Do helmet laws save life?

Helmet laws rumors are doing rounds in Bangalore now. My friend and I were debating over the topic in lunch today. His logic is simple: Helmet saves your life by reducing the chance of head injuries in accidents. So why not the government is implementing compulsory helmet laws in place? Yep, there is no doubt that helmet reduces the risk of head injury in two-wheelers accidents. But I won’t vote for compulsory helmet laws for two reasons.

• There are no worldwide statistics saying that number of deaths in accidents came down in any city by implementing helmet rule. Every city lays their hand on the helmet laws once in a while and sees them reversing the rules after court verdict.
• There is a commercial aspect of making helmets compulsory. Assume there are two crore (2, 00, 00,000) people in Bangalore. And lets take a quarter of them (which is fifty lakhs 50, 00,000) commute by two-wheelers. And we can safely assume three fourth of them don’t wear helmets and hence the estimate of helmets sale in Bangalore city alone is 37, 50,000 helmets. If we take a helmet cost as Rs.300, then the business potential involved here is about Rs.112, 50, 00,000. The overnight huge potential business deal makes the helmet manufacturers to woo or lobby the government to bring in the helmet laws. It’s back door business for them.

So the best way forward will be to create awareness of helmets among the city dwellers, rather than forcing it as a helmet rule. What’s your take on this issue?

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I'm A Country Boy...So?

This post is inspired by ‘so-what’ series written by Ammu. The earlier one is I’m depressed…so what?

I was born and brought up in a small-time town. I am proud to be country boy who see value in life.

 

My town had no big shopping malls, no big multiplexes, no discos, and no coffee-bars. But it had a lively set of people. It is a no nonsense town. It had enough wealth to sustain agriculture based economy. It had enough schools to bring the best talented kids to forefront. Besides it had plenty of natural entertainment spots like lake, beaches, lush-green paddy field and lovely people.

 

Our thoughts on people, friendship and relationships are more towards commitments. We, small town people, never know how to hang out on bars with friends forever and also run off from his problem.

We will never learn to live in same neighborhood and still live like the neighbor is non-existent living being. We don’t treat anyone as our enemies. We will never learn to see bad character in others. We are country boys for whom all will think good and all deeds will be good.

We will never learn to run off from the place when someone needs help. We learn to live as a big society and we will never learn to go to cosmopolitan style clubs in cities.

We will never learn how to go behind a girl, flirtings are strictly no-no. But we know how to be sensible in relationships and how to be polite to girls.

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Happy Birthday Ghost!

1. September 28th is Ghost Particle's Birthday. Many more happy returns of the day bro. Wish you a lovely day and wonderful birthday bash! What's there in your wish list? Hope you get all of them on your day
   
2. While talking about the gifts, I am remembering my unfulfilled promise cum gift to my brother. My brother is in his early teens, generation-X guy. He lays his hands on all hot fashion gizmos. The latest in his wish list in the game box- Play station 3. I am not a game freak, so never liked these PS boxes. But I loved the kind of reality and fast action sequences produced by them. The main problem of playing PS with teen experts is "whatever you try to do, you will finally definitely end up with failures". The conventional wisdom of elders beating young can never hold good for play station and computer games. Watch few of those actions on Play station 3 in its advertisement here.
   
   

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Are girl's really weaker sex?

After spending a weekend with Freakonomics, I started asking questions on so-called conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is a false fact but that got wide popularity among the masses. Just because everyone of yester world told us that girls are emotionally dependent, don’t take those statements for granted. I wish to quote some statistics to put forward this argument, but I didn’t get one good case study. I will try to get one. I am taking cues from my life. My friends who are girls impressed me a lot in terms of emotional maturity. All are very much independent and with right mix of social nature. My first impression about them is all are running with clear direction in their life. I couldn’t resist quoting this dialogue from a Tamil film “Ah Aah” a.k.a “Best friend”. The dialogue as said by heroine’s alter ego is:
 

Heroine: “Pasanga marathuten solluvanga, ana onnumey maraka mattanga. And ponnunga marathuten sonna, avalothan”
Translation: Guys will keep on saying that they forgot her from his life, but he never forgets anything. But when girls say they forget him from his life, that’s the end of it.

