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Showing posts from September, 2011

Golden India

Saturday : In air : Frankfurt Mumbai Some sunahara gyan from who heads gold trading of Canadian bank. India is world's biggest importer of gold. She import and consumes close to 900 tons per year and our gold import bill is next to oil. Even Dubai be around 200 tons and that too bulk of it is exported. His major customers are Zaveri Bazar , Laxmi Road. A big jewelry shop would house at least few hundred Kgs just on display. Nearly 12 banks are in the business of this trading. With price being uniform ; service, payment terms and relationship must be variables that would differentiate one trader from the other. US interest is zero percent, stock and bond market crashing, western countries economy tottering , real estate price defeating. People who hoards the money need a place to park. No other option than gold. Result gold prices are going up and up. I kept on thinking, can this gold asset of India not be channeled in economy ? Answer lied in various gold loan schemes that are

Hotel Hassles

Sunday : Mumbai/Pune All hotels while check in take pre -authorization yet while checking out, they again swipe the card , take a print out , ask for your signature and take another printout and fish out for an envelope to present customer his copy , in between make a call (perhaps housekeeping dept to check if all room belonging are intact). All these sequence of events don't happen in US hotels - at least in Marriott. They just swipe the card at the beginning, last day of the check out slip in the bill copy to the room and that's it. You inform them at check out and 'Bye' . In my previous visit to US, I asked the front office person and he said ' of course, we are business hotel, we don't waste time '. At 2am, at Marriott Courtyard, Mumbai, front office was manned by just one staff and he took his time to attend to the customer till he turned out to me. I waited with mix of impatience counting the minutes of precious sleep that I would be wasting after tra