 years back.

Depressingly, the only thing that I can infer out this is that freedom to think individually is always suppressed in a society. People always want us to be conformist and live a life that has not novel objective. And it’s these people who sideline non-conformists and call them bad or evil and never allow new thoughts to surface.

if I was a little Ignorant

2005-04-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

If I was a bit ignorant life would have been much simpler. This thought struck me when I visited a barber shop in Kanpur. The barber of the shop seemed to me a much happier man than I was. I had all the reasons in the world to be happier than him. I was professionally more sound than he was, my future was made secure by the college in which I was studying in, and many uncountable things of this kind. But what I and many like me fail to get in life is the genuine smile that truly indicates the happiness of ones inner self. Three years have passed since this incident happened, I have had innumerable incidents in which I have found people that have been happier than what I have been.

This has made me inquisitive about the true definition of happiness and many related questions. The one that I ask myself frequently is that whether I am on a wild goose chase that was suppose to lead me to eternal peace and happiness, but has failed to do so? I often ask myself what can I learn from that barber I saw, or for that matter a person who lives his life in his own sphere and doe not know, what getting a high paid job means, or what being successful means, or who does not want to go abroad and stay where he has born....

After contemplating a lot on these issues ..:-) I finally found the solution to this dilemma. The solution was very simple but not that obvious, it just required me to stop expecting a lot from life, it wanted me to be a bit patient and wait for life to give me whatever I deserve....believe it or not this feeling or waiting for the right things to come my way, already makes me feel much lighter...

Case Study

2005-04-23T03:03:00.000-07:00

Pals I put up in Gurgaon and I have my meals at a small catering service provider (lets call it Good Meals). I have been having my meals at Good Meals for around 2 years now. The USP (unique selling preposition) of meals provided by Good Meals is that the food is homelike, but this delicacy comes at a high price. Good Meals provides a meal containing:

a. dal
b. chapati
c. rice
d. curd
e. subzi

The total cost of the meal is Rs. 40. My inquisitive self once provoked me to enquire about the margin per thali Good Meals has, and I found out that after removing the cost of vegetables, cereals and pulses, and that of labor, Good Meals was making somewhere around Rs 20 per thali. This was an exorbitant amount of margin, for a total volume of around 100 customers per day. Good Meals has been able to maintain this high margin because of people in gurgaon can dispense this much cash for decent homelike food. The popularity of Good Meals was growing by leaps and bounds, but one could see that Good Meals was becoming complacent about its services. The quality and the taste of food started becoming mundane, but Good Meals was still in the seventh heaven of its success.

The real problem for Good Meals arose when Mr. Anoop of Cheap Meals realized the potential of the cash cow. Cheap Meals copies the business model of Good Meals and opens a catering service just opposite to that of Good Meals. Cheap Meals was serious about the competition and succeeded developed a better pricing strategy than Good Meals. Cheap Meals introduced the same thali that was introduced by Good Meals for Rs. 30. In addition, Cheap Meals also introduced other variants of a thali that had special addons like a sweet dish, vegetable rice, and the like. By this strategy Cheap Meals has been able to not only capture the existing customers of Good Meals, but also pull other people to buy food. Good Meals on the other hand, has identified this competition a bit later than expected. They have also increased the variety of subzi's provided by them but still pursue the same thali system at the same prices. A very interesting feature of their new strategy is that they:

a. have started caring about their existing customers
b. assume that their existing customers would find their food more homelike than they would find at Cheap Meals. As a result they have not changed their prices.

The question that is left unanswered is that how effective is their strategy in comparison to the pricing strategy being played by Cheap Meals. Good Meals is approaching the competition in a totally different manner in comparison to Cheap Meals. I wrote this case in order to know the opinion of people not on the situation but on the strategy being followed by Good Meals and Cheap Meals, and would like to know who according to you would be the likely winner in the near term.