In this ever changing world, do you think this old adage (that girls are weaker sex) still holds true?

Courtesy: The picture in the left is of photograph of a sculpture called "Cupid and Psyche". It is a grand work on artist Grayden.

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Freakonomics- Review

True to its title, Freakonomics searches answers for freaky questions. The answers provided by Stephen B. Levitt sound plausible, but very odd reasoning. For example,
 

1. The crime rate fell drastically in US of A in late 1990’s and 2000. This had been most discussed case study ever, yet Levitt answer was pointing to a girl in some distant place who won a case against government for legalizing abortions. He argues that this reduces the birth of lot of kids in economically disadvantaged background, those termed as would-be criminals birth were avoided permanently by legalizing abortion. Logic goes similar to example quoted in Chaos. A butterfly fluttering its wings in Cuba caused the cyclone in the Indian ocean
2. How can we prove that people naturally trained to cheat others? Levitt took the case study of school teacher’s attitude in Chicago public school and sumo wrestlers in Japan. Interesting and racy read. But I doubt whether it will add any value to your knowledge
3. How money plays role in shaping politician victory? Why do drug peddlers always live with their mom? Why real estate agents don’t act in your favor? Interesting questions are strewn plenty in this book

The book is definitely an interesting read. But I doubt whether it will add any value to us or not. New York Times magazine goes a long way in finding out and publishing best seller books. Freakonomics is one among them with an attempt to build a hero worship around Stephen B Levitt.

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What's this attitude problem really means?

Attitude problem- this is one of overused phrase in HR parlance and software industry these days. It becomes a cliché to refer anyone who are introvert or with self centered ego. Other day, my friends were grudging about another colleague of mine. His nature is to push the work around others’ table. He tries to say what others have to do in their work, rather than concentrating on his work. Nobody wants to take advices from peers, and this attitude of this guy had got this coveted label. Quickly before going to the analysis, let me quote one more friend of mine, he says “all my appraisals have same feedback – please work on your attitude problem”.

 

It’s natural for people to be independent when they enter their career. As aptly said by Steven covey, people will move into interdependent paradigm only if they achieve success in their independent paradigm. Till you feel that you achieved a lot in your personal career, you will not think about working for betterment of team. It’s not at all issue of that guy/girl trying to be independent, give them their time. We don’t abandon our kids just because they don’t listen to us. Similarly treat those people with parental affection. Industry works in a fine fusion of people with different mindsets. People with different perspective can form the best team. And team’s success is what gets counted ultimately at the end of the day.

 

If you are one of those who got bugged up to work with those guys, try to list what’s positive in those guys and work on to improve them. Having said this, I never really mastered this art. But I wish to. These days I am getting enough maturity to deal with all kind of people. I am very independent, never become really close with lot of friends but always felt the friendship with everyone whomever I met. Feel free to share your best/worst experiences regarding this. Have you ever noticed such a stuff going around you?

 

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My angel

This photo is quite famous in my family. To quote my cousin "world famous - sithappa and ponnu photo". The photo features me and my niece Harini. I love her and I love spending my whole day with her. She is an absolute angel. I miss her very much in bangalore, I always felt that it's a stupid decision of mine to shift to bangalore for my career.

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How to teach Email to kids?

I am working on planning of teaching email to kids. This is for computer workshop which we conduct for kids from Ananya. This activity is part of Dream A Dream computer program. The intended audiences are kids with ages ranging from 10 to 16. The topic of the workshop is "Email- Basics". The session also includes creation of email address for all kids. The basic aim is to impart the basics of email to kids in an interesting way. The secondary aim is to make them realize the importance and advantages of emails. The session is for one and half hours and each volunteer has to teach for two kids personally. As a team, we had a discussion before on this. I prepared a PowerPoint presentation on the topic, which basically aimed to help volunteers in taking the concept further. Now baton is over to you folks. Feel free to post your feedback, comment and advices.Pls.

