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Showing posts from January, 2009

Age and the new perspective!!!!

Today's email conversation with my sister: Me : The travel desk guy has given my age as 32.... for the train tickets...!!!!! :( :( :( Either I look aged 32 or he is a bad judge :) She : Either he is a bad judge or His wife is 32, or The person who booked today before you did was 32, or The ticket receipt number could be 32 and he used the same for want of a number, or The average age of people in your company is 32... This quick conversation clarified that there are many random angles possible when it comes to any decision that we take. When I was taught perspectives in Engineering Drawing class back in college, all I knew is that there are different perspectives in which you can draw the same building or object. Never really occurred to me that we are dealing with decisions that dwell on perspectives all the time. I want to term this new found perspective as Random perspective... With these random perspectives I believe, you have a chance to think better... and make puzzling situa

Social networking

Unless you are of the kind who hosts dinners and parties often, or belong to the social group of people whose parties you get to attend, in today's fast paced world, the only way to stay in touch, or so it seems is through Internet. When I log on to the Internet, I noticed I get very occupied like most others.. In fact, GMail accounts, orkut, linked in , blogger have become more of a routine these days for me. The result is social networking, the new meaning of it is 'To stay in touch over the Internet with people'. It is admittedly time consuming.. but coming to think of it, I don't spend time talking to the same people otherwise.. So I guess it is fair to set aside some time for people networking among other things in life. A good number of our friends are online - Gtalk , Yahoo Messenger, Linked In , Face Book , Orkut, Gmail, Blogs. This aside, I hear people saying , ' I do not have time for emails', 'Orkut, I do not remember when I checked it last, th

The Three Mistakes of My Life - Chetan Bhagat

I like Chetan Bhagat's writing. I spotted 'The Three Mistakes of My Life" on the shelves , quite a few times, but never really thought of buying it... The last one,'One night at a call center' which I enjoyed reading, failed to impress me. So, I wanted to wait for a few reviews on this one, from friends before I invest time and money - the two big investments according to me for any book. Finally, when I got some nice reviews on the book, I bought a copy for myself. I liked the friendship that the three friends - Omi, Govind and Ishaan, shared. Chetan had picture painted their lives on paper, black and white. It is interesting how these friends be with each other throughout and its nice to note the mild humor, subtle emotions, strong friendship, teen relationship, moral responsibility, and strict conscience, all of which surface in the story, in just about the right dosage. The book is about the three mistakes in Govind's life, as narrated by Govind in Chetan&

The Busy icon

Yes, everyone is busy doing something all the time. If you are at home, you are busy attending to home needs and people needs, or sometimes taking care of your space and spending time your way. If you are on the road, you are busy driving, waiting for a bus or auto, or walking very fast to reach a destination. If you are in office, you are busy in a meeting, on the phone, at work, at lunch, or with a coffee cup. There are other times when you are busy in a temple, shopping center, friend's place, hosting a party, attending functions, watching TV, reading book, spending time on your hobbies and so on... Even if you are sleeping, your mind is still busy dreaming or processing something or the other, like a background script, of which you are not aware most of the times. Now tell me, is there any point in saying 'I am busy' at all? I am talking about the internet people only here. I see people putting on the busy icon in the chat windows and continuing to work or doing

Pledge

India is my country; All Indians are my brothers and sisters; I love my country; I am proud of its rich and varied heritage; I shall give my parents, teachers and all elders respect, and treat everyone with courtesy; To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion; In their well-being and prosperity, lies my happiness. I remembered this pledge one morning, when I saw some smartly dressed school kids last Friday. Back in my school days, apart from the welcome weekend, I used to enjoy Friday mornings because, the school assembly extended to an hour's time to accomodate the Flag hoisting. I used to love the flutter of the Tricolor in the bright morning sky with the entire school saluting to honor the flag and hence the nation's pride. The sequence of flag hoisting as I remember: From some where you hear, School Attention!!!! and we all stand in attention.The School pupil leader marches towards the podium and accompanies the principal in a march towards the flag pole, the princ

