Yet Another Blogger (YAB)!!!

Ebook reading

2009-05-18T14:08:00.003+05:30

I'm really a download buff - trying to download as many ebooks as possible - but I'm not sure if I would actually read through them atleast once. But off late, I'm having a longing to get an ebook reader - with so many ebooks on my ibook, I find it difficult to access them, especially while travelling.

This week, by quite a surprise, I found out that my ibook was quite helpful in getting me go through my ebooks - no big surprises here - I use Preview for reading the pdfs - rotated them left by 90 degrees and then, made sure they were page aligned. Well, I could get to about 1.5 hrs of reading in this manner and with a nice back ground music, i was really a time nice spent.

Post by email

2009-05-02T11:02:00.002+05:30

It has been a long hiatus from the regular blogging I had done. With more office work mounting on, it is even hard for me to go through my library of blog rolls at Bloglines. After a long time, I chked out the blogger pages and thought that I would try posting a post through the email facility.

Win the battle, but lose the War

2008-08-15T19:57:00.003+05:30

I was seeing the Men's doubles QF match between India and Switzerland in the 2008 Olympics. It was interesting to see the Indians face the serves from Fedex and trying to match him. One thing was obvious - the confidence in the game of Fedex could be seen in the grace in how he played the game. His humbleness in the game was also visible. Especially when the Indian duo trying to show off with pumping hands into the air after fighting hard to get a point. The duo were concerned only about that point - Should they not have concentrated to win the war? I suppose their visiblity was only to win the battle and not see anything beyond that.

ESTJ

2008-08-14T21:32:00.003+05:30

I told you who I am through my VisualDNA. And for fun, I tried the Myers Briggs Personality test at 41q - and here is what the site tells about me ...

Your personality type:

Friendly, adaptable, action-oriented. 'Doers' who are focused on immediate results. Living in the here-and-now, they're risk-takers who live fast-paced lifestyles. Impatient with long explanations. Extremely loyal to their peers, but not usually respectful of laws and rules if they get in the way of getting things done. Great people skills.

Careers that could fit you includes:

Sales representatives, marketers, police, detectives, paramedics, medical technicians, computer technicians, computer technical support, entrepreneurs, comedians, agents, race car drivers, firefighters, military, loan sharks, con men, auditors, carpenters, craft workers, farmers, laborers, service workers, transportation operatives.

And here's my results - but do I believe them - not that much - but, some questions are a bit tricky and I had to squeeze a few extra cells of my brain and I like that :)

And I seem to be a ESTJ - to more about it in detail, look here, here and here

DEC is dead, Long live DEC

2008-07-10T22:03:00.003+05:30

After a long time I found some time to get through a book. I took a book that had been chosen by my current company's CTO as a recommended book for reading - "DEC is dead, Long live DEC". The book consists of three major sections taking about DEC's culture, its decline and then the lessons learned.

I have just started with the second section. The first one was interesting. I suppose many of today's top high-tech companies inherit a lot of legacy from DEC. I suppose what Ken Olsen would have done in today's high growth, high fluctuating environment. Possibly creating a DEC out in today's rapidly changing world would be really difficult.

Personally, I felt that this book gives a lot of insight into how a technically-oriented company led by a techie would span out into. I suppose management takes a bit of back seat in these type of companies and attitude comes to the forefront. I have seen a lot of MBAs in the HR departments of many IT companies. I strongly recommend them to read this section to understand how a techie culture would be. It is more towards getting things done, solving problems, fixing issues rather than a "do this in this manner", " come through this channel", etc.

Tracy Gibbons writes a chapter on DEC's other legacy - about how DEC influenced the society as a whole. It's an interesting read. Access the full chapter online at Tracy's consultancy site.

Alltop

2008-07-04T08:11:00.002+05:30

During my long hiatus from blogging on this site, I found a nice website Alltop - and I had mentioned it earlier. An update to that .... one plus and one minus.

First the good news - they have a search engine setup for their site - which I think would come more handy - but I haven't yet tried it to see how it works - but is Google powered - so should be decent.

And the minus - Initially the home page had the topics arranged by categories - if I wanted to read something on arts, books, cinema, photography, etc. - these were under one roof and it was easy for me to find all my topics at a single place. But now - they have arranged it alphabetically and I suppose this doesn't appeal great to me - topics are scattered and you might need to scroll till the end of the page to find if the topic you need is really there or not.

Hope they revert back to their categorised home page.

Calculate your consumption

2008-07-03T07:35:00.001+05:30

First, it was BSNL and now it was BESCOM - I always have issues when it comes to billing with public utilities.

I recently shifted from one rented place to another. The previous one was huge but still I got a monthly electricity bill of around Rs.500/-. This new place is just over half of my earlier place - hence I expected my electricity bills to hover around Rs.300/-.

The first month when I was here - landlord said that there was some issue in the sub-meter and he charged me a round amount of Rs.500/-.

The next month the bill came to around Rs.490/-. I was a bit suspicious but still couldn't find out why I was getting it. I searched the BESCOM site and came across this consumption calculator - this was handy - and a great tool. Inputting my usage here - on a very conservative estimate - the bill amount came around Rs.350/-.
But beware, the site is not accessible most of the time - probably BESCOM should see that the link is hosted on a very reliable server.

The next month bill came - and it was a whopping Rs.1040/ - Well this is NOT something I wanted. And sure there was some mistake in the sub-meter. I called the BESCOM linemen who said that the meter was fine. Then I had to get the local electrician to check out what was the issue. There were around 40 apartments in my whole building and this was newly constructed - and my submeter was connected for two houses and hence the huge bill - now after rectifying it, the bill amount is around Rs.300/-

Thanks for being 'sensible'

2008-06-13T23:47:00.001+05:30

After a gap of two years, I went to an ophthalmologist to check my eye power. During the examination, I was applied eye drops and asked to close my eyes for about an hour. It was totally a different experience - I got a call on my cell phone - now, how do I find out who it is before I take the call - especially when you have a plethora of calls that come from one bank / the other for some offer.

This is when, I found out how important it is to appreciate the presence of each and every organ and sense in your body. Most of us take for granted that we are fine and don't even think the importance of our senses in every day. But even an hour of just closing my eyes, got me into a realisation mode - how important and necessary our senses are.

This gets me to remember an old poem in Tamil by the great poet, Auvaiyar ...

"aridhu aridhu maanidaraai pirathal aridhu
maanidaraai pirandha kaalaiyin
koon kurudu sevidu neengi pirathal aridhu..."

- translated "It is rare to be born a human, Inspite of being a human, it is rare to be born without any ailments - blind, deaf, dumb"

- Thanks for how I'm created with the senses!!!

Exemplary Leadership

2008-06-12T08:10:00.000+05:30

One of the company VP's visited our site yesterday. I report into his group. He is a veteran in the industry and switched his career to this present one about three years before but after what he calls "a blessed" 25 years.

Even as a VP, he is very technical about what his group is doing. Being in the semiconductor space, understanding technical stuff is itself a big effort for anyone at the Executive level. Inspite of him, coming into this role only about three years back, he had amassed a wealth of information and it was like an engineer talking to an engineer - not the regular managerial stuff.

Apart from his visit, what I like is the weekly mails he sends out. This is quite a different mail - he updates everyone under his umbrella with what is going on - this gives a better picture of where our company is headed, how our products progress, what each group does, what are the major tasks that were addressed over the week, what are the plans ahead, etc. Sending out a mail like this one serves a lot of purpose - you get to know what is happening at the high level, how the various teams interact, how your specific work affects the company, what is your importance and responsibility in the company, etc. Communications like these boost the morale of the people and also bring in a lot of enthusiasm and drive from each person.

Rather than getting a job done without details, if there is lucid communication on what is going on and where you fit in - it really helps you to understand your work and get more out of you. There you go - a great example of the importance of communication that eventually grades how good you are as a leader.

On the other hand, I have an immediate manager who is totally opposite - more on that later !!!

After a long gap ...

2008-06-06T16:44:00.002+05:30

Yep, posting after a long gap ... It has almost been more than three quarters of an year that I had put up a post on this blog. Most of the time I had either been lazy or been very busy. During busy times, it had been shuffled between personal prioritues ans professional stuff. Now that I'm starting to get frustrated with things at the professional front, I want to spend some time on bringing myself 'back to form' to write some good posts.