I have tried to embed the powerpoint file in this post. If i'ts not working in other browser, try opening the blog in IE.

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Random rambles

1. How many of you felt these kinds of SMS are utter bull shit, yet still forwarded it.
   “Tomorrow is international ‘I LOVE YOU' day. If you get this it means that you are loved....Send this to at least 5 people in the next 600mins and tomorrow will be your best day ever. Tonight at mid-night ur true love will realize that they love u. Something good will happen to u between 1-4 pm tomorrow, it could be”
   
2. Lot of pop and rock songs sounds lovely, as long as you don’t care about what’s there in the lyrics. I felt odd on hearing these two songs. It’s basically those guys hatred towards their girl. Those lyrics sound really yucky.
   ”My gal..” Nirvana.
   ”Runaround sue .. by Dion”
   

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Teach your kid what is Rhythm

Rhythm in music is much more than the beats occurring at regular interval in songs.  The beat in the music determines its tempo. Beats vary from slow to fast, comparable to the pace of slow walk and fast run. The slow beats are relaxing, and the faster beats add excitation. Even if you are musically dumb, did you notice that your tap your feet rhythmically when you hear good fast paced songs. Human can identify the beats in songs involuntarily. Scientist advises to teach kids on how to differentiate rhythm in music from early age to avoid their embarrassment in dance floor in later years. J Why did I say this? Because I always felt I am dancing offbeat on the dance floor.

I am adding two songs with different beats, listen to them.

 

powered by ODEO

 

powered by ODEO

 

 

How many of you guys can dance with beats properly? Who want to do Hawaiian Hula dance for me?

 

Did you know?

Indian Tala is source of cyclical rhythms present ubiquitous in world music. It symbolises the human life cycle, a man born in this world, live his life, dies and reborn again. So the story continues. Isn't it interesting to see Indian gurus embed life's philosphy in music too :)

 

PopKorner:

Inspirational quote of Shashank (Dream A Dream). Nice!

'devta banna tou door .. is umra mein insaan ban jaaye yahi bahut hai'
translates to: Leave aside becoming a saint, in this life if one becomes a human that will be sufficient.

 

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What the heck is this impending US Economic slowdown?

IMF issued a warning last week about impending US Economic slowdown. The growth target for US economy has been revised downwards from 3.3% to 2.9%. The main reason attributed to the slowdown is the burst in housing market. The US department of commerce reported decline in the sale of new homes by 4.3% and inventory of unsold homes climbed record high. The Federal Reserve wants to cool off the growth to overcome this burst. I leave it my friends who specialize in economics to explain us the technicalities of the slow down. (Tag to Vatsan, Santhakumar or any other who want to write on this)

 

Few worthy happenings and announcements that came after this:

 

1. Few stocks took the beatings. Shares of Tomkins, Rinker group and Lenova are falling. Around the Markets: U.S. sneezes and world catches cold - Marketplace by Bloomberg - International H
2. IMF warned the Asian countries not to over-dependent on US exports and advised to concentrate on improving domestic business. US economic slowdown is key risk for Asian growth, warns IMF
3. Federal Reserve faces the twin problem of rising inflation and slow economy. This is interesting because the interest rate is right now at 5.25% and this rate had been revised upwardly 17 times before. IMF warns of U.S. economic slowdown - baltimoresun.com
4. The economic growth in other parts of world will compensate for this US slowdown. China economy is showing a steady growth.

