Riders

Hi all,
Poll results, 16 out of 18 voted that We become old when we let ourselves believe that we are!

Astounding but expected results! So to all of you who think they are old, you probably are not.


Anyways, this posting was meant to be for yesterday, i had typed something really nice...and then, just when i clicked on post....'La connection à haut debit a fait des siennes'... J'étais rouge rage..well do not forget that I am an Orange customer!!!

One thing no one is really talking about is that Emtel, which is the main competitor of CellPlus( ...sorry Orange) is rather quiet....lets hope there is not Rebranding there also...whereby, Emtel would go Orange too!!! lol!

Emtel, has the potential to be a decent player when it comes to ISP. With its 3.5 G network, which offers a decent speed (1.8 Mbps), it could be a serious competitor. May be it needs to review its marketing Strategy to decrease its cost. In Scandinavia for instance, a mobile operator has done something very interesting:

People are given free Internet connectivity provided they install a small (and rather low cost) emitter/relay on their rooftops. The Electricity supply is paid for by the customer, and the only investment by the operator is for the antenna and maintenance.

Consequently this allows the operator to setup a 'wide' network providing enhanced coverage of an area. Then people would just connect to the network and pay for the usage. The 3.5 G doongle offerred by Emtel is currently at around Rs 6 000, which imho is expensive. Should they reduce the hardware cost as well as the price for the different 3.5G packages, this service will quickly gain popularity.

Well on Monday, many of us got delayed going to work because of traffic jam on the motorway from Phoenix to Port-Louis. There were several excuses...sorry explanations for these:
1. Broken down bus
2. The third lane was not open
3. The guys and gals who came for the SADC comference were going back.

Whatever be the case there is one practice which i do not agree with: that's the wastage of resources.

I will explain how: When you are stuck in a traffic jam, you most probably stress out, you probably get late, and you do not operate at '100%' efficiency. Furthermore, when your are stuck in traffic, your engine is kept on, so you unnecessarily burn fuel. This is a waste of money.
On top of that we are increasing the emission of carbon compounds (Greenhouse gases), Sulphur compounds, and Tetra-Ethyl lead added in fuel causes damage to lungs.

I have just attended a little talk by folks from Orange Business Services, and they also provide Telepresence services...Should we organise teleconferences, we would save on fuel, thus reducing our 'corporate carbon foot-print' as rightly pointed out by the speaker.

Wouldn't that be cool- instead of wasting money and jet-fuel we could organise all these international conferences as tele-conferences. For the people who attended the conference on Poverty in Africa...we are acknowledging poverty on the one hand and wasting money on the other, lets use technology to save money!!!!! .

Talking about carbon footprints:
All those people who attanded the SADC conference used Mercedes and other 'grosses cylindrées' to move around- i think they use a lot more fuel than any other cars. Furthermore, something else they were assigned riders to provide them priority on the motorway. Well there are two explanations for this practice:

i. our leaders want to show that we have a good transport system - fast and efficient (though we all know the truth)
ii. they have wrongly planned their journey and need to do a 30 minutes journey in half the amount of time.

Well one other thing was the fact that the cars they were using had number plates on which the names of the country was written. I personally saw two of those. I do not remember what was written on the first one, but on the second one it was Mozambique. This is illegal i think, If the representatives had difficulty remembering the correct number plate they could have put flags belonging to the respective countries.

The Use of Riders (Motards!)
To many of our ministers, the use of riders ( paid from tax-payer's money) is common practice. They would stop traffic on motorways or round-abouts to allow the ministers through...unless they have chronic diarrhea whereby they urgently need to go to toilet- this is not admissible. Its should not be the case that because of someone who is irresponsible in planning a trip you get delayed going to work. Someone please quote the part in the Road Traffic Act whereby it is written that ministers have priority. I believe that we could make better use of these riders to regulate traffic, to escort ambulances, fireman's trucks... anyways...since this is a logical and practical suggestion, i am sure that it lies out of the range of the brilliant minds of our advisers paid at Rs 150 k.

The riders are paid using each and everyone's taxes! so lets make a fair use of them!