So, did I not have time to do anything else apart from personal and professional stuff?

Mostly yes - I had been on and off and many small things ... reading a lot of blogs had been there - but I had come down quite significantly.

I discovered Alltop and this nice accumulator of blog posts is a gift for someone who likes to go through a collection of topics. I have my own feeds organized at bloglines - but Alltop seems to give more details on a topic and introduces me to new blogs.

Just a cakewalk ....

2007-07-26T12:11:00.000+05:30

There comes the time of the year when you need to go through your bills to submit your IT returns. This is almost like a D-day for many when they had to gather all their annual accounts into the small form to say this is what I earned and this is what I lost and 'dear Government, here is the part I am paying you for all what you have provided me over the year and what you will provide me in the future'.

Last year I filed my returns through a CA who had come to my office. This year also, I was thinking about going through the same route. But for getting details from Form-16 and inputting them into the ITR form and with no major calculations from capital gains / others, I was a bit hesitant to pay 400 bucks for the simple filling up the form and another 100 bucks for filing the tax returns. Now, that I had to do the same for my wife, it becomes double. And I'm not certain if the guy was going to charge me more for two Form-16s from my employers over the last year.

So, DIY.

It hardly took me 30 mins to get the ITR forms filled out for me and my wife. But, I was expecting a big queue at the IT office for filing. But it was a cakewalk.

There were about 15 counters, in the Bangalore C R Building, for checking the PAN details and an additional one if you are from out of state. Then, according to the Salary Ward and Circle, there were ample counters with atleast two IT officials ready to get the forms, verify the important details and giv you back the acknowledgement form.

Wow, a simple task - finished everything in 5 mins. Bet, the CAs would be making a fortune in this period for an almost no-hassle-no-sweat-no-mind boggling job.

Back to India ...

2007-07-25T16:12:00.000+05:30

Finally, after a long wait, I watched 'Sivaji - The Boss'. First, I was happy that I need not spend more money to get a ticket in black. Second, I found the film to be a good entertainer. Inspite of being on the run for over a month, the moview was spinning money at the box office - a reality that I could see from the show which I attended - tickets had been booked very early and the show was full house.

Being a good entertainer, I liked the gist of the movie. Thalaivar returns from US after a long time, working there as a Software architect. His only thoughts - to put all his hard earned money to good use. But, resistance from well settled dons and 'industrialists' peak up when someone new enters the arena. - and thus goes the movie.

Hats off to the director, Shankar, for bringing in the thought of NRIs returning back to India and making India actually grow. - But apart from this, he had failed in his department. I wish, that many people atleast take this message from the film and invest for a better India.

As the Prez hopes, that India will become a developed nation far earlier that 2020, I am certain that money invested in proper circles by returning NRIs will certainly pull that target more earlier.

Shocking bill

2007-07-17T21:18:00.000+05:30

Oops!!!

It was a huge shock for me when my monthly BSNL phone+broadband bill came. Each month for my Home-500 dataone connection, I usually get around Rs. 750/- as bill, which includes an unused landline rent. But this month it had shot up four fold. Ok, now rather than calling up the customer service and giving them tirades, I wanted to see if I could reason out if the bill was right or not.

A few assumptions that I made had been wrong in my internet usage. I was thinking that I would be charged only for my download bandwidth - but the bsnl website states that the monthly cap is a cumulative of both upload and download traffic. Next, I was assuming that the free time starts from 12 midnight through till 8 am the next morning, but unfortunately, it starts only at 2am in the morning and extends the next six hours.

I went to the 'check usage' in dataone website and then tried to pull out the records related to my usage over the last month. I was able to get the traffic details over all the month with respect to each chunk of my contiguous online time. Seeing the records, I was able to atleast convince myself that the bill was indeed true. Atleast, thanks to BSNL for providing this cross checking facility.

Citizen No.1

2007-07-08T20:27:00.000+05:30

Citizen No.1 is on for a change at India. When five years ago, when there was a change of guard for the post, there was an easy consensus on who would occupy the huge 350+ rooms. The choice was very optimal - a technocrat who put India onto the nuclear map - Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

Dr. APJ was a choice that no one would refute or oppose - a person who had no black mark, a person who had a great education, a person who would glorify the post of Citizen No. 1, etc, etc. A person who well deserved the post, or rather a post which deserved a person like Dr. APJ. Even after being, welcomed to the post and appointed as the President of India, he added more feathers to the post - amazing speeches, still a very accessible President, etc. A few things that are outstanding during his tenure are the opposition to the OoP bill, the speech at the EU, visit to the Siachen , etc.

Now, out of the billion others in the country, there goes the call for the new occupant of the house. With so many able people out there and a person who had glorified the house and the post, now comes a person comes who has not been in known political circles for long. Along with it she brings a lot of allegations. Now, does a country like India need a person with allegations to take up the post? Can't some one start thinking about where we are going? Just because the current occupant of the house rejected the OoP bill and did not co-ordinate with the current ruling party, we have to throw the person out and get someone who would nod her head for the ruling party? Kids play! Someone please save India.

A different weekend...

2007-06-17T17:01:00.000+05:30

Busy over the weekends still avoid me from contributing regularly to my blog.

A couple of weeks ago, it was a different weekend for from the normal cooking, TV and some odd professional work.

I had been to Parikrama to get introduced to what they do. First, they are a NGO working towards providing better education to children from the slums in India. I took a first had look at the working of one of their schools. They are far better than the lot of Government schools, where most of these kids could, if they can.

These kids have decent classroom facility and dedicated teachers who train them to come to better understanding of education and the society. From the personal interaction we had with the kids in their classrooms, I was amazed at the English fluency some of these kids had, their inquisitiveness to know things more, their confidence in communicating, etc.

It was different way of spending time and I hope that I might spend more time with these kids in the future.

To wind off the weekend, I also attended the Frames of Mind hosted by the Bangalore Photography club.

Travel and Travel more

2007-06-04T20:53:00.000+05:30

After some continuous hectic weekends, I was able to take a bit of back seat and relax this weekend. My friend, Prasanna, introduced me to the nice film , The Motorcycle Diaries. - A great film!!!

I liked the way, 'Che' had taken the motorcycle trip with his friend Granado in his early life. This is really a classic of its own, especially when you want to explore the "Who am I" within you. Sittting inside a cubicle or four walls will not teach much except that you have to compete with your colleagues to gain better place. Coming out into the open world, puts you across real life problems - problems that need solutions, solutions that will last long, solutions that will make up the future, solutions that intertwine with our life, solutions that pose more questions and more solutions.

Everyone who thinks that he/she is a leader ought to take a journey in his/her own county, understand what the people really need and then put yourself as a tool and as a solution to solve the problem. Life is tough, many want to be leaders just by being in the circumstance only for a very little time. Time is a great teacher and with travel, there would be no book/ university education that would teach more.

In parallel, to the same travel by Che, in India also, Gandhi travelled a lot - literally making inroads into the country. In his early stages of travel, he used to wear western/formal dresses and address the gatherings. On one occassion, while during his address, and further interactions, one woman asked him, why after speaking so much about India, poverty, etc, he still wears a formal dress and this is where he understands that to be a person among others and fight for independence together with them, he should also be in their same standards. This is when, he relinquishes his formal wearing and gets in to the dothi.

Travel really makes a person wise and a wiser person a leader.

Linkedin Answers

2007-05-18T18:17:00.000+05:30

It had been an hectic time over the last fortnight due to some personal emergencies ....

I recently visited linkedin after a long time to acknowledge the invitation of a colleague. I liked the Linked Answers introduced recently. Many might say that these are based on the Groups structure provided by Google/ Yahoo or others. I do agree on the concept, but still once again I prefer this as you could match the authors, of the responses, to what field they are in, what work they do, etc - giving a correlation to what they answer and who they are. This is mroe better than most of the respondents who maintain their anonimity in the other open groups.

Hoping to contibute more in these answers....

More about me .....

2007-05-04T21:56:00.000+05:30

Ok, I'm not going to write an autobiography. One of my friends sent me a link to try Imagini. For fun only :)

Here is the widget about me ....

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Learning Lessons

2007-05-04T21:51:00.000+05:30

Came across this link on the lessons of an MIT education.