 

Few funny ways to know that effect of US economy slowdown in your job are:

 

1. When your boss says your quarterly performance bonus is declared as 5%
2. When your boss says your annual salary hike is decided, but kept frozen for few months. You will get it as pre-dated hike after next January
3. When HR manager says the recruitment drive is frozen for next 3 months
4. When your colleague says “I love this company, I am going to work for the profits for this company”
   

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Creativity at its best!

It’s heartening to see group of people working with common mission. “I think I have a solution” ITIHAS is a group of volunteers working with several NGO’s inBangalore. I was amazed by their monthly magazine “Sattava”. Take a look at it.

 

Couple of good advertisements caught my attention recently. Both score A+ grade for its creativity. One is for TV media, Bank of India advertisement. One grandfather gift a piggy bank Hundi to a kid. The kid carried the Hundi to all the places he go and he fears that it may get stolen. He settles down to the decision to keep in Bank of India account. The bank manager understood the importance of those savings of kid, take him to safety locker section and keep his saving safe.

 

 

Other advertisement is for Radio. It’s Durex dotted condoms advertisement. The advertisement goes like this “If you want to be the most romantic guy in the world, visit www dot love dot com, dot kiss, dot hug,...Can you see? More the dots, more the fun”. The words got the magic, got enough humor to make you enjoy the advertisement.

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Have you spotted this trend before?

Indian IT companies are losing their jobs to Chinese competitors. The cost of operation in India was the primary selling point for IT companies to bring jobs from US to India. And thanks to hot Indian job market today, the cost of operation is increasing multifold. In simple terms, running same operation in china is roughly 3 times cheaper than India. The only disadvantage of Chinese friends is their proficiency in English. But we should not forget that Indian’s knowledge on English was also poor before all these IT operations moved down. If we could scale up all our resources, the efforts of Chinese governments to overcome this disadvantage will work in their favor soon. My friend was predicting that Bangalore has jobs only for next 3-4 years.

 

Indian IT companies are running in government office mentality. Less passion for the work among the IT population is the latest dangerous trend in India. They wish to freak out most of the time, work for fun; besides they want more and more salary hikes every year. The yester year’s government office working mentality has come into this place. That is not a great trend for Indian IT industry. People here should work more with more passion for work and work more towards profits for the corporation.

 

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Dumb Remark

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached" Benedict said, quoting the Byzantine source on the Prophet Mohammed.

 

This remark of Pope is an utterly dump propaganda. There is an unplanned propaganda going on this world around us to link Islam with the problems exist. Earlier I had seen reports claiming all the terrorism exist today are linked with Muslim countries; Pakistan vs. India, Palestine vs. Israel, Indonesia Bali, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Terror attacks on US, UK, Spain in recent past. Pope has just fuelled to this argument by quoting some stupid king of 14^th century. In fact the story behind the remark is: that Byzantine king used this as war cry to unite his people against Muslim invader. Pope got into self-dig hole by quoting this remark to malign Jihad.

 

I don’t agree with linking the whole community and religion to terrorism. General statements are not always true. Earlier there were propagandas against the Madrassas, claiming that they produce dump set of people who are unfit to be employed in any sane organization and hence they turn to be terrorists. Not sure of what’s the curriculum in those schools of Islam, but those statements are classified as fallacies of generalization in common people literature.

 

 

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Which album features this song?

Here is a video of dance show performed by my dance school friends. I want to know to the source of the song used means which album features this song? Do you guys have any idea?

