People & Behvaiors

At one end, I saw this... Being Summer, a cow was lying in the shadow of a tree. One guy starts shoo-shooing this cow ultimately to know why... Coz he wants to park his car in the shadow of the tree. Just imagine... Car is more valuable than the cow.
At the other end - Today morning I was travelling in a train & my 2 yr old was sufferenig from fever.

• There was one couple who did all that is possible from their end to help me & my wife. Started with sponging, while they went out to look for the doctor who can immediately provide some help. The lady also applied the holy ash on my daughters forehead. Both of them were quite old & they blessed my child for well being.
• Another gentleman told us that there is a doctor who helped someone else in the night. So, he directed us to them.
• Meanwhile, we asked a set of people who had quite some children. They tried their level best to hand me the medicine they had which can be given to a 2 yr old. This family also later helped me get my luggages down from the train. All the children each one of them came & wished my daughter good luck.
• While all these was happening, there happened to be one gentleman who seems to be very much knowledgeable about child's medicines etc. He was mentioning about not to take paracetomol, how to do sponging, which medicine to take, how to control temp not going to brain, not take milk, take lots of water, how adults & children are treated abroad & how in India & so on. Quite some helpful tips... He also helped me in handling my luggage when others were passing by in the passage.
• This didn't stop there. One gentleman advised me how to strategically reach my house faster rather than wait for the train to take me for another 45 mins or so. He & another person gave me all the phone numbers (nearly 7-8) possible to book some cabs but it was so unfortunate that no one cab was available.
• Then came another gentleman who told me that he has a cab coming to the next station. He went out of his way to call the cab to the station where I'll be deboarding. Then he helped me carry my luggage & he took me his cab.
• The cab driver helped me to locate a pharmacy shop, waited for us to feed the medicine to my baby & ultimately delivered us to our house. The gentleman completely refused any kind of amount from me telling that the cab is for personal use only...

Ohhh... That was one set of good people just helping with nothing expected in return...

Lessons from Kung Fu Panda

• Understand yourself
• You must believe that you can do things.
• Whatever you do, a peach seed will grow to be a peach tree, not as oranges & apples.
• The inherent qualities should be nurtured to be guided in the right direction
• Go behind what you are passionate about
• Accidents don't happen in life
• Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery. But today is a GIFT. That is why its called PRESENT.
• When you are agitated, you can't think clearly

Attrition

At one end I keep hearing that all the IT companies have got lots of mid & senior level resources & it is already saturated enough. It is brimming that orgs are forced to create new mid & senior level positions so that they can be filled in by the getting-experienced employees.
But it seems there is a newer trend that there is going to be more attrition in that upper levels like 15%. When there are no positions in the market, how is it possible to have such an attrition. But inorder to retain these employees, I'm not sure if 15% salary hike would really make a difference, as per this article.

Relaxing

Have you seen the MasterCard ad where some buddies get together in a restaurent after long time? That is what I did with some of my schoolmates yesterday. It was in fact great to get along, talk about other school friends, school days, the place, the teachers, the jobs, the business models, the latest techs, domains, the personals, the families what not... Sweet times...

B schools

Lately, I & my wife have been discussing a lot about B Schools, GMAT etc. Even though ISB & other US B Schools come very often, I see this article giving some insight on some other upcoming B schools in popularity like those in Singapore...

The shift in Indian preferences is evident from the fact that Harvard, Stanford and University of Pennsylvania, which used to be the second, third and fourth hottest business schools in 2005 by the number of Indian applications sent, have lost their status to National University of Singapore, France-based INSEAD, which also has a campus in Singapore, and London Business School in 2009.