A few of the lessons, especially Lesson 6, really made me think. Personally, I feel that I might have made a mistake. After completing my high school, I got a place in a very prestigious college but not in an engineering course - but an allied engineering course. But not being comfortable getting a degree in an allied engineering course, I switched to a very new college but an Engineering course. I'm still not very certain that this had been a definitive advantage/ disadvantage over the years. But like what Dr. Rota states, an education at a more competitive centre would certainly boost the confidence as well as would help us measure to a high performance. At times during my undergraduate course, I have felt that the faculty or the research level was not upto what the student needed at that time. But, well, you go into an institution in India - you have to come out of it - there is no easy way to transfer and move to be a better institution during the course of education.

Being at a well established educational institution gives a lot of opportunities to the students as well as the faculty. Being a centre of excellence, better performers congregate and this leads to higher levels of education, research and learning. Having more better minds, gives opportunity to explore more new fields, more intersecting/ overlapping arenas, etc. Better industry collaboration would be definitely on the cards.

Seeing this article, still makes me wonder how many of the institutions in India measure upto this level. IITs and IISc are a very few. But even at IITs I have been told that "Undergraduates are the products of IIT, Graduates the by-products and Ph.Ds the waste products" - I'm not trying to be critical - but how many great doctoral dissertations have we got from IITs? - how many break through technologies have we seen from students in research at IITs? - I still wonder if we have the numbers to compare with other well known institutions world wide.

Hope that India puts her best foot forward to tune up the level of education at the educational institutions so that one day, we would still be able to write an article on "Lessons from an Indian Education".

What's it like to fall in love?

2007-04-22T08:59:00.000+05:30

This nice C&H strip gives the details!!!

Nice thought that goes into the strip and when I read this, nothing but only Indian cinema come into thought. Only in Indian cinema - most of them - revolve around love and flirting. I think Bill could have got the idea from seeing a few Indian films!!!

I have always wondered why Indian movies can't come up with something other than the subject of love and flirting. Like, a comment that I heard - "Indian movies don't have anything but except for the lovers to go around trees singing and dancing" - Indian movies have their own special formula - hero saves girl from villain - fights villain - loves girl get married and live happily!!! - why don't we have movies that try to give more importance to reality. Many youth in India are blinded by the Indian films and their sense of dealing the love affairs. With a growing youth population, and the fact that India is credited with making a large number of movies every year, people from the tinsel world have to come forward, experiment with more better subjects and give more great films. Commercialisation is a fact that has to be cared of when making a film, but exploitation of the general public on a thought and idea that they are hinged to is very bad. Let us have some really worthy films from India!!!

Applying Thought

2007-04-12T19:07:00.000+05:30

After a hectic day of work, I got chance to peep over the hardcopy of the day's Times of India (Apr. 12, 2007). Fortunately, for a change, the paper added some extra info to my brain. It carried a mail from Azim Premji written to his employees. I'm not able to get a link for the same from the TOI site, but thanks to TOI for sharing the same. Managed to get the contents from their epaper ...a nice article, well written. Azim Premji once again demonstrates his leadership and communication skills on paper. A good read....

Applying thought, the Azim way
Over 60,000 Wiproites have received some powerful advice from their big boss, Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro Ltd. In an e-mail sent on April 9, the software czar shared his successes, setbacks and the lessons he learnt during his corporate journey. TOI brings you some excerpts from that as we believe Premji’s message can cut across multiple business domains to benefit millions of employees and employers, and not just Wiproites
Azim Premji

Dear Wiproite,
My own successes and setbacks along the way have taught me some lessons. I wish to share them with you and hope you will find them useful.
Lesson #1: Be careful to ask what you want. You may get it.
What this means is that do not ask too little either of yourself or the others around you. What you ask is what you get. When I look back at the time when I joined Wipro, I was 21. If you ask me whether I thought that Wipro would grow so by someday, the honest answer is that I did not. But neither did I think it would not. We constantly stretched ourselves to higher and higher targets. Sometimes, it seemed possible, sometimes fanciful and sometimes plain insane. But we never stopped raising limits. And we got a lot more than what we bargained for.
Lesson # 2: Respond, don’t react
Always be aware of your emotions and learn to manage them. There is a huge difference between people who react impulsively and those who can disengage themselves and then respond at will. By choosing to respond differently, we can prevent another person from controlling our behaviour. I remember a small story that illustrates this well. There was once a newspaper vendor who had a rude customer. Every morning, the customer would walk by, refuse to return the greeting, grab the paper off the shelf and throw the money at the vendor. The vendor would pick up the money, smile politely and say, Thank you, Sir. One day, the vendor’s assistant asked him, Why are you always so polite with him when he is so rude to you? Why don’t you throw the newspaper at him when he comes back tomorrow? The vendor smiled and replied, “He can’t help being rude and I can’t help being polite. Why should I let his rude behaviour dictate mine?’’
Lesson # 3: Intuitions are important for making decisions
It is important to realise that our intuition is a very important part of decision making. Many things are recorded by our subconscious. Use both sides of the brain. Even that is not enough. Some decisions need the use of the heart as well. When you use your mind and heart together, you may get a completely new and creative answer.
Lesson # 4: Learn to work in teams
The challenges ahead are so complex that no individual will be able to face them alone. While most of our education is focused in individual strength, teaming with others is equally important. You cannot fire a missile from a canoe. Unless you build a strong network of people with complimentary skills, you will be restricted by your own limitations. Globalisation has brought people of different origins, different upbringing and different cultures together. Ability to become an integral part of a cross-cultural team will be a must for your success.
Lesson #5: Never lose your zest and curiosity
All the available knowledge in the world is accelerating at a phenomenal rate. The whole world’s codified knowledge base (all documented information in library books and electronic files) doubled every 30 years in the early 20th century. By the 1970s, the world’s knowledge base doubled every seven years. Information researchers predict that by the year 2010, the world’s codified knowledge will double every 11 hours. Remaining on top of what you need to know will become one of the greatest challenges for you.
The natural zest and curiosity for learning is one of the greatest drivers for keeping updated on knowledge. A child’s curiosity is insatiable because every new object is a thing of wonder and mystery. The same zest is needed to keep learning new things. I personally spend at least 10 hours every week on reading. If I do not do that, I will find myself quickly outdated.
Lesson # 6: Put yourself first
This does not mean being selfish. Nor does it mean that you must become so full of yourself that that you become vain or arrogant.
It means developing your self-confidence. It means, developing an inner faith in yourself that is not shaken by external events. It requires perseverance. It shows up in the ability to rebound from a setback with double enthusiasm and energy. I came across a recent Harvard Business Review which describes this very effectively: No one can truly define success and failure for us. Only we can define that for ourselves. No one can take away our dignity unless we surrender it. No one can take away our hope and pride unless we relinquish them. No one can steal our creativity, imagination and skills unless we stop thinking. No one can stop us from rebounding unless we give up. And there is no way we can take care of others, unless we take care of ourselves.
Lesson # 7: Have a broader social vision
While there is every reason to be excited about the future, we must not forget that we will face many challenges as well. By 2015, we will have 829 million strong workforce. That will make India home to 18% of global working-age population. The key challenge is to transform that into a globally competitive work-force.
This will not be an easy task. Despite all the rapid economic expansion seen in recent years, job growth in India still trails the rise in workingage population. It is important that gains are spread across this spectrum, so that the divide between the employed and the under-employed, is minimised. Education is a crucial enabler that can make this growth as equitable as possible.
Lesson # 8: Play to win
Playing to win is not the same as playing dirty. It is not about winning all the time or winning at any cost. Playing to win is having the intensity to stretch to the maximum and bringing our best foot forward. Winning means focusing on the game. The score board tells you where you are going, but don’t concentrate too much on it. If you can focus on the ball, the scores will move by themselves. I recently came across this story that I thought I would share with you. A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went into the kitchen. He returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal-some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite and asked them to help themselves to coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, you were more concerned about comparing your cups but what you really wanted was coffee. Yet you spent all your time eying each other’s cups.
Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to contain life, but cannot really change the quality of life. Sometimes, by over concentrating on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee.”
I wish you all every success in your career and your life.