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Random rambles

1. I rejoined dance classes after a big break. I am now part of class learning different dance styles like salsa, hip-hop, casion rueda, disco funk. The song used for casino rueda is a peppy one. you can listen to it in the odeo player box at bottom of this post. It is a salsa variant and few more information is available at here and here. Sample video is:
   
   
   
   
2. My colleague has lot of funny anecdotes on marriage and love. Here are few :
   One guy is looking at his TV in afternoon and starts weeping. A passerby got intrigued by his actions and stops by to ask 
   II: "there are not even one soaps or serials in afternoon, then what made you cry like a girl in afternoon?". 
   I:  "I am seeing video casette"
   II: "So what's special in that casette?"
   I:  "Ohh, that a sad story, thats my marriage video recording" ;)
   
   His anecdote on similarities between Windows Xp and Wife : Both are very sensitive, starts complaining once something go right/wrong and pesters you by asking "can i send the error report?" ;)
   
3. Simple question: How to embed audio files in the blog like youtube videos? Wow. found out with the help of my friend.

 

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Think Tank Series - 2

This discussion thread is kick started with a mission to understand the business model of our companies and your vision of an ideal company with big potential. I am aware that lot of readers of my blog are techies and software professionals. But that shouldn’t restrict us from discussing any business under the sun. A business is defined as an activity which we like to do that could earn us money and become independent; the revenue potential is not the scale of comparing these ideas. The scalability, sustainability, diversification activity of the ideas will be given importance for the evaluation of ideas.

 

The discussion thread is not necessary supposed to end us making entrepreneurs immediately. We, the like minded people should keep the discussion alive and share our views. Feel free to post your views on comments section. I will keep his blog discussion thread as a sticky post; will update your views on the posts as soon as possible.

 

1. What is your company business model? If you are part of big company, what is the business model of your vertical or division? Try not to name these companies, anonymity of those companies need to be maintained. What’s important to us is to understand the ideas clearly
2. What do you think is best business which has big potential?

 

My take on this:

 

1. My company has two divisions. PC division has a big hit product. That is media player software for DVD. It includes multimedia codec’s of audio and video. The codec are packaged into a successful winning product. The business plan is linked with OEM. The product gets shipped a bundled product with PC manufactured by those OEM. The volume determines the revenue. PC division earns around 100M$ per year for the company.Embedded systems team is working on developing a reference design for TV on mobile. The core components remain same and now this reference software will run on any gadgets. The embedded product division is not reached its pinnacle; we are still making inroads with few design wins here and there.
2. I don’t have clear idea on what is the winning product or business or market. I like to proceed in my current career line

 

 

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Weekend on Rocks!

On sunday, me and my friends went on an adventure outing at Ramnagaram near Bangalore. The program was organised by Thimmaya adventure academy. Event had rock climbing, obstacle river crossing and river rafting. check out the action on photos below:

 

[+] September 11. In remembrance of all those lost lifes on this fateful day and in the war followed this. September 11 is clouded with pains, tears and a lot of controversies. John's account on what happened to him on september11, 2001 is the best one ever I had read regarding this. Link

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Bangalore is Rockin! dude

“ Bangalore is rocking dude! “. Heard this statement, kind of overheard this statement all through the years. It becomes a cliché. Finally I got a chance to enjoy this facet of Bangalore . Yep, I went for a rocking Friday night party along with my office friends. The party was on Zero G, hosted by my company for the celebration on one year of operations in India . Hurray, it was a wonderful night filled with fun, frolic, chats, foam dance and fashion ramp

 

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Stop braggin Satu :)

What a lovely day it is. If your dream girl becomes your friend; if your demigoddess speaks to you; your favorite girl smile at you; guess no body can hold you onto the ground after that. I am flying way above the cloud nine now because of that.

 

 

Hi Satheesh,
Suchi r (suchi@radiomirchi.com) has accepted your invitation to join your orkut network of friends.

* * *
To see Suchi's profile click:
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=14356097140613282478

 

 

I am an ardent fan of Suchi of Radio Mirchi. Her voice is amazing, caught my attention on the first day I entered Chennai. Well folks, if you don’t know the celebrity about whom I am bragging here, Suchitra works as Radio Jockey in Radio Mirchi, a FM channel inChennai, India . She acted in one Maniratnam movie and was hosting a talk show in Vijay TV called "Koffee with Suchi".  After moving out of Chennai, my only solace was that TV show and unfortunately she left the show recently. I was missing my dream girl for long time. I found out later that Suchi is active in orkut and has a community of her fans too. Sent her friend request and got accepted today. Her fans club has got a webpage.

