Cool Service at Lowe's

I was checking out after getting a new fridge for the condo, and saw something really cool. Because the unit was a floor sample, I had to check out at the customer service desk to get the immense price reduction. Up there, I noticed multi-lingual signs -- not just English/Spanish -- which is de rigeur at home improvement stores -- but also Russian, French and what I thought was Korean. Pretty cool, eh?

But that's not all. They have a service called Language Line, that will translate dozens of other languages, including Gujarati, Hindi and Bhojpuri. That's pretty amazing. I don't know how useful it is to Lowe's in terms of attracting business, but I'm more likely to go there just because I know they have it.

Mind Blowing...

article on the Dharavi slum in Mumbai.

It is an aerial view of Dharavi, considered Asia's biggest shantytown, two square km (0.8 square miles) of open sewers, muddy lanes and ramshackle tenements that is home to almost a million people. But strip away its squalid veneer and Dharavi bares a unique entrepreneurial spirit, and multi-million dollar micro-businesses, that breaks all the stereotypes of a slum.

Capitalism is a hell of a drug.

Bad Dot

Well, it's happened.  An Indian-American has been revealed to be a giant douchebag*.




*Dinesh D'Souza and Ramesh Ponnuru excepted, of course.

Woah -- Punjabi Mexican Americans?

Sepia Mutiny has a really interesting post on intermarriage between Punjabis (South Asians from the Punjab region) and Mexican women in the early 1900s. This is absolutely fascinating to me. And there's even a book about it. I guess I'll put in on my list.