Some Health lessons

Here are some more lessons which I read over... Thought of sharing
Some things under "Health"

• Always understand a child's growth milestones & the time for immunization
• FITness - Frequency, Intensity & Time.
• Smoking is cool death
• Nutrition - Go, grow & glow
• Learning - All children have the ability to learn, its upto us to develop the ability to teach them in a way that they can learn easily

For the family

Yet again, its Zig Ziggler who did advice to read some book for sometime everyday. So, I happened to get this book called 'For the Family' which has been endoresed by both Abdul Kalam & TN Governer. Its a good book on Indian traditions, culture & family values.
The first topic was about Relationships which is further analyzed on the following

• Emotional Quotient - I know I have been losing this EQ lately. In recent times, for sure I'm unable to control my unwanted & stressful emotions. Its more like even sometimes some movie scenes make me move, unlike the older times...
• Transactional Analysis - Every conversation between 2 persons has an agent & responder. The agent & responder should be in one of the states like Parent, Adult & Child. If both the persons know which state the other person is in & in sync, then things are really going to be complimenting each other.
• Communication
• Parenting - Can be democratic, authoritative or permissive.
• What is marriage...

A short crisp read but we sure need to relate them to our lives... There are much more to read in this book. Hope I'll find time to scribe them too once I read.

Crazy People

Today morning, I saw something weird. A small kid may be of the age 4-5 is standing in the front gate of a house trying to come out of the opened gate. An adult with a cycle is standing outside the gate & asking the kid to go inside. So, essentially there is a tussle. The adult started picking some dark stones (usually used for construction & in local lang it is called Jalli) & started throwing slowly on the kid, under arm though. One of the stones hit the kids head. The kid is like slowly scratching its head, went inside & brings another adult to complaint.
Weird people weird behaviours

Twitter

Everyone around me is asking me to move to Twitter...I really don't know. Should I?

Six Sigma

It's been really a long time since I did read about 6 sigma. That was way during my Masters. I have been going over one of the Six sigma books in recent times & its good to have all those details. Some of the details which I went over today are like DOE, Theory of constraints, Value Streams,Drum Buffer Rope, Kanban, 5S, Kaizen, Poka Yoke, SPC, Control Limits etc...Nice Read

What I See: 4 Persons Problem - Answer

What I See: 4 Persons Problem
Answer...
- 1 sec & 2 sec go to the other end. - 2 sec
- 1 sec returns back - 1 sec
- 5 sec & 10 sec go to the other end - 10 sec
- 2 sec guy returns back - 2 sec
- 2 sec & 1 sec go - 2 sec

Total = 17 sec

Everywhere IPL

Man... today atlast I found sometime to sit in front of TV channels. Especially news, & whereever I turn its all IPL... The corruption, Patel, Modi, Tharoor, Mauritius, BJP, Pawar... Why? There should be better issues to solve in nation level. Seriously... Like today for taking an auto rick from a place to another the rick-wala is asking for 20 bucks & I'm arguing for 15 bucks.
IPL is talking about some crores of bucks... Where money is, there everyone is to take some bite. And media is just exploiting things...

Schooling Process

I think there is a telugu movie called 'Aakasamantha' (a remake of Abhiyum Naanum), which depicts the process of getting admission for a kid. Well, I was imagining myself to be one like that too, but I saw the criticalities of getting admission in a different angle. Here are really some of the things not in any particular order, which we as parents started looking for in the schools around us. Though there are some compromises, but like everyone we want our kid to get the best 'First Touch'.

• Playgroup or nursery
• Is there any disadvantage of not going for playgroup
• Vicinity & location
• Transport
• Playground
• Slides & play area
• Sand area
• Water area
• Clealiness
• Safety & Security
• Toilets & their numbers
• Number of sections for playgroup, nursery & KGs
• Fee
• Teaching Phonics
• Curriculum
• Montessori pattern
• Hand/Mind/Body acitivities
• Themes of months & days
• Teacher availability
• Kid to maid ratio
• When do they clean the toilets
• How do they organize foods
• What kind of food do they allow the kids to bring
• Do the kids share the food
• How passionate the teacher is about
• What is the teacher background
• Years of experience & running
• How they communicate with parents
• What kind of events do they conduct on a yearly basis
• We even spent sometime during the teaching hours
• How many kids in a section
• How many hours...Cos there are some schools which are commercialized & wanted to conduct 2 hours for 2 batches. 2 hours I think is not sufficient for a kid...
• Audio Visual Activities
• What is the connection to the higher grades? Can we get admission later in another school?