 

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How anonymity in blog world helps?

I never tried to maintain an anonymous identity in blog world or in the internet, but had seen lot of  friends write blogs in anonymous identity. For long time, I could not relate to that necessity. But now I started to feel that I may even need an anonymous identity to talk more freely in blogosphere. “This post is banned/removed/discontinued for my friends” Did this message in my blog perplex you before? That is direct correlation with the subject matter of the post. The subject in those posts is people around me, and those who know me can relate to those friends. People accept if I speak positive about them, but criticize if I speak something in negative tone.

 

I don’t want to run away from those criticisms and I don’t want to hide my feelings too. The possible solution would be an anonymous identity. So don’t be surprised if I discontinue this blog and start writing in a new identity. In some sense, the subject matter can be related to cartoonists and political column writers in magazine. Politicians are one crew of people who don't accept to criticisms so easily and they are most criticized also. An anonymous critique can write better than anyone on the functionality of the organization/government. In those cases, the meaning of the words written is important than the person who uttered it.

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Do you like this? TV on mobile phone

We have been discussing about how innovative is the idea of Digital TV on mobile phone. It is technically feasible and already there are cases of field testing and sample deployment in few countries. I am not going to get into technicalities of this. I like to hear your views on how innovative is this? Do you like the idea or not?

 

A friend of mine is of opinion that mobile TV technology going to be a run-away hit in the Indian market. Already a lot of fairer sex friends are complaining that they couldn’t watch those television serials when they are on the road. Now if a content provider starts telecasting those niche programs, people can enjoy it wherever they are. Even if they get struck in traffic, on the travel, they need not miss out their favorite programs. The flop side is going to be small screen size, which may switch off most of the users.

 

I like the idea of using my mobile phone as my personal entertainment center. Though my phone is not DVB-H enabled, I copied few video clips to the phone and watch it during my travels. Though the mobile phone screen is pretty small, it didn’t kill my whole interest of watching.

 

Another friend is in opinion that the market for the mobile is not yet come. During FIFA world cup 2006, in Italy, an operator started this service. He got 100,000 subscribers within a month, but he couldn't sustain that growth after the world cup. All sports lovers will definitely enjoy seeing their favorite game on the go. Like all products, there may be initial hype around it too, but the true market for mobile TV is yet to come.

 

What are your views on this? Do you like this idea of seeing TV on mobile phone or strictly no-no?

 

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The Nomad's Checklist Tag

Gp, wrote his wishlist for the future here. Looked like an interesting tag, Here is my wishlist for near future.

1. Want to buy a car- a little cute black santro zing for now. Later Honda city
2. Get a laptop and restrict all these internet related stuffs to that. And concentrate more on work in office
3. Change my wadrobe. Definitely can't change my physical look (I know how smart I am :)) so wanted to change my wadrobe to make me look more kewl and smart
4. Plan my day and execute it as per plan
5. Get back my lost frenship with my best buddy of life. You know who!
6. Came a long way from reserved small-town guy to freaky bangalorean. ;) Wish to be sweet chatterbox after this
7. Want to have a trip in all weekends. Hurray I am going to Ramnagaram adventure trip along with my college mates in this weekend
8. Learn to walk slow :) I just dont inherit big ears from MK Gandhi and his walking swiftness too.
9. Rejoin dance class.
10. Get more friends and get to be develop more best friends. All along, I try to be independent even inmidst of gang of frens, now paradigm change- want more to be with friends
11. See Rang De Basanti movie. I somehow missed it man. Just citibank reminded my wish today by gifting me the audio cd of this movie.
12. Develop thinktank on the new ventures and innovations with friends
13. Plan atleast a bit for my future
14. Read few good non-fiction books. List- will come later
15. Trip to this god-own-little-home
16. Trip to singapore and mauritius.
17. Meet and have a talk with this guy who acquired my company recently
18. Travel and enjoy life like this gal