And more (unwanted) cricket

2007-04-06T20:21:00.000+05:30

Cricket, Cricket, Cricket!!!
I'm still bewildered why India and Indians are so ridiculously and emotionally attached to the game. I am not a die-hard anti-cricket fan. But, with such an explicit showcase of politics and play in the game, why should we still watch and harbour cricket as THE GAME?
News had been flowing in saying that coach Greg Chappell had to be changed. - Well, if his term ends, so be it. But, by changing the coach will the game improve - of course not. It is not like American Soccer where coach calls the game while it is on. It is the eleven players of the team who make / break the game.
A few things that India can do to improve the quality of cricket .....

1. Team selection should be by performance - strictly.
2. Captain should be selected after the team is selected.
3. Out of every three matches recently played, if the player has not performed well in more than one game, remove him from the top 11.
4. If the team does not win, do not give compensation to the players.
5. Do not allow players to sign contracts with advertisers and other commercial interest business if the player is not part of the top eleven.
6. When touring overseas, allow only the players and not their family to go abroad.
7. Get a second eleven ready and keep shuffling the players if they do not perform. - Let us not worry about the experience of the top eleven - what did we achieve in this World cup with experienced players like sachin, sourav, dravid and kumble?

Leading from Below

2007-04-01T22:23:00.000+05:30

A short read this week ... "Leading from Below" available online at WSJ. This focusses on mid and lower management people coming into the corporate responsibility circle. I have heard from my many of my engineering friends that their bosses are just there to fill the places and they would perform better if they were left their own way. I suppose, this article is aimed at such bosses.
Like how the article points out, many bosses are comfortable in their service and governance role - leading their teams, giving update on what is happening to their product, how their product interacts with other products, etc. But there are few, who look more that what is required of their role. They step up to see how they can define new things in the corporate and the technology world. One aspect that the paper pointed out is very relevant nowadays ... "In an age when job cuts are common at even the most successful companies, being a good manager who doesn't make waves is increasingly risky." I hope that each and every 'comfortable' boss tries to shirk of his/her cosy environment and start to take risks and start to lead - not manage.

Better employee ...

2007-03-24T21:18:00.000+05:30

After a long time, I met with a couple of my friends who had been my course/lab mates during my MS program(s). It was a nice time having a chat about many thoughts that traversed our mind. During the chat, one of my friends pointed towards why you should not employ many people in a project. I liked it very much. ....

1. Employees become productive.
2. Employees get to be more responsible.
3. Employees get to recognised and be given due importance.
4. Profit can be shared among lesser number of employees.

... Net, the employee turns to understand the importance of a project, does challenging things, learns more and is also being rewarded more.

I see this in contrast to many companies who tend to bloat their presence just by increasing the headcount. I hope these companies don't start off a race and contribute towards a Bubble 2.0!!!

Cricket is a religion

2007-03-24T21:13:00.000+05:30

Over the past few days, the Indian news channels have shown their inability to analyse and do justification to their purpose of existence. It is understandable that the billions of people are anxious about the results of each and every world cup cricket match. But, does that mean that the other legitimate news have to take a step back?

All 24x7, the news channels are engaged only in talking about cricket. If want to hear the news in the morning / the evening, it is only cricket!!! Why do we want to give importance to something that is only a game - how much does it affect a commoner? Does the win / loss of a cricket match do anything to affect the daily lifestyle of the commoner? Most of us, Indians, are addicted to cricket - well, addictions is not bad - but addictions to the level that cricket is considered a religion, an emotional one is bad - after all, can we have hope on something as a religion when we see things like India losing to Bangladesh?

All the Indian news channels tend to concentrate all their prime broadcasting time on cricket. Why do we want to give importance to the game? - After all, who is the winner - it is BCCI and the cricket team. It is they who rake in all the money from advertisements and broadcasting and the cricketers who get houses from governments and sops for each and every part of their lifestyle. The Indian news channels have understood the weakness of the common Indian towards cricket and have started to exploit it. Why can't Indian news channels stop this exploitation and start doing proper journalism?

Leadership styles

2007-03-10T23:03:00.000+05:30

Leadership is an art as well as a science. Leadership is inborn for some, but can also be developed over time and experience. Leadership has various facets. Recently, I came across 'The Personal Work styles of Leaders' at Life2.0 Like the 12 signs of the zodiac, each of the leaders mentioned have their own style of leadership.

The article discusses various features of a leader, how he/she co-ordinates the activities in their own environment. A few points that I liked about the article are that it shows that leadership characteristics are not hard and fast - they vary from person to person, time to time, environment to environment. But, certain features are not avoidable - hardwork, lucid communication, knowledge and co-ordination.

The article talks about each leader in how they schedule their day, their mode of communication, their stressbuster, their principles - putting the concept of work style in a more vivid picture. A few things I like the most of each leader ....
1. Time to spend on physical exercises / stressbusters.
2. Early to rise.
3. Prompt communication.

Fair Treatment to all

2007-03-10T20:16:00.000+05:30

Recently, I have started to have a feeling that KBC is having a tough time trying to find proper questions for their Fastest Finger First (FFF) round. As most of us know, this is the last elimination round, where in ten participants compete for the Hot Seat. One question is asked which has the four options to be arranged in some specific order.

I have two observations to make ... in one of the recent episodes asked the contestants to arrange the title of a popular Star TV's well known Indian serial. In another couple of episodes, the contestants were asked to arrange the options - the options were either ornaments/clothing in the order of how we wear it on our body.

In the first, I think the question is well below a level for the level of KBC. With such a popularity and the questions compilation team, even, consisting of the well known Siddartha Basu, I am starting to doubt why such an efficient team has come to this level.

With respect to the second question, I'm satisfied with the option - but the choices were only in Hindi. Given that English is the most common language spoken in India, and Hindi not being prevalent everywhere in India, I have the strong feeling that contestants should not be denied their fair chance because of linguistic issues.

A few suggestions that KBC could follow to get some nice questions for their FFF ....

1. Chronological events, age, lifetime - anything date wise, historical
2. Height, weight, etc. anything compared to numbers.
3. Anything related to placement, geographical.
4. Record related - like most numbers in a cricket match, etc.

Hope everyone gets a fair chance!!!

I'm bored ....

2007-03-03T17:51:00.000+05:30

I'm bored ... I usually here this from people of all ages - especially from the teens to the office goers ... why do we get bored?

1. We don't find things interesting.
2. We have been like machines - doing the same things on and on.
3. We lack enthusiasm to go explore new things.

On a weekend, you start to have your breakfast, clean your house, prepare lunch, have it and then ... you start to whine "I'm bored' sitting before the same TV every week. How can you get rid of the boredom? - Try a few things ....

Let us go with the same example ...

1. It's a weekend - plan something different - break out from your daily routine and go to some place different.
2. Go out on the streets (atleast that, please!!!) and enjoy seeing people - learn from what they do, interact with other people.
3. Get hold of some puzzles or crosswords and solve them.
4. Visit your friends.
5. Take a hobby and try experimenting with it.
6. Take a refreshing walk.
7. Do some exercises to get brisk.
8. Read something totally different - engage in new fields of thought.

11C + R ...

2007-03-03T17:33:00.000+05:30

This week, I was quite busy but just found time to go through a few articles - from various quarters....

First, through one of my blogfeeds, I visited the Ivey Business Journal and took to read "What engages employees the most or, The Ten C's of employee engagement" - A very short read - it was nice and summarised that the employee engagement depends on the following ten C's ... Connect, Career, Clarity, Convey, Congratulate, Contribute, Control, Collaborate, Credibility and Confidence.

I had seen that one or the other factors had personally been a factor of influence or disapproval when I had discussions with my bosses at lot of times. I'm not certain if the authors are missing any other C's - but I give preference to Confidence, Connect, Clarity and Career when a boss has to have the support of his employee - many companies lose out on this and I have heard 'People do not leave companies, but leave their managers' - hope managers realize this - it is the people of the lower rung who make or break the company - not the top elite!!!

Next, once again through another blogfeed, I went through Reactive and Creative - Although the post article was tuned towards the Budhahood, I really liked the logical reasoning behind a creative and a reactive mind. Especially these ones, from the article are noteworthy...

In the first place, the reactive mind is a re-active mind. It does not really act, but only re-acts.

The creative mind loves where there is no reason to love, is happy where there is no reason for happiness, creates where there is no possibility of creativity, and in this way "builds a heaven in hell’s despair".

