Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Goodbye January
January came and went. It saw a wishlist from me, and remained just that, a wish list! How undisciplined can one get — I can actually write a book on that. But I’m sure my indiscipline won’t even let me finish that book! Sometimes I think its okay to be a ‘mere mortal’.. Heck, what will change if I became the perfect disciplinarian. But for probably one thing — my self esteem. And That may have a cascading effect on a lot of other things. Like my personal life, like my career and like my social life. So do I believe that more discipline will mean that I’ll improve on my personal, professional and social aspects. Maybe yes. Then why don’t I want that improvement. What stops me. Indiscipline. So the equation becomes something like this:
Indiscipline > Low self esteem > Potential losses
Discipline > Potential Improvements > Higher self esteem
Its simple as that. But why don’t I get it…
Stem Cell Donor Registry
Just gave a sample of my saliva for the Stem Cell Donor Registry — an initiative by www.matchpia.org. I’m now registered as a stem cell donor. My saliva sample will be analyzed for my DNA etc and I’ll be listed as an available donor for stem cells. Any time somebody needs my stem cell, I’ll be contacted to donate some blood and that’s about it! It could save a life…. And by the way, it works both ways… if I/my family ever needs a stem cell I’d be helped too. Without being a donor, I’m told a stem cell could cost upto Rs 1 million (>$20k). Being a donor will get that to you FREE… Now that’s some ROI as well — Good cause with an ROI… couldn’t have been better!
Stalkers
..Or whatever they are called… in particular referring to the guys who repeatedly post slimy anonymous comments on people’s blogs. I’m not a victim yet, but Sakshi is, so its equally bad > worse.
Anonymous. Heck, why can’t these people own up their identities! If you kill your own identity who the hell is going to respect you for what you say anyway!!
Of course there is an easier way to escape this nuisance — disable anonymous comments. But then its against the spirit of blogging/free communication. Anyway, if it gets really dirty then being anonymous doesn’t save the ‘culprit’ — blogger captures IP addresses that can be traced back! Hope good sense prevails….
Let’s play
That used to be the slogan for a design company I co-owned some 8 years back. And no, it is not copyrighted or anything, so feel free to copy it shamelessly if you must!!
I received an SMS from someone and found it very interesting — “Life is a game. God likes the winner and loves the loser. But, He hates the viewer — the one who is lazy. So be a player. God will always be with you.”
So, Let’s Play!
Comment = Pornography
Proxies sometimes behave so funny, that its not funny! Try posting a comment to a blog entry from my office and ‘SmartFilter’ tells you that access is forbidden since the page is classified as pornography… Now isn’t that funny!! This is the error message that I get!! The following error was encountered:
Request: CONNECT / HTTP/1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) Host: www2.blogger.com Content-Length: 0 Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive Pragma: no-cache Access co
ERROR
Access Denied by SmartFilter
Poor sales skills
For the umpteenth time today I received a sales call from a financial services company — this time for selling a Reliance credit card. Usually I cut those guys short and hang up but today I listened to the person on the other end. During the conversation, she asked me for my salary. I refused to reveal politely saying that I’m sensitive about telling it on the phone, and should I choose to buy their product I’d anyway be providing a salary slip. My statement should have been reassuring since I also mentioned that my salary is not going to be a constraint for their parameters. She seemed cheesed off and asked me to hold. Me, the customer… give me a break! I hung up. There was no return call.
Wonder if this is how Reliance would sell credit cards!
Don’t have bread, why buy butter
Sounds very logical. What will you do with butter anyway? But think from a more macro perspective and you may think differently. India as a country is still grappling with hygiene factors like infrastructure, education, social security etc etc. But does that mean that we should stop free trade, or disallow ‘luxury’ goods? Wouldn’t that be a socialist approach — and does that/has that helped anyway?
Snake charmers and the art of deception/robbery
Just outside of my office building I was basking in the sun, smoking. Just from nowhere this snake charmer, or whatever they are called, comes and asks for some money. I’d usually not give anything to such people but then I had a coin which I gave him. This guy uttered some bullshit, all in the name of God, and asked me to give another 10 rupees that he offered to give back to me with blessings from the ‘Snake Lord’. I don’t know why but I obliged and the guy kept his promise of giving the ten-er back to me along with some ‘holy offerings’. I was not too keen to take it, but didn’t want to be rude — and this is where the guy sniffed yet another opportunity. He asked me for Rs 200 that he offered to ‘bless’ enough for me so I could keep them in my vault and expect a surge in my wealth. The idiot that I was/am, I took that money out and gave it to him.
That money is of course gone with the guy just refusing to part with it… I could have done several things to save that money, probably the most effective one being calling one of the guards. But I chose not to. Suddenly these two hundred bucks that I lost, made me realize this — If I allow myself to be deceived, I will be deceived.
Come to think of it, I, like many others in the world, keep deceiving myself. For instance at this point of time, I may know that looking out for another job may make the most sense for my career (at least on the money aspect which is quite important), but I will keep deceiving myself by thinking of stability, convenience etc etc.
My only hope now is to act basis this learning; wisdom is no good without action. And I don’t mind spending another two hundred bucks for this…
163 kms > destination nowhere in sight
This weekend was devoted to driving around Delhi meeting relatives. This is how the journey looked:
Saturday: Gurgaon > Central Delhi > North Delhi > North-West Delhi > Central Delhi
Sunday: Central Delhi > West Delhi > East Delhi > Central Delhi > South Delhi > Gurgaon
Tiring, illogical, frustrating and ridiculous!
Net net: Monday feels as tiring and as unwelcome as it possibly can. If ‘focus’ is the destination then its nowhere in sight — despite the 163 kms driven!
Free speech, sensitivities and the cacophony
The I&B Ministry is unhappy over some videos posted on YouTube by an NRI (on Gandhi).
Article available here — http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/YouTube_angers_IB_with_its_tasteless_Gandhi_video/articleshow/1161665.cms
Great — they finally woke up. But what do they think the solution is — taking YouTube off the air… How ridiculous is that… If I publish a book that’s inappropriate will they ban anybody from writing books. My point essentially is that take action (file a libel case or whatever it is) against who you think is incorrect; do not blame the medium… Wonder when good sense will prevail..
