Here I am in warm, sunny Jupiter, Florida for a week of golf, parties and just relaxation for the holidays. Wait, relaxation? No, that does not come to me naturally. Soon after we arrived here, we grabbed something to eat and hit the golf course for 9 holes. My sons and I had a very good first outing, the last 2 holes were played in not so ideal conditions, but we were able to locate our balls. I have been up since 5:30 AM, my usual wakeup time, attending to College work – we have some purchases to finalize because we got “excellent” deals because of the end of the year. It is yet another game that we all have to play.

I am happy to say that I have brought a different attitude to negotiating purchases at Wellesley and I am thrilled to see some of the staff practicing it effectively. We have saved significant amount through these bargaining which are going towards academic initiatives such as classroom technologies and academic software purchases.

One of the examples recently involves negotiating a critical hardware needed for our central disk system. We began the negotiation in Feb 2011 and it dragged on this long. The quoted hardware would replace an aging one and we received 48% discount from the list price, which is great. However, I noticed that they were not crediting us for the maintenance already paid on the old hardware, which was a good chunk. When asked, we were told that by contract this amount is not reimbursable and that I can talk to their contract folks to get an explanation as to why.

Well, this is the quarter end as well as the year end for these companies and we have some leverage. So, I said that unless we receive the additional discount which matched the remaining 6 months of maintenance for the old hardware (which will be decommissioned when the new one is installed) the deal is off! After the usual drama of several email exchanges, we received the credit, which meant the discount is now 55%! Happy Holidays!

I am pretty sure we all have our favorite stories when it comes to technology and how it is making a lot of dreams come true. For us, between skype and some of the ways that we now can make cheap phone calls, we hardly think about planning the calls back home like we used to. When I came to this country in 1978, a very unreliable landline call to India cost $3.79 a minute. I made a lot of calls in favor of eating cheap food because I was only a grad student and that was my priority. Now, a call to India can cost as little as 3 cents a minute unless your relatives at the other end have skype.

But the best thing that is happening to us this holiday break is December is the Music season in Chennai, South India when there are literally hundreds of south indian classical performances called Kutcheris held all over the city. We have been dreaming about going there, but it has not been possible. However, our absolute favorite vocalist, T.M. Krishna, considered the top artist, is live streaming his three performances, the first of which is tomorrow. $35 for three performances and connections from Chennai, India are blocked. We are really psyched about watching tomorrow.

I thought it was today and was upset that I did not see any video. When I wrote a complaint, I got an answer right back saying that I am checking in 24 hours early! Part of the deal is the whole experience of meeting friends, other pundits and critics and ha! the food. My sister-in-law has cooked up a storm, so at least that will be replicated. We love T.M. Krishna so much, that no critic will survive here.