Finally, after a long time, this makes up my 50th post!!!

Relax

2007-02-25T20:01:00.000+05:30

For many of us, we are comfortable trying to undergo the pain that we suffer than trying to deviate ourselves into a different mood and relax. There are a plethora of techniques to relax - I try to follow or pick up a few according to my mood and environment ....

1. Listen to some calm music. I prefer hearing some instrumental music like romantic tunes on the flute, piano, violin, guitar or get listening to some cool jazz. The other more relaxing is to find a number that has natural sounds like water flowing, the sound of breeze, the rattle of leaves, etc. The bottomline is try to sync with the music and relaxation will come into picture.

2. Try taking a brisk walk. Once again, try this walk in proximity to nature - where you can avoid the maniac called traffic.

3. Take a deep breath and do some relaxation exercises.

4. Try closing your eyes and doing some visualization - like thinking of a calm place, nice greenery, etc.

5. Avoid reading books or seeing TV during the time you need to relax - these add stress to you rather than helping you get of stress.

6. Try drinking a glass of pure water - at normal temperature rather than a cold or hot one and avoid having a caffeine / smoking during the time you need to relax.

When you try to get to adopt and adapt to one or more of these habits, trying to relax comes in naturally. I had tried most of these on one or more occasions - like I used to take long walks during my college days, listen to soft music most of the time or try during some relaxation or meditation - they have helped me alot - especially to tone down my frustration and also to increase my concentration.

Working from home

2007-02-19T21:11:00.000+05:30

As I had been WFH in the morning, due to some personal errands, I decided to continue the same in the afternoon and avoided the huge rush of Bangalore traffic. I really appreciate the concept -as it gave me few great advantages ...
1. No tension due to traffic.
2. Time wasted on traffic is avoided.
3. Free from pollution.
4. Helps to calm the mind due to the above.

But obviously the disadvantage is that not much of face-to-face interaction. But if have forwarded your extension/ got a messenger to connect to your colleagues at work, you can almost have the communication link on.

Thinking of trying this option once every week to help me avoid the unwanted stress and time waste due to the nonsensical traffic.

Also, this saving of time, gave me an option to go through two nice articles ....

First, a short one by Steve jobs on opening up DRM. I liked the stats that he gave - and asking the "big four" to come up and open up the DRM model.

Second, was a Sunday morning conversation between the two Indian IT Titans - Premji and NRN - big minds, but humble ones that brought in a lot of unanswered questions into picture.

... Will try to pen up a couple of more articles on what I liked about the two readings in future entries ....

Devil's Advocate

2007-02-18T21:11:00.000+05:30

Recently had a chance to see Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN conducting Devil's Advocate - I liked the concept of the program - questioning incumbent people about their acts vs. their responsibilities and duties. But the way the host behaved was really intimidating - should Indian press go to the extent of harassing the guest by cross-questioning to get the answers? - Do we need hosts who shut their mouth when they are attacked by the guest - do we need hosts who wrinkle their faces when they don't get a proper answer?

We don't want channels churning out their news and interpreting news according to them - say what is happening and show what is there - we don't want your views and your ideas -we want to see what happens in reality and we do not need interpretations. Do not try to change the
perception by binning the answers into your views. No ticker messages please!!! No comments on the screen please!!! Let us get an undivided opinion from the guest - you can have your opinions in another program / section.

If you want to cross question anyone, you are welcome - but why do you want to show unprofessional facial expressions and try to corner the guest on a question which does not have a large impact on the daily life of the people?

Mr. Thapar, a suggestion ... Thanks for the nice program - but try not be unprofessional - because a great host is one who tries to get the best out of the interview in a very prefessional and dignified manner - do not harass - but try to get answers in a more amicable way.

Heroic Acts

2007-02-18T20:26:00.000+05:30

It's been a very long time since I had taken to reading fiction books. The last but one I read was the famous Da Vinci Code. It was the controversy about the book together with my interest in reading history/ mythological / occult topics that made me take the book. After this, I had been reading a lot of non-fictional books over time - especially more on the biographical and more on self-help front - apart from Management and Technical books.

Recently, my friend Sada, asked me to try Clive Cussler on the fictional side. I took Inca Gold and it was almost a month since I had started to flick the pages - I rarely found time to get to the book to read through it because of work pressure as well as developments in the personal front.

Inspite of the book being a eye-opener on what NUMA does and details on the Inca Trail, I found the book to be like another Indiana Jones stuff. The hero, Dirk Pitt, is like another Indian cinema hero. He comes out of nothing, takes the situation in his hands and he is the only one who has the solution to solve the situation. Sometimes, it is very hilarious to read this, but I stayed put to complete the book, just to get any more extra information the author provided on the trail or NUMA or any related topic - and not certainly for the super heroic acts of Dirk !!!

Toastmasters for Reporters

2007-02-12T11:03:00.000+05:30

It was a peaceful day in Bangalore, due to the bandh called for opposing the final verdict on the Cauvery River water dispute - no traffic on the roads, cool breeze coming, bright unadulterated sunlight and a noise free day, virtually. I had to be indoors to avoid any encounter with any sort of disturbance. The only two activities that I had was to enhance the look of my blog and to turn into a couch potato.

On the three Indian news channels that I surfed through - NDTV, CNN IBN, Times NOW, most of the news were either about the bandh, the selection of the Indian Cricket team for the upcoming World Cup, the acquisition of Hutch telecom by Vodafone and finally, the buyout of Novelis by the Birla Group.

Irrespective of the news and the source, all the channels sucked. None of the reporters were fluent enough to express the news properly. All of the reporters had a plethora of filler words and this spoiled the spirit of the news. Second, the choice of words were only from a selection of a few words and were almost repetitive. I'm not certain if these reporters had taken the Journalism 101 class. The way to report a news depends on how you express it and how you present it.

This brings me to say that Indians are at a loss to keep seeing these reporters ain't any other choice, inspite of the huge overflowing population. Why don't some one start a Toastmasters for reporters? - This will bring out better reporters and also make seeing the news channels more effective and interesting.

Being a good reporter does not mean covering the news firsthand. It also has a lot more....
1. How you think and analyse the situation - your choice of words makes a large impact on how people perceive the news.
2. Lucid Presentation - clear thoughts, simple words that can express the situation ditto.
3. Body Language - being stoic while reporting does not add any value to the news. Being a good reporter who communicates through body gestures helps a lot to convey the news.
4. 'Thinking on the feet' - As reporters, it is necessary to think on a different line to present the news, so that the news is well received by the audience.
5. Fluent speech - Avoiding filler words while reporting adds more substance to the news - more effective words can fill the same time compared to that with filler words.

Dear Reporters, join Toastmasters to improve yourselves and make us feel that we see a great and good Indian News Channel!!!

86400 is all yours

2007-02-09T21:19:00.000+05:30

Since I'm now virtually off from attending the regular weekly Toastmasters meetings, I feel bad about myself not being an active Toastmaster. Till I get anchored properly in my new job, I thought I'll keep posting a few Presidential speeches I had given during my term as President in my earlier Toastmasters Club.

This is the first speech I gave as a President - the theme: "86400 is all yours".

Dear Toastmasters,

"86400 is all yours" - can you comprehend this? 86400 is just a number. But see this number in terms of your life .. it is the number of seconds in a day of your life ... yes... everyday and every second is yours.

Seeing a day as a day may not mean much .. but seeing it from the level of a second means much. Yesterday, I was going through Robert Pirsig's book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance'. There was this amazing short stuff where he talks about climbing mountains ....

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speedup. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.

And here comes the most pragmatic reasoning ....

Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a a means to end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top, you can't have the sides. Its the top that defines the sides. ....

If you correlate the mountains to your life and each of the steps to each second in your day, dear Toastmasters, you will feel that you need to live each and every second to reach to the top. As Pirsig says, once you reach the top, there is nothing, but it is the feel that you get through each and every step.

So, Dear TMs, there should be an aim to your life - like the peak of the mountains, but similarly to the mountains' sides, our life should have variety, liveliness and enthusiasm - which we need to enjoy and appreciate.