 

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Unposted Emails

Well, I was strolling with these thoughts for two days. The concept of unposted emails is not new. There are occasions in life where silence is better than any words uttered. When things go bad, better take life as it comes; don’t ever speak more and make things worse. The basic etiquette in email conversation is it should start in smile and end in smile. If your email is going to be about any negative feelings, better post the email to yourself first. Then at the end of the day, take a re-look at the email. If your negative feelings (anger, jealous, possessiveness or irritation) still persists, delay posting the email again by a day. Don’t send those emails ever with the same mood in which you have written.

 

The world has really become a global village, become small by improvement in communication mediums. Emails, chats, skypes, mobile phones replaced most of face to face meetings. Over the years, I lost confidence in most of the other mediums in helping true communication. I try to maintain friendship with people whomever I meet in daily life. I am little bit matured enough to hold back my negative feelings in F2F meetings. The smile in my face rarely goes away or few times I show a kind of irritation in my face. But I fail miserably lot of times in using these ultra-modern means of communication. Expressing feelings over emails & chats is really tough for me. Most of time ends up with misunderstood statements.

 

Trust and beliefs in people are tender things which you need to be much matured to handle. The differences between the people never blow up a big issue when they are in love. But the day when someone lost love for other; even a small misunderstanding will become big issues. The nuclear family culture - when guy and gal start living together- teases them with a lot of problems based on this. There may not be any elders to advice them what to do during those times. These occasions can cause lot of failures, don’t get dishearten when you face failures, it is just a lesson you got to learn.

 

[+] There was couple of interesting columns in Ananda vikatan in this week issue. One is by Dr.J. Radhakrishnan, IAS officer in Tamilnadu. He talked about the social issues and the fallouts in our primary education system. I can't agree with him more. Our primary education rears students with competition rather than breading good social culture. Our education system complements a guy who gets first rank based on marks and demotivates another who don't excel much in studies. Both of them has rights to co-exist happily in the world, then why do we disparage between them. Just because a student can't score marks in the exams, he has to be deprived of rights to live peacefully. Nay. The education system has to be refined so that everybody win the race; one can excel in studies, another in music, acting, sports, organising and any other.

 

[+] The second column is from actor Prakash Raj. His level of maturity in handling human emotions is unique. The latest episode about love and the issues lover face after the marriage. He quoted an example of his two fren who fall in love and failed after marriage. The "panni kutti" story as explained by him was little rude, but absolutely a matured talk. He uses other people's emotions to express his feelings. Those writing style reached grabs my attention immediately. Last episode was about the his kid asking him questions about terrorism. May be that kid is not so big to ask him so many questions, may be it is just his figment of imagination, but lovely style of writing. He discusses the problem and leaves the issue to people to conclude. Well, way to go, Mr.Prakash!

 

 

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What good stuff have you done in recent past?

This question is few standard stuffs in self-help management workshops. It kindles new experience and new flow of thoughts in you, when tried to answer. I joined as volunteer in DaD computer workshop again today- but with new set of kids, new set of syllabus, new faces around and getting ready for whole new experience. Spoke about my earilier experiences here. And this is not one more post on that! So.... :)

Shashank started the group discussion with the question in title. We are just eight of us there. And this question was thrown to bring the positive vibe to the think-tank. It worked out well too. One fren talked about how she helped a lorry driver to take an u-turn in mid of high traffic road; how she stopped her car and made the whole crowd wait behind her car, which considerably ease out the tension of the heavy vehicle driver and how he bowed out of his door to wish her a big thanks. Sounds great, Isn't it?. I had to race my thoughts back to find out what good have I done in my recent past. Left blank also for few moments. Finally could remember one incident happened a week back. What I quoted was: "Me and my friends were having our lunch in a hotel. That restaurant was unusually crowded that day and the waiter of the table couldn't attend to us properly. We had to remind him 10 times to get our side dish, main course, or even for a glass of water. Our usual reaction in those moments: We get bugged up, call the owner, shout at his face and show the anger on the bearer in mid of whole guests. Those negative reaction won't work out most of time. What happens finally is you get tensed up and you spoil the mood around. Today we consciously decided that we are not gonna do anything negative. We sat quietly, waited and reminded him every time patiently and finally left a good amount of tip also. That would not have made the bearer understand his mistake, but definitely eased out his tension on that busy day".