For all these, we really had to roam around quite some:)

• Kidzee
• Euro Kids
• Time Kids
• Kangaroo Kids
• AtoZ
• Kinderkare
• Greenwood
• Roots to Wings
• Sunshine

Unity in Diversity

We have grown in the belief of India's 'Unity in Diversity'. Whatever diversities which we have seen, we wouldn't have see this... The one based on food.

Ice Skate for B'wood Music

Carnatic Wiz

Prime Pump

When I was watching Sun TV today morning, someone was telling about the concept of Prime pump & I remembered Zig Ziggler again. So, I thought I would write about it before I forget. Zig Ziggler has started carrying a small shining pump along with him for his talks. So, his point is very simple.

No Pain No gain.

Now he relates the same pump & to life. For a pump to get water out, it is required to pour some water into it first (well, so that the air lock gets released etc). And life is also something similar. If you need to get out something, you need to put in some efforts first. Let's do it!
The guy who spoke in the TV took this to some other extent. There is a small vessel of water kept on top of a pump. A thirsty guy takes this vessel to drink water. There is a note written on the pump saying

"before you drink, why don't you pour the water into the pump, get the
water after you put efforts, enjoy lot more water & do a favour to the next
guy by leaving some water in the vessel"

SEBI-IRDA

When I considered myself on ULIP platform I was consistently informed that it is better to go for government based rather than private. Well, government or private, we need some kind of proof, some reliability, some risk & what not.
Now, after SEBI banning most of the big players, truly the BIG ones - ICICI Prudential, SBI Life, HDFC Standard Life, Bajaj Allianz, Aviva Life, Kotak Life, Max New York Life, Metlife, Reliance Life, Tata AIG, AEGON Religare, Bharti Axa Life, Birla Sun Life and ING Vysya - in selling any more ULIPs, things are in a state of confusion for everyone; both the boards, the insurers who are banned & not banned (LIC, Future Generali etc) & specifically the investors.
Anyways, for your clarifications

Memories of India

Some Good Violins...

What I See: 9 Balls

What I See: 9 Balls
The Answer
1) Split the balls into 3 groups of 3 balls each.
2) Weigh 1st & 2nd group against each other to see if the heavier ball is part of them.
3) If the scale balances, then the 3rd group has the heavier ball. Or whichever side the scale weighs heavy, has the heavier ball.
4) Take that heavy group. Take only 2 balls from this group.
5) Weight the 2 balls against each other. Apply the same logic.

Taking Kindle - Head On

Recently, I could say that I had a very close encounter to get in touch with Kindle & play with it for a long time to come. But somehow things didn't go as expected & it was more of a disappointment for me. Because, I know there is going to be such a fierce competition for Amazon's Kindle when placed against any other e-book readers which are up-coming. I was in fact very positive that Amazon will go offense - will have to add more value to the product for the money spent & at the same time get the price reduced.
But in the wake of IPAD, I just wonder what is Amazon's winning strategy.

What I See: Traffic Jam

What I See: Traffic Jam
Well... Here is the answer
1234-5678
12345-678
123-54678
12-354678
1253-4678
125364-78
1253647-8
12536-748
125-63748
1-5263748
-15263748
51-263748
5162-3748
516273-48
51627384-
5162738-4
51627-834
516-72834
5-6172834
56-172834
5671-2834
567182-34
56718-234
567-81234
5678-1234

Energy Management

I ran into some tips to keep you going during the day time when your work load is making you sick & tired.

Skip high calorie desserts in summer and opt for lemon juice, coconut water and buttermilk to cool down instead.

And ofcourse here are some points which we always know & try to follow... Better to implement:)

• Get up early and broadly plan your entire day.
• Set realistic, measurable goals. Create a priority list.
• Start your day with regular walks or jogs.
• Exercise. Putting in 30 minutes three times a week would suffice, too.
• Have a good breakfast. Foods rich in nutrients will see you through the day.
• While at work, take a 15-minute walk outside to soak in fresh light and air.
• Drink lots of water. Even slight dehydration can slow you down.

