At the tender age of 28 I have already become a bitter old man. Kids these days, I just don’t understand. When I was young we played Pacman and Frogger on the Atari. Now they have Halo and Grand Theft Auto. I used an AM/FM Walkman and now they have these Ipod things. This news however just pushed me over the edge. Now you can actually outsource your algebra homework if you were to properly abuse a new tutoring service by Growing Stars Inc.

Twice in a week, Ann Maria, a sixth grader at Silver Oak Elementary School, California logs on to the internet from home after school hours. Ann is not chatting up her friends.

She is connecting to her personal tutor, already online, armed with headset and a pen mouse sitting in a call centre like cubicle almost a timezone away in Panampillynagar, Kochi, Kerala.

Your neighbourhood tuition teacher, riding on the Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) wave, has gone global and his monthly pay packet turned meatier – the 17 teachers who work with the Growing Star Infotech (P) Ltd will testify. The firm a subsidiary of California-based Growing Stars Inc went online in January last year.

Ok, I know I am being unfair. This is a legitimate service. The testimonials are glowing. Still, you guys can see the potential for abuse by crafty kids can’t you? If my memory serves me correct though, Indian parents teach math with a rolling pin in one hand to smack you if you don’t properly carry out addition. THAT’S going to be hard to pull off virtually. Continue reading →

I thought the desi accent was good for cutting tension?

More customers now ask to speak to an American after they hear an operator with an Indian accent… “In India, the operators are doing a lot of the courtesies they are trained to do,” … but they often miss the nuance of conversations.

I didn’t know you had a choice in voice. I’ll take an Eartha Kitt with a side of Scarlett Johansson, please. Silly Americans! You can request a native, but all your call are belong to us:

[M]onitoring is also moving offshore. HyperQuality, which is based in Seattle, has 100 call monitors in New Delhi who eavesdrop on call center workers around the United States.

Eavesdropping on American call center workers probably leads to some interesting conversations in Delhi. ‘Eh, Seema, vat does it mean, “I am all crunked up”?’

Last October I reported here on how the Justice Department laid the smack down on the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority for attempting to require Sikhs and other religious minorities to discard any head coverings while on the job. Well it seems as though the MTA is trying to be “cute” in how it complies with the Justice Department’s wrath. From Reuters:

A Sikh subway driver is being forced to wear a badge on his turban or face being demoted and sent to the stock yards, his lawyer said on Thursday.

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (news – web sites), which operates the subways, told motorman Kevin Harrington to wear the MTA badge or he cannot not work with customers.

“If he wears it, he can operate in customer service areas, if not then he’s relegated to yard duty,” said Charles Seaton, spokesman for the MTA’s Transit Authority.

“I feel wearing the patch violates my religious freedom,” Harrington, 53, told The New York Daily News. “The turban is a sacred space, so it’s like asking a priest to wear a logo on his vestments.”

Harrington’s lawyer, Amardeep Singh, said his client had always worn the turban in his 25 years on the job, but it was only after “9/11 that the agency tried to get its Sikh and Muslim employees to stop wearing their turbans and hijabs.”

Continue reading →

Sepia Mutiny has just received its first mention in the REAL news. Journalist Francis Assisi (whose stories we have referenced here before) writes an article regarding the Power99 Fiasco (see here and here) for IndoLink.com:

Spewing hate and vitriol at Indians and at outsourcing may make good comedy shows for Americans. But not for Indian Americans. Not anymore.

Thanks to alert American bloggers (notably Turbanhead, Sepiamutiny, Herstory and Moorishgirl) Indian Americans are raging mad at the racism and sexism displayed by a Philadelphia radio station last week when its African-American DJ, phoned an India-based call center worker, showering her with obscenities on-air, and then offering her humiliation to his listeners as entertainment.

Some Sepia Mutiny readers will note their comments in the story. Does this mean that the Mutiny is now legit? Never!

Although it appears a Kerala baby girl was not named Tsunami after all, a newborn boy from the Andamans has swiped the sobriquet (via Boing Boing). Meet Tsunami Roy:

“It was early morning Sunday, when I made my pregnant wife a cup of tea and woke her up. She was just about to take a sip when we felt the first jolt of the quake…” After hoisting his injured wife and [older] son on to the rickshaw, Roy pedaled and pushed the rickshaw as fast as he could up and away from the shore toward a nearby rocky slope…

The nurse… rigged up a makeshift curtain, laid the 26-year-old Namita down on a bed of dried leaves and grass and ordered the men to get some clean cloth, thread and a bowl of hot water. “A few hours later the child was born…

“It was the doctors who suggested we name the boy Tsunami and we also liked the name and decided to call him that. After all it is a name everyone will instantly notice and remember.”

It’s a little bit morbid and a little bit poetic. It’s not quite like naming him Bubonic, but much more eyebrow-raising than just plain Venkat. Ah well, people will never forget his birthday.

Of course, they’ll also be in mourning. No matter the name, there’s nothing he can do about the date per se. He joins all those poor saps born around Christmas, New Year’s, final exams and 9/11 as people cheated out of their own remembrances.

There is always a lot of junk science and numerous conspiracy theories that follow any great disaster. The tsunami in Asia is no different. From the Jerusalem Post:

The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated,” an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday.

According to Al-Osboa’, India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear know-how from the United States and Israel, both of which “showed readiness to cooperate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind.”

Since 1992, the magazine argued, leading geological centers in Britain, Turkey and other countries, warned of the need “not to hold nuclear experiments in the region of the Indian Ocean known as ‘the Fire Belt,’ in which the epicenter of the earthquake lies.

Continue reading →

In economic freedom…. I’m personally a little skeptical of this result – surely India’s in better shape than 118? The Financial Express reports – Mostly unfree –

That India still ranks in the last quarter of a world ranking on economic freedom with an index score of 3.5 illustrates the extent to which we are inured to clamps on our rights to trade and invest. One needn’t agree with all the details of this ranking of 155 countries by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal to go along with its basic thrust. The notion of economic freedom is only a theoretical ideal — like perfect competition — and its finest expressions are found in small trading bastions like Hong Kong (which topped the 2005 index for the 11th year running)followed by Singapore. …This global ranking should set aside a lingering delusion among IndiaÂ’s officialdom that one major advantage we have vis-a-vis our emerging economy rivals like China is our wider range of economic freedoms — rule of law and all that! Far from it. China occupies the 112th place when compared to IndiaÂ’s 118th and the report notes that the dragon has reduced tariff barriers since joining the WTO, cut government expenditure and privatised some companies. India, by contrast, has wound up the disinvestment ministry altogether under the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.

The Indian Express also covers the story…