Feel free to share your experiences folks!

 

Popcorn Entry:

How is my new template folks? :) or :(

Theme is to potray optimism everywhere in my blog. Title says it all, I guess.

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How crazy can you go?

Me and my friend had hours of laugh on seeing this watch. Actually my another room mate had spent 130$ to buy this Binary watch. He seem to be bitten by digital gadget freak bug! Did his one month homework to hit the nail on this gods-own-crazy-thing! His mission is to own an unique watch where time has to be shown in an coded format. First, What's binary watch? It has LEDs to display hours and minutes in binary format. For example, hours LED section include 4 lights with weights as 8,4,2,1. To display 9'o clock, the first and last LED will be kept on. Similar logic goes for minutes section also. The technology behind the watch is nothing complex to grasp, it has two counters- one for hours and one for minutes, few LEDS, some chotta circuit, which can cost you nothing more than 5$ (equivalent to Rs.250 in India). The idea of owning an unique watch is atleast ok, but to shelve out 130$ (or nearly Rs 6000) for this stupid little thing has made us laugh like devils yesterday night.

He was wearing it and we failed to notice it when he came in. So this good chap has to strike a pose with his cute watch's LED on to grab our attention. Then we blasted out with laugh. Ha ha ha......It looks like those colorful sunglasses kids buy during festival times in the villages. The bright LEDs definitely can't go in tune with our so-called formal or casual attire. Worst is- the LED can't be kept on for 24 hours, because it will drain out the battery. You gotto to press those knobs on the side to see the time. Alas! it is coded, you gotto work out mental arithmetic to understand that it really shows us some meaningful time. How crazy can invention go after this yaar? Ideas pls...

 

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Vettaiyadu- Vilaiyadu - Movie Review

After long time, I saw a no non-sense movie . The story line seem to be taken from lot of "medical detectives" episodes of Discovery channel. Yet the racy screenplay keeps the spirit in this lengthy 3-hour movie. Had never seen this director's (Gautham) earlier movie  . Kakha Kakha experience seemed to have added a lot of expectation for this movie- which would have been a spoilsport for majority of audienece. The script is the real hero, which keeps the story line bristling with energy all the way.

 

Surya would have done a better job than kamal. But Kamal's presence adds a majesty to the movie. His larger-than-real-life image definitely is a plus point. Jyothika acting skill are being tested in those sentimental moments in the movie- she did a fair job too. The goa song is an absolute inspiration from Bollywood movies; may be the director had intention of selling that song alone to any hindi movie :) The first half of movie unfolds clearly with no major hiccups, whereas second halg got slowed down by those unnecessary songs.When prakashraj and his wife got killed in Newyork, Kamal speaks to his boss asking him to be oathed to the case. His speaks so politely and I couldn't avoid comparing that with the situation where our softie frens speak politely to their manager to get an onsite assignment ;)

 

Few interesting moments from the movie:

When kamal and Jo meet in a hotel in NY-

K- "Raghavan"

Jo- "Aradhana"

K- "Enn??" (asking about the suicide attempt of her)

J- "Enna maniratnam padam meri dialogue pesiringa?"  :)

 

Kamal goes out on investigation with detective Anderson in NY

K- "I have a gut feeling"

A- "What? what feeling you said"

K- "Back home it is called Raghavan instinct"

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