What I See: Bulbs puzzle

What I See: Bulbs puzzle
Here is the answer
1. Switch on one switch.
2. Wait for 5 mins
3. Switch it off.
4. Switch on 2nd switch.
5. Now go inside the room.
6. Which ever bulb is glowing is matched.
7. Which ever non-glowing bulb that is hot is the 1st switch.

A last day email...

One of my colleagues, who is really 'unknown' to me & my team sends the last day good bye email to I think the whole organization. You know why... Because he did his best to market about his new venture where he is stepping in - A restaurent in the Besant Nagar Beach road - to all the employees.

• For sure people will read such an email with difference
• Free publicity & people will remember it
• May be talk of mouth... People may give reference to the place just because it is being run by a colleague

Cool stuff.... Once again its Marketing...

Happy New Year

Wish U n Ur Family A Very Happy, Fun Filled & Prosperous New Year

Alternate Prime

If two successive prime numbers (where both of them are greater than 6) are adjacent numbers of a single number X, then X is divisible by 6. Like say take 11 & 13, then 12 is divisible by 6.
Prove!

Time for Family

I've started to wonder if I'm spending enough time with family & with my 2 year angel. I just don't know because whatever time I spend doesn't seem to be enough:) Obviously, even at house I work & whenever possible, I just take & make time for family. Sincerely, that itself is more than relaxing, gets me out of all stresses, I feel.
The above came in when I read through this article.

So where is the extra time coming from? Women, in particular, are spending less
time cooking and cleaning their homes, while men are putting in fewer hours at
the office.

Hanging Man

A man is seen hanging by the neck from a single beam. The room is completely empty. The only door is locked and bolted with the key still in the lock on the inside of the door. The only window is also closed from inside. There are no signs of a forced entry. Time of death is estimated to be appr. 8 hours ago. There was a damp patch on the floor which later proved to be water — not blood.
How did the man die?

College Days

College days are the loveliest days in our lives I feel. No wonder, when we see 3 idiots, or Happy Days we feel so good about our memories. When I was discussing something with my wife on our college days, I remembered how I used to enjoy those hostel times, classes, professors, notes, xerox shops, the scary days, the achievements... Man, those are real awesome times.
There was a professor who used to translate some of the native words, proverbs in English... What a fun!

"You know crow... It'll never hate its baby"

"You know snake... It'll take pictures"

Change & Choices

Change is the only constant. Everyday is a challenge but still everyday is an oppurtunity to learn, live & enjoy.
It is because of you, you are spending today like you are. At every moment of life, you had, have & still will have choices - I would say they are only discrete - Yes or No, Go or No Go, Do or Don't do.
So, let's make the right choices - atleast try & strive to... What say?

Stolen Mobile?

Well... It seems if your mobile is stolen, you can disable it.
This is what I got to know...
First get your Mobile's serial number - To check the same, key in the following digits on your phone: *#06# A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.
When your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
My opinion - Why should we rely on the service provider? I would probably want this to be handled by the mobile company themselves...

Negotiation

To some coincidence today, I had some discussion with another sister of mine who is doing her Masters in US in Univ of Illinois, Chicago. And she is about to complete her school & wanted to get a job. We went on to discuss some of the aspects of negotiation & here are some of the power factors that I adviced her to use during the negotiation.

• Alternatives
• Legitimate Position or title
• Degree of risk
• Commitment
• Knowledge
• Experience
• Ability to reward or punish
• Time & deadlines
• Perception of others
• Relationships

Internship

One of my sisters in US is doing her Masters in Purdue & she has been in search of internship for quite sometime. Today she, to my surprise, passed me the good news that she already have got one.
I'm just wondering if that is in fact one of the signs of the economic return.

Want to reduce weight?

I know quite a lot of people around me who want to reduce their body weight. But they couldn't also not stop feeding their hunger with enough food time to time daily. But simple solutions do exist... I used to hear like Eat like a king in breakfast & like a beggar in night.
But for sure, this article about eating egg for breakfast might help a bit to reduce the further daily calorie intake & hence, possibly reduce the weight eventually. For that matter, any protein rich intake for the breakfast should help...

It was found that men who consumed an egg-based breakfast ate significantly fewer calories when offered an unlimited lunch buffet compared to when they ate a carbohydrate-rich bagel breakfast of equal calories. In other words, a protein-rich breakfast helped keep hunger at bay.