Similarly, coming to a meeting, giving a speech and moving off is not great - I would term it shallow - because you don't live and enjoy the enthusiasm of other Toastmasters. But when in a meeting, you can give importance to the meeting and to each and every other Toastmaster and the guest and make the meeting a success, that is the real spirit as a Toastmaster. Dear Tms, our TM of the day is one such person, who brings in liveliness, brings in importance to meetings and brings out the best of all other Tms in the day. Please join me in welcoming our TM of the day, AM ......

A few thoughts on what a President should do to give a good kickstart to the meeting ...
1. Know the theme of the meeting.
2. Get some information about the Toastmaster of the day, how he/she views the theme.
3. Get some inspirational examples to substantiate the theme.
4. Connect the theme to the Toastmaster of the day, the Toastmasters and the meeting as such.

Affordable Rights

2007-02-08T13:41:00.000+05:30

Seems Moser Baer is coming out with a plethora of titles on Indian movies. This is great for two reasons - one the DVD / CD prices of the titles will be very cheap - in the range of 30-50 rupees. Second, at this price, we get the original one with the proper rights for the title. Way to go Moser Baer!!! - I think the company, can go a bit more in extending their presence online by publishing a catalog of available titles, under continuous update process.

If MB can come to this stage where they can give the titles with appropriate rights at this cheap prices, what were the others doing till now? Eating the customers' money? I'm not certain what deals MB made with the title owners, but if MB can bring the titles at this price, any one could. I hope there are lot of DVD/Cd burning companies who can negotiate the price with the title owners and look into bringing more titles in the future. This would certainly generate a lot of revenue, lot of sales of consumer electronics and will certainly bring down the piracy seen in India in the media sector.

Bringing the needs of customers to a stage where they are affordable without any hassles is a great way to capture the market. Hope I'll get a lot more movies in the future from MB and others who might venture into this.

Finishing touches ...

2007-02-03T16:14:00.000+05:30

In my earlier post, I had mentioned about the half-baked work on Residency Road - but today, the half-baked stuff was nearing completion, with the BDA working on filling the rest of the 50% of the road. - IS BDA so proactive reading my blog? - just kidding - I think the BDA had to go a long way to peep into others blogs and get what the people wonder and think about. - Think just a mere coincidence of when I put down my thoughts and when the BDA had started working on the rest of it....

I wish the Indian organisations - either private / public, when in the service sector, should start to inculcate what their customers want and what their customers think - this would be a very asset to the organisation - see how the private companies who are very proactive - consider how important blogs are and how important their organisations can be directed from the voices of their employees, their customers - and the stake holders of the company / organisation.

Unfinished finished work

2007-02-02T09:18:00.000+05:30

Daily, I travel through Residency and Richmond Roads in Bangalore. Traffic is at its gruelling pace - especially due to the infrastructure factors as well as the notorious driving of many drivers. Drivers are very proud to show their skills on the roads irrespective of who else is on either side of them on the road. Totally a very nasty civic sense on the roads adds to the already exisiting hurdles and obstacles faced by most of the commuters.

Recently, Residency Road, atleast from Cash Pharmacy to Bishop Cotton Girls School, has seen a sort of makeover on the infrastructure. A week or so ago, the road was inundated with potholes and if you are riding a vehicle, especially a two wheeler, you should know the 'interesting' spots on the road as the back of your palm. Now, the road came with a makeover in the sense that the road was laid with a layer of tarmac. No the problem is that the full width of the road is not fully covered with the new tarmac. Due to the this, about 50% of the road at the centre, seems to have a nice smooth finish, while the rest 25% on either side seem to have th old face.

Due to this unfinished 'finished' work, most of the drivers try to attack the center of the road and sometimes it can be seen that the center of the road is flooded with vehicles trying to outsmart the other, while the sides of hte center are almost free. Second, due the different patches on the road, at any one point, there is a sharp cut in the height - the central new tarmac road is atleast 6 inches high compared to the old one and when four wheelers go with either wheels on each of the patches, they seem to be tilted and the guy at the back seems to wonder if it is sort of a mordernised San Francisco Road to imply that Bangalore is also a Silicon Valley in terms of the road - but in a different sense - not the ups and downs over the length as in SF - but the ups and downs over the width of the road.

This makes me wonder if BDA is really concerned about the pathos the commuters face everyday - nobody seems to care about what the layman experiences - everyone is concerned about if their job is finished or not - I haven't yet seen anyone raising voice about BDA about this unfinished finished work.

Solitude

2007-01-19T09:17:00.000+05:30

Recently came across the article "The Call for Solitude" - I appreciate the importance of having a solitude once at regular intervals - this gives me an oppurtunity to spend some time in a calm and serene environment sans any distrubance to think and introspect more. Getting time for oneself is becoming very difficult in this wired and weird world.

Getting the lone time is only in our hands ....When we decide to make certain that we need time to introspect and improve ourselves, we should consider this zero hour as time well spent in getting us to the next level. A few factors that we can do to get this time .....

1. Get out from the regular commotion.
2. Alienate yourself from any electronic gadgets.
3. Get a few sheets of paper and pencil/pen.
4. Have some nice music flowing in the background - something that is smooth and enhances the brain activity.
5. Try to spend atleast 30-45 mins trying to question on what you are doing and how you can go forward.

I had been practising this type of solitude till a few years back. It was really great. I generally used to listen to a music cd with water flowing / go near a lake / fountain and I would get some nice time to be near nature for some time. Once in a while, I also take some long walks, so that I have time to get to know more about myself.

With increasing responsibilties - personal & professional-wise, I hope I can get some more of this solitude in the near future to more forward ahead.

Chennai Book Fair

2007-01-16T15:23:00.000+05:30

This weekend I was at Chennai to celebrate Pongal at my in-laws' place. During the weekend, I also had a chance to go the Chennai bookfair. This ist he first time I'm visiting the fair at Chennai - I had gone to a few earlier fairs at Bangalore - but most of the fairs at Bangalore had focussed a major part on the English books and literary titles, while at Chennai, I could see a lot of Tamil publishers having stalls. Apart from the famous English publishers like Oxford Press, CUP, Prentice Hall, etc. I was really searching for other English publishers.

The fair as such was crowded and since I had visited the fair in the evening, it was like being at an exhibition. People got a bit exhausted when they covered only about 30-40% of the total 250+ stalls. So, most of the stalls after the halfway mark were virtually free. Crowds thronged the more known Tamil publishers who were at the entrance, mostly the Vikatan group.

For my part I got a few self-help books and natural healing books in Tamil and also a few titles on occult studies, like Samudhrika Lakshanam!!! And one book that I got for a better reading was a collection of Einstein's writings.

Another one?

2007-01-09T11:53:00.000+05:30

With me out of my earlier company and into another Tech major, I am feeling the miss of being part of a regular Toastmasters Club.

Specially, for me, the club at my company was a great one. Particularly for a few specific reasons....
1. Starting the club from scratch was challenging - think about selling the idea of public speaking and communication to engineers who are comfortable sitting before a system in their own cubicle.
2. Setting the standards needed for proper meetings and speeches.
3. Motivating members to attend meetings and persuading them to give speeches.
4. Keeping the club open - like most say, 'Opening a Toastmasters Club is not difficult, but keeping it open is!!!'

Inspite of the challenges, it was really a encouraging result for me, seen from my perspective.
- Improved my communication skills, especially tried to overcome the ahs and ums to a large extent, got a better understanding of how the administrative tasks in TM hierarchy go on, and finally more visibility in my company, better networking, etc.

Now, I have choice to repeat the same in my new work place or be a part of a community club.
Starting a new club would be great, but getting members would be challenge, given the fact that it might be a corporate club with restricted membership. In my earlier company, I had only about 2-3% of the total strength being part of the TM club. If I apply the same ratio, I can count the strength of the club at my new place using the fingers of one hand!!!

Being part of a community club would be nice given the general perspective that community clubs perform better than corporate clubs. But if I need to improve my skills, I must certainly be part of a club that has a strength around 30. Else, I might just be attending the meetings, but not improving my active communication skills.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed till I take a decision!!!

Real Estate

2007-01-07T20:38:00.000+05:30

Bangalore is known for the real estate business. Out of the blue, lands costing at a meagre rate, say, 100 per sq. ft., sky rocket to 2000+ in the next day - reasons - speculation that XYZ is coming up near this place. Today, Bangalore is no more the older pensioner's paradise, but a 'city' that has a lot of villages in its fold.

