Senior Srikanth suggests...

Mindset change, Quality Management System (Q.M.S.), a halt to PropCare bashing, and a compendium of procedures and formats for our functioning at Mantri Synergy.
"It might take a few months to write but if written once will pave way for 80% trouble free living", says Mr Srikanth (F-Block), in a letter addressed to Mantri residents. He has offered to help us draft the compendium of procedures and formats.
Mr Srikanth has made many other meaningful suggestions in his mail to CommonFloor, which isn't accessible to all Mantri residents.
Excerpts from Srikanth's mail to residents:
There are so many functions which need to be studied understood and analysed and a solution found. All that is needed to run a organization as efficiently as possible.
1)Administration
2)Aesthetics & ambience
3)Electricity Management
4)Energy Management
5)Entertainment (which is very essential to bring in talent, harmony and bonhomie amongst us)
6)Facilities like Swimming Pool, Courts, Gyms etc. lifts management
7)Financial Management
8)Garden
9)Garbage Management
10)Gas & Lines Management
11)House keeping management
12)Security & Safety Management (Have you noticed the “Security” whistles when the power goes. Is he scared? Or does he want to tell you it is darkness – when you are already deep in it?)
13)Sewage Management
14)Services to the flats like electrical, plumbing, etc.
15)Stores Management
16)Training all functions
17)Water Management (waste and disposal)
We have not been exposed to any of the functions directly we have only been bashing propcare...if we take up from the first April, we will be at the receiving end....
We need to have a vision,a mission,a plan. We need to strategize many many things. All these functions should have a written procedure which itself has a procedure to write a procedures. A compendium of procedures and formats as prescribed in International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a remarkable tool to mitigate our problems.
This will make every ones job “Go by the Book”. Lack of system can lead to the blaming game. The proposed committee has already blamed the ADHOC. Next committee will blame the earlier. They will work O.T. to do so.
Kindly understand that to adopt a system of ISO standard we need to break our mindsets.
Elected members should have the humility that they have volunteered to do good service to the residents including himself/herself.
All residents are themselves “Mantris” and hence elected members should have no hang ups or a superiority complex. ... Let us shed our egos, roll up our sleeves and get on to work as a team. Let us not curse the darkness,et us all hold a candle instead.
Residents should come out to state what he/she is capable or his/her USP and stand for election.Let there be “Fact” finding attitude and not “Fault” finding attitude in all of us.
Circulate your profiles and state where you would fit, this can help us form the committee with bundles of talent. You need many committees and sub-committees.
We need experienced professionals (managers to technicians). Mind you the Tamil Nadu which was a Haven for talented force does not exist now...We should not upset the apple cart now which is PropCare.
We should go with them,atleast for 6 months, review our operations and decide.6 months, though, in my opinion is a bit too short. Let us give it a shot.
The committee should have mixture of experience & youth.
Let us decide soon.
D.A. Srikanth
Flat F-1203/1204
(D.A.Krishna's father)

Camphor cure for Mantri's mosquito menace

Call it coincidence or telepathy. A day after some of us, evening walkers at Mantri's, exchanged notes on how to cope with mosquito menace, I got a mail from Mr Kishore Kumar (B-407) suggesting a mosquito repellent - camphor."We have tested it in our master bedroom for an entire month," says Mr Kumar who moved into Mantri Synergy six weeks back.
I am sure my evening-walk friends and several others would read what Mr Kishore Kumar has to say. "We have two little kids, right from Day One (at Mantri's) we have been facing the mosquito bite and the kids were not able to sleep at night properly; we tried all methods like mosquito spray, liquid machine & electric bat but nothing worked", says Mr Kishore Kumar.
He adds: "At last after a deep search in google we found a way to overcome this problem, and also tested the method in our master bed room for an entire month and it’s very effective. Nowadays we rarely catch a mosquito with electric bat".
My friend Srikanth who lives on the 12th floor says, before he moved into Mantri Synergy,he was given to understand that mosquitoes can't reach us on higher residential floors.My Google research told me mosquitoes can't rise above 25 ft. Apparently, the Google talks of American mosquito. Ours are smarter. Mr Srikanth and I can vouch for the fact that Indian mosquito, notably, those in Chennai, can scale much higher heights than their American brethren.
If you Google 'mosquito repellent', you get no less than 978 products. Mr Kishore Kumar, citing an article on medicinal values of camphor, suggests the following:
1.Place two tablets of commercially available camphor on any warm surface - the device on which is used for blue tablet type repellent serves the purpose well. Plug it for an hour and see the results! You can do it twice a day- morning and in the night as well!
2.Place two tablets each on different corners of the room or at places where mosquitoes seem to stay! Leave them there and they will evaporate in a day or so keeping the air mosquito free.
3.Fill water in a bowl or saucer with water. Drop two tablets of Camphor into the water. And Keep the cup in your room. The size of the vessel and camphor used may depend on the room-size. Water evaporates at normal temperature. Camphor slowly starts dissolving in water. The water evaporates with Camphor smell.Adding little bit hot water gives instant action.