Mobile Signals

I just don't understand. My office building holds like nearly 3k-4k people & is one of the hot cake place that is getting developed in recent times. Still, I don't believe why cell service providers are unable to acknowledge this fact & act fast on the same. It's like most of the service providers - Airtel, Aircel, Docomo, Uninor, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea - everything is having very weak signal. I think BSNL signal will be good enough. Business - get the right product to the right people with right infrastructure to back it up...

What is your take on conflict?

Everyone of us has a style to face & look at conflicts. Well, all those styles will fall under one of these categories

• Avoid
• Accept
• Compete
• Compromise
• Collaborate

Collaborate is the best method which gives a win win for all the parties involved. Said more easy than done, but let's strive...

Rent

wooohh... OMG...
The rent for apartments has severely been on rise here in India & especially in Hyderabd it seems to be overhyped - 15 to 20K for a normal 2BHK average. If monthly take home is like 50K for a person, then where is the savings...'Cos everything will get absorbed for day to day bread & butter...

Health Day

It's cool... World health day. I was just thinking should I start on something new today, to become more health concious. All the employees here got handed over with a small sample box of Sugar Free Gold... Nice marketing for a product on the right day & the packet reads like start today & check the result next year.

Nano Burning

One of my friends is thinking about taking a TATA nano & I was mentioning about how there have already been 3-4 incidents of the new car burning to flames. What is going on TATA? The engine obviously sounds like auto-rick engine. With 4 hefty people inside & in a up slope like in Hyderabad, I doubt if the car can do well.
We just need to do some stress & get the stats out of how much the engine can really bear...
The article -

"I have no idea what happened. A motorcycle rider overtook me and told me that the vehicle was on fire," said Sawant adding, "The engine was behind me and I did not realise that the car was on fire."

Ctrl + S

When I was coming to office today I saw one high end Benz & it has the Ctrl + S sticker at its end. I was just wondering, if the person is such an ardent fan of pollution control & saving the environment, then he should obviously be an example... Well, he should drive a cycle & not the Benz which is the luxury & the one that is drinking all the gas...:)

Franc

One of the business leaders - CEO of Cognizant - Franc, who is making the organization take the recession head on.

F1 in India?

Wow... It's cool & great when you have F1 in India...
But earlier I think CNaidu was trying to get the sport into Hyderabad region. Well, seems like sports ministry has cleared the path to Delhi area after all these Telangana issue...:)

Soldiers...And their rights

At one end, we all feel US is striving to do the best for Iraq,but at the other end when we keep hearing & seeing such things like soldiers are taking everything in their hands & in fact spoiling the spirit of living... Where is world coming to?

The editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has told the media that the video was uploaded by a whistleblower and its authenticity was checked by a group of 'military whistleblowers' before it was made public.

Indian Defense

Man... Just read thru this article...

“I thought, wow, that's the whole Indian defence establishment,” he said
yesterday as the researchers prepared to issue their report on the online
espionage, titled Shadows in the Cloud: An Investigation Into Cyber Espionage
2.0.
The report stops short of blaming the Chinese government, mainly
because the researchers just aren't sure.

When country spends more & more on defense thinking that the same can secure the borders, things in computer, database can open up all the loopholes for any secure system... Just like how it is shown in DieHard4.

Returns... Atleast Favours

There is a friend of mine, who really was in some urgent need of funds quite some years back. I tried to help him with whatever was possible from my end. I even went out of my way to do something more. Ofcourse, I know for sure that, my help was really the biggest for him at that point of time.
Then ofcourse, years have passed by & I haven't got any info from him. So, I started pinging him may be sometime during last August. The response is so delayed like I got to wait atleast for a month. The response is also vague enough but positive. He doesn't even want to share any more of his contact details like mobile or so. Even during my heights of emergency too, I couldn't get his hands return back my favour!! Time, people, mind...

Make a Mark

There is a film fraternity person about whom I was discussing with my wife, about how that person has come up in the life by own, trying hands on so many things, making a mark on everything & excelling in the same.
Recently, when I was attending a session on 'The Attitude & Altitude Connection', I came up couple of phrases...