Rabh Ne Banaa Di Jodi

That means 'God made the pair'. Of course a lot of us believe in God and we all pray for a lot of blessings in life...the most important one being a 'Made for each other' pair. That was my view and I was expecting to see something to the effect on the screen. It was PVR Cinemas.. one thing about watching movies in such theatres in Bangalore.. every time you buy a movie ticket you pray to the good God, that the movie be worth the cash that you spend. So, we had bought the tickets and were all set for the Sharukh starrer RNBDJ.. It is an acronym world, so let's keep it that way. Tanni marries Suri by chance and Suri was definitely not her choice.. (I like the ji suffixed with the name, but unless that is the way in Punjab, I am not sure if Suri should call his wife Tanniji.)But to Suri, Tanniji was his world and the best choice he ever made in life. Suri has never been around a lot of women and is by nature a very quiet person. Tanniji says she cannot love Suri, but

Scope ....

In software projects, there is a lot of inter-dependency between the various functions - Development, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Documentation, Release Management, and Project Management. In one of my project discussions with a project leader friend of mine, I saw a drastic difference in scope of the project. I wanted to know if the timeline also moved and to my surprise he said the time line does not move by a second, but the project scope definitely has moved more than anticipated. In response to my question on how they were planning to handle this kind of a scope creep, the sincere project leader's answer was very simple : Cope with the Scope is the mantra. True ... Day in and day out we in software industry constantly try to cope with the ever increasing and rarely diminishing project scope. Instead of continuing to see scope creep as a problem, my friend has given a challenge dimension to it and made 'Cope with Scope' as a norm at work. Gives a lot of chance f

If your ladder needs help.......

This is a very practical question that my friend asked me yesterday. "I heard from people that one of my school teachers for whom I have good regards and a lot of respect, needs help financially. He is quite old and his family is dependant on him. Now, it is not easy and practical to just walk over to people who have been a pillar that offers support to the needy and a ladder with strongest of rungs that brought up your career/inner strength/confidence, and ask " Heard you need financial support. How may I help you?"... How do you think I should approach this teacher? He has played a very important role in what I am today. I want to help and the problem is I have not been in touch for quite long now. I do not know what his exact needs are and what kind of assistance is appropriate to give... Can you and your blog readers help me think? Here is what I told him. Meet your teacher once in a while;tell him about your college and career.. In due course of conversation, you wi

Need-to-have vs. Nice-to-have

I recalled my childhood days when my grandma taught me these words in Tamil : Avasiyam ( Need to have, but can manage without it ), Athyavasiam ( Necessity and cannot do without it), Anavasiyam ( Not required and is definitely a waste of money) and Adambaram ( Luxury and can do without it). Need to have is a car Necessity is a means of transport Not required is a Mercedes Benz car Luxury is a Honda City car Need to have is a study table Necessity is a comfortable study set up Not required is an artistic table with a lot of wooden carving Luxury is a Rose wood table with a glass top Need to have is dinner at a restaurant with a nice ambiance Necessity is dinner Not required is dinner at a five star hotel Luxury is dinner at a restaurant in a resort I remembered this when my friend was talking about Need-to-have and Nice-to have choices that we must make. A snippet from one of the conversations with a friend on Need-to-have and Nice-to-have in life, as narrated by him when our group was

New

If you bought a pair of new shoes, a new pen, a new watch, a new dress, a new bike, a new car, or a new house, you feel good about it and are generally seen walking around with a sense of satisfaction on your face... Same should apply to new year day and rather the new year month : New hopes, new dreams, new thoughts, new ideas, new wishes, new confidence, and a new self should reflect on your face on New year day and of course be recalled more than once throughout the year. I was going home by sleeper bus on 31st Dec 2008 night and was not quite sure what to expect ( other than a few messages and phone calls from friends who are awake at the hour and whose messages can manage to navigate through the cellular traffic jam at 12:00.A.M) on a new year night in a bus. It was 12:00A.M, finally... I prayed for a quick quiet minute that all should be well this year and said a quick thanks for the past year's experiences and life in general. The bus stopped for a five minute break in a pet