Travel: Chennai to Madurai by road - Bus

Chennai to Madurai by road - The omni-bus ride! (My experience and some tips) 

 We did the Chennai Madurai by road using a speacial bus from Chennai CMBT (Koyambedu) - Man! what a nightmare of a jam. The bus was full and he left at 11:20 and reached Madurai at 7:30 - about 8 hrs. You will hear a lot of tales of 6 hrs of travel, but I think safe reasonable time for 560 hrs is 8 hrs While it was a good "Volvo" bus, and had only one stop over at Tiruchi, could have been a lot better had he started someplace else. (Perungalathur being too far)

 Please make sure that you get down at the Periyar bus stand (there is also a mattu thavani stand but I think its a little outside town)

 BTW some tips for going on the long distance bus from Chennai :
1. Parking at CMBT for a drop: Follow the general melee of buses and theres a way for cars too to drop you behind the KPN /Parveen stall
2. They do give you water and blanket in "Volvo" bus (Parveen) 
3. Carry night blinders and a pillow if possible
4. Book on kpn web site or parveen website. Just check the cancellation fees . I think its 10% for upto 12 hrs before travel. Book seats in front but not the first row if you can avoid it (The first row is next to the driver and lights from oncoming vehicles are a pain till the curtains are drawn -usually after perungalathur)

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Movie: Kahaani: Nice movie

Nice movie and a gripping way of telling a story

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Role of the program in issue resolution: Project Management

Several times I had been told that the role of the program is to keep the ball rolling on tasks, and this meant little to me.

In a matrix organization, a key role of the functions is functional excellence. Several times, each functional member raises issues on other groups and the response to this issue by another group is usually a solution

Wrong!

The response to the issue by another group is another problem - rarely a solution.  Each functional team has what is often labelled as professional ego and it hurts to change their pas

Example, I need to fit this part and need 10 mm clearance. You have only 2 mm. Answer from a mating part group, even if I change you will have 3 mm besides I cant change it as it costs too much.

In most non-program situations, the conversation stalls here and in a muddle of competing tasks, functions move to easier tasks (not necessarily important). Often times, the issue gets resolved after long periods of inaction in a kind-of batch mode resulting in delays.

It requires a program team to get the experts together and strike a bargain with a unifying metric - the customer requirements - to move the program forward.

This is probably the key value add from program teams.

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