The other part of real estate is the rental business. I'm currently undergoing the same.

I had been contacting brokers to get me a house with some minor requirements - but none of the houses I have seen have ever been upto the requirements I had asked for. They try to push you into houses that nobody would tend to stay in. Exploitation is the only word I can say for their business. Very few brokers have the courtesy even to give a call and talk to you. They generally give a missed call. I have been shown atleast eight to ten houses in the past two days and the success rate is only about one that barely meets the criteria.

English...

2006-12-30T20:45:00.000+05:30

I was reading 'Eats Shoots and leaves' a few months ago and was really intriguied at the manner in which the punctuations in the English language have come up to this day's stature. A misuse of a small mark (read punctuation) makes the meaning twist and turn 180 degrees. I quite enjoy the following the gender based example.
On the other hand, the English language as such has gone a drastic metamorphosis in the way the words are used. In one of my Sanskrit classes, the guruji (teacher) usually mentions the evolution of the language over time. It seems that none of the words have undergone a change in their meaning over the long period it has been in use. He usually quotes the example of how words in English have changed in their primary meaning over the years. The most common word he uses as an example is gay.
Similarly, I was quite amused the see a similar example when reading 'An Autobiography of a Yogi' with respect to the word ejaculation.
This brings me to wonder what makes the primary meaning / usage of a word change. Is it the media that plays an important part? Is it the emphasis of technology or science? Any thoughts on how these changes get slowly into the act? Wikipedia has some details on this semantic change.

Endoscopy

2006-12-30T16:24:00.000+05:30

Recently, I was at a hospital at Coimbatore for consultation on gastric disorders. The hospital is known for its specialization in Gastro and Endoscopic treatment.
There was a huge crowd of patients that day when I went for the consultation. Even at 9 am, I could see about 100 patients before me in queue. Most of the patients had come empty stomach to have an endoscopy done. But none of the hospital staff do seem to note the inconvenience they cause to the patients. Inspite of the patients' empty stomach, the patients are kept waiting even till noon to get the endoscopy done. I wonder why the hospitals accept so much of appointments and still cause inconvenience to the patients. This is not the only time I have come across this. Even in Chennai and Bangalore, I have experienced the same situation and also seen the public being put in discomfort.
On discussing this with the doctor, during my consultation, he noted the main issue being population. If population is the cause, why still give that as an excuse. I strongly believe that hospitals and doctors should have a heart for service rather than a business acumen. If that is the case, they can take the following steps for better service and treatment to patients....

1. Accept only a quota of appointments per consultation day.
2. For endoscopy related appointments, do the endoscopy and have the consultation later.
3. Finish the empty-stomach related observations (like endoscopy) before starting any appointments related to non-empty-stomach cases.

What I see now in India is the excess flow of money in every sector that the service indebted to the customer is no more seen as a service but as a business transaction. The major reason is that people have become lax with the attitude of most Indians - not responding on time and with proper answers - and second in India, if you give money, things happen - corruption is having a nice dance here.

Unless and until people become more demanding and understand the value for the money they spend, the service sectors will continue to exploit the non-knowledgeable public.

Fellow

2006-12-19T07:23:00.000+05:30

Being part of any professional or academic society, we get to hear the word 'fellow' quite often. And whenever we hear it, we attribute it to the noteworthy tasks the person has done to the field / group or the adjoining body.
Recently, during a chat with a few of my office colleagues, I started to hear another usage of the word.

"This is the fellow who is responsible for the work."

"Why did this fellow not tell us what is happening?"

I found the usage quite annoying - wherein the word denoted a person who was not particularly positive in the work he /she did. I'm not certain how the colleague got to use the word 'fellow' when trying to mention a person in a negative way.
Once again, this is more of a funnier situation when you have the real Fellows who have done things on a large scale significance to the field and on the contrasting side, there are the conversational fellows who are pulled in when they didn't do their jobs properly!!!

Book Reading

2006-12-12T17:39:00.000+05:30

After a long time, I had enough patience to complete a whole book - nowadays, I have been more attracted to reading books, if time permits, on leadership, philosophy and my curiosity always takes me to reading books on occult studies - palmistry, astrology, numerology, tarot, etc.

Recently, I found ample time to complete the Autobiography of a Yogi by Shri Parahansa Yogananda. I had been delibrating on going through this book for a long time. Inspite of the online version being available, I found more pleasure in getting a hardcopy for myself and spending time to read it.

This book was primarily written with the western audience in mind and happens to be one of a kind to open up the window on the Indian yogic science to the western world. Most of the chapters had been about the experiences the author had with many great yogis of his time. From yogis who can be at multiple places at the same time, who can cure great diseases, who can foretell the future, who do not eat (but still live), etc.

Reading the book, we come to feel the importance the concept and practise of yoga has upon the person. A dedicated, pure and committed yogi seems to achieve what an ordinary man can just dream about.

Nice book - would prefer to read it once again :)

Sweet Talk HR

2006-12-07T22:30:00.000+05:30

It's been quite a while since I had blogged here ... a few reasons - getting onto interviews to try my hands at a new job and also getting the things settled down at my current location.

Could say that I was quite lucky - I did not attend too many interviews - but stayed onto to attend the interviews at two companies and got offers from both - but inspite of a slightly better offer from one, I chose the other for the sake of a better job profile - but I have to wait and see where this takes me from my current location :)

With respect to the interviews, I didn't have quite a good interaction with the HR personals.

At company A, it was mostly on the attitude of the HR with respect to compensation. I had asked the HR for a bonus compensation as I would not be eligible from my current company due my move. I got a very positive response from the person without any hesitation - I had still not signed the acceptance offer then. When I went to hand over my signed acceptance offer, the HR started to back saying that there was no provision in their company to compensate for lost bonuses. Step 3, I didn't like the yes - no approach but was willing to go the extra move to get details on a strong affirmation / a negative answer without any oscillation. I mailed the HR detailing the compensation issue and also cc:ing the technical manager, I would be reporting to. Finally, the HR person promptly calls me to discuss about how to go about the compensation!!!

At company B: the HR personal asked my current manager's contact information for reference and promised that the references would be checked only if I sign and accept the offer. Trusting their words, I gave them the details. But one day before they could even give me a verbal offer, my manager was contacted to verify about my profile and about me. The next day, my manager comes and questions me whether I'm leaving and why I hadn't told him about the offer!!! - Superb backfiring for a mistake I did - I shouldn't have given the contact information before I signed the offer.

Good lessons from both the interviews - I'm not certain why the HR at Indian workplaces - both the Indian companies as well as the MNC Indian offices - play spoilsport during the recruitment process. I had the high opinion the HR has to act as a facilitator to get candidates with proper technical expertise into appropriate teams - I get such shock when I see that the HR tries not to help the technical teams, but screw up the process - I hear that Indian HR act based on the incentives they get - I suppose this will ruin the company they are in, over a long run. Companies beware of such persons!!!

No more Cricket!!!

2006-11-26T17:35:00.000+05:30

It was a nice sunny afternoon when my friend Vinod reminded me of the 3rd ODI between India & South Africa. It was overwhelming to see the match at a state when South Africa were 57/4 at 16 overs and then went to 76/6 in another four overs. Both of us, possibly all of the Indian cricket fans, were hoping for a good vengeance from the Indian Side to the Proteas after India's last defeat with just scoring only 91 on the scoreboard.
  Once again the team in Blue stumbled and fumbled, not able to contain the tail-enders - allowing Justin Kemp to score his first ODI century, facilitating a new world record for the 8th wicket in ODIs, what else do you want - and finally making way for the SAs to reach 274/7 at the end of 50 overs.
  Seeing the match, it was full of frustration for me, as I could see that the players were just displaying their presence in the field rather than the drive to contain the match and turn the conditions favourable towards India. Full toss balls in the slog overs, short pitch balls, wides, no balls, etc. all making certain that the bowling department was fully off track. Also, the bowlers seemed to go down, with batsmen swinging to the tunes to fours and sixes. None of the bowlers were able to concentrate and bowl good length, if not yorkers and variant styles at the last minute.
  Inspite of a population of a billion people, and cricket being more than a cult or a religion to most of the people, I still doubt what stops India to have great players and produce winning results.
  One strategy to make certain that an earthquake is being felt by the dons in cricket is :

1. Boycott seeing matches at the stadiums.
2. Stop sponsoring matches.
3. Don't take the broadcasting rights.
4. Don't mention about Indian cricket on sites and papers.