• A person doesn't hold a job, the job has the person.
• A person has to sign her/his name on every job he/she does.

Think over it...

ATM Pin Reversal

I don't know this, but for sure, is really good to know.
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse. For example, if your pin number is 1234, then you would put in 4321. The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to the location. This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers however it is seldom used because people just don't know about it.
I tried looking for related video in Youtube but couldn't find...

Big Bang

I know the Big Bang experiment got restarted but why was it stopped in the first place? From BS,

The LHC will certainly make a large contribution to the sum of knowledge about
known unknowns. But everyone of the 10,000-odd scientists collaborating in the
experiment must be hoping fervently for a breakthrough into the realm of unknown
unknowns. Some completely new unanticipated results could arise from the
collisions and those could change current cosmology

The first time I came to know about this experiment is when I was reading something on 2012. So, can things go uncontrolled or unseen in such 'recreating history of nature' which can create history of disaster? At the other end, what kind of break through are we looking into?

Lake in Park

Once in a while I used to visit this Vengal Rao park. The park usually has lots of people & has a good visitor count. Today I even saw that the park maintenance management team have included lots of new playing items for kids & children. They've infact revamped that section & repaired even broken items. My family was in all praise of this in one end when in the other, there is this huge stangant water in the center of the park which really is so dirty & stinking that no one worries about the same. Even today when I was coming around the park, I could see that some dirty foamy water from somewhere is being pumped into the lake.
Being summer is the best time for cleaning this lake & making sure that it is properly maintained. For the amount that is being taken as entry fee in this park, it is worthwhile to take a look at this lake too.
May God Bless...

What a Catch?

True Spirit of Sports

I think I heard Sachin say some words ahead of today's IPL Mumbai Indians match against that of Deccan Chargers. There was some mention about going for a 'good score' as they are going to bat first & he was in return asked for the defintion of the good score.
The answer was something like, "If we make them get even a single run less than us, then we have made a good score". That is like, really seeing the big picture of the game. What is the strategy for winning this game...

Docomo

The market share these Docomo gained here in India is just amazing. It really stands for "Do the New". They really made every other service provider to follow them.
I'm not too much of mobile taking guys, atleast now. When I came to India, I was just thinking that Post Paid is the best strategy & was using Airtel then. Constantly I was feeling I'm obviously overpaying than what I'm using. Then I switched to pre-paid which is a good move because the total cost reduced.
The way these new players like Docomo, Uninor have come in with a bang into the market, things have changed a lot. I saw a pre-paid pplan recently from Docomo like if you recharge for Rs333, then you'll initially get a talk time of Rs300. Then every month you'll be added with 33 local minutes for 12 months.
Simple Strategies, simple solutions... Right price, product, people, promotion, place & time...

Titans...

Its been a some time since I went for a movie. I just booked for this movie 'Clash of the Titans' with no idea that this movie is getting released this week only, today being the first day in fact. I kind of know this could be some action movie but could also be some sports related stuffs... Anyways, when I checked in IMDB, it was getting a rating of more than 8. So, thought its cool.
Well... its just another fairy tale which I can tell my daughter. I think we used to hear about such kind of novels during those younger days ... Just hand full of graphics & real good "story".... in real sense

Bands

For quite sometime I have been wearing this Love Band in my hand. Recently I came across a manager who seems to be in his 35's. He enquired about the band in my hand. When I told him that it is Love Band which is more like an gift to show your affection, he got in fact more curious, absorbed by this Band. When I had just started wondering how come he is not even aware of band, he started with so many questions on this band itself... Like what are the other purposes, do we have band for every relationship, what are the colors etc...
Something different

Education

It's one of the key days in India I should say because usually we don't see the PM of the country talking to all public over TV to address something. Today that initiative happened just like how the pres. of US address his people.
And the area Dr.Manmohan was addressing is the Right To Education. The idea is great. The PM himself talking about it just shows how much importance the bill has. With almost the absolute majority, the congress is really getting some long pending things done. Let India look to the light of a developed country.