  Basically, don't give the iconic status to cricket - see the match only if India wins the matches / the series. Are we Indians fools to see such a match and a match where we keep losing? - No, I'm not going to watch cricket from now. When companies talk about performance for the paltry pay they pay, why not the BCCI also talk about performance and results when they pay so much for each match?
  Note: I'm writing this blog during the match break - I still don't know the results of the match - but still I don't have good faith that India might do some miracles to win the match!!!

Lifelogging

2006-11-25T17:25:00.000+05:30

Came across the article in FastCompany about the novel and innovative method in which Gordon Bell of Microsoft is focusing on to record each and every possible moment in his day-to-day activities. Digitizing each of these information - whether from the SenseCam, mails, written communication, discussions, etc. - and storing this itself a huge task. Add sorting these and searching for relevant information, then the complexity starts to increase. Data warehousing at the personal level!!!

Analysing what this concept could bring if everyone had it is a nice talk to fill in over a cup of tea.

First, for me, this can help me log all the thought process that my mind tends to undergo. Sometimes, very rarely, I get a new idea and ponder over it. Then I forget about this, when I have no relevant storage recording my thoughts. I suppose this will be a welcome tool for a lot of inventors and innovators. - Yes, you have notes and scrap books, but sometimes, you can't record everything your mind everything in words as it thinks - speaking out into a mic or seeing it through a camera, correlating things together make up a lot of sense and brings in a new perspective to understanding things and exploring them more.

Second, this will be helpful for students as it can allow them to recall lectures and discussions. This might give a chance to improve upon their memory, trying to recall what the Professor actually meant and what is needed out of it.

Next for a layman, most of the time, we fumble upon a face and then, our mind goes into the hunting spree of trying to figure out where we actually crossed that face in our past. Trying to have a sample of all the encounters we had, this would give us more choice to recollect the face, and the surrounding in which the person had come in contact with us.

This might seem a total recall, but inspite of Gordon and his colleagues working it out as a prototype, I still have a few thoughts on how this could be improved more - possibly they have something on these lines already ...

1. Face recognition - or some image search not by words, but by the content of the image would be helpful.
2. Tagging the information will be helpful for sorting.
3. Trying to have distributed storage of the information will be great.
4. Ability to log in the information using wireless and also retrieving the info wirelessly would improve the accessibility to a great extent.
These are the small things that come to my mind - wish I can have this technology at the earliest at the consumer level - this will benefit the community at large.

And here is the article from Atlantic Journal mentioned in the FastCompany article.

Being Humble?

2006-11-23T18:58:00.000+05:30

Recently I got a forward that really spoke in life about what being humble is. You can see the forwards being preserved on the web here and here.

When I got the mail, I was thinking as yet another forward, but I wonder the importance and the reality the mail brings with it. I think, each and everyone who thinks he/she is great should put this mail before him at his workplace and read it everyday.

Few lessons:
1. Being big is not important, but being how useful you are is important.
2. Never think yourself big and great - you are after all a peck in this huge dust of glaxy - there are others who are also big and important.
3. Since you are in some profession, never underestimate the others - they might not seem great when you see, but without them, our work and life would not move an ich.
4. Life will never be the same - try to be humane to people around you.
5. Don't talk big about yourself - let others talk about you. Your actions determine who you are.

Training Centre

2006-11-19T18:25:00.000+05:30

Last weekend, I &my wife had the oppurtunity to visit the Infosys Campus at Mysore, courtesy my friend Senthil. Tucked, deep from the arterial roads, this seems to be only live place there, apart from the ongoing industrial construction at L&T, just on the other side of the road.

The campus was really a taste of what wealth the IT companies have acquired over the years. The campus boasted great gardens, nice buildings and the environment over there reminded me of the cleanliness I had experienced in US during my masters program. The Guest rooms, where we stayed were really great, with TV, connection for Internet (ofcourse, you need to be an Infoscian to get hooked on to the net!!!), neat restrooms, great view of the garden, very airy and provisions such as a safe locker as well as an iron box, made think, ifit was just a training centre / a resort.

More than a resort can have, the campus boosted, atleast four foodcourts, that I visited, a huge cinema theatre( I saw Fast & Furious - 3), bowling lanes, gym, aerobics centre, swimming pool, courts / tables for cricket, basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, tennis, - it was amazing. This is really a recommendation for anyone, who has a chance, to visit the campus. Some clicks from the campus are available at my flickr place.

The environment so positive that I had a great invitation to getup in the early morning at 6 and do a very calm learning - free of any noise and pollution. I haven't experienced such an atmosphere for the past two years and I wish I had this surrounding in Bangalore. Contrast to the Silicon Valley of India, this was campus probably doubled as a resort-cum-workplace for a few of the company. Having this environment will certainly stimulate the mind and make the body feel great.

Inspirational Speech

2006-11-09T12:11:00.000+05:30

Recently listened to this speech by US Senator Barack Obama. It reminded me of the Inauguration Speech by JFK. With great inspiration, persuasion, this speech was delivered with great passion and enthusiasm. Leave out the target & the platform - politics & election time - but the value and the presentation was really great. Not seeing the speech from a political viewpoint, but seeing it from a speech value, I liked the way, Barack had chosen the words, used rhetorics,tried to portray things in a very diplomatic way rather than attacking in a direct manner.

I like to hear it more - not for the way he supported John Kerry, but for the great variety he had portrayed in delivering the speech.

Boosting Solaris

2006-11-09T11:11:00.000+05:30

I was reading this interview focusing on multi-sided markets, recently. This one really struck me to think how Solaris can grow more - I'm an ardent fan of Solaris and I suppose that this great operating system is still not understood to a great extent.

A few things that Solaris can do to gain more importance and value ...

1. Since the source code is already open sourced, Sun should start o evalgalise more on the product and its features - it already has blogs and articles and some communities opened and moving on - what would be more better is call a meet of driver folks - give them a challenge to write drivers for more fancy peripherals - when this happens, there starts to be an adrenaline flow in the community to see what the OS offers - also, many companies would also try to leverage this to come and say that their product is being supported on Solaris. When products get supported on an OS and the OS supports the product, they go hand-in-hand to talk lot about the OS as well as the product.

2. Try to organise another event wherein a sort of hacking is allowed so that the OS code is hacked to run on embedded and other hardware plattforms other than being just a SPARC & x86 only product. When more platforms come in, people seem to get the idea of the vastness the OS can be on.

3. Try to engage the student community more - this is where we have the future developers - especially connect more with colleges/ Universities in countries like India & China where there is a huge base of software development. When students start to understand the OS in their college level, it becomes easy for them as future developers to hack the OS and bring it to a more better level.

Wow, love the one with Dtrace, ZFS, and etc.

What's in a name?

2006-11-05T09:41:00.000+05:30

Bangalore changes to Bengaluru. I suppose that the State Government wanted to show that it still had the control of the modernising city by changing the English name into its Kannada brethren. I think that changing a name alone in a city that itself is changing at a fast pace can inflict any change in the outlook as such. By changing a name, many of the Indian cities have shown that they still are the same old decaying rot what they were before they changed the name.

What needs to be changed is not the name but the attitude of the people in the city and the people who develop the so called vision for the city. One excellent example in India is the planning of the city of Chandigarh by Le Corbusier. Inspite of the city being brought into life more than a few decades ago, still the city is appreciated for the foresight the developer had planned for the city. Nice roads, well planned sectors, greenery, etc. add value to the city. In Bangalore, people try not to root cause the problem and get it done, but what they do is a temporary fix.

Yesterday, I was seeing an episode on National Geographic - don't recollect what series it was - but they were showing how in Boston, due to the increased traffic, a two lane bridge was being replaced by a six lane bridge without much distrubance to the traffic. If India can boast itself about the IT sector and the software industry and Bangalore by itself boasting as the Silicon Valley of India, why don't people with vision come and sit in the offices that need to set the vision? why have people who look only into changing the name of the city and not do anything.

I feel that the empowerment the Software industry had brought into Bangalore had together also brought in a lukewarm approach to the city in terms of the civic administration and politics. Will there be a change to bring Bangalore to the levels where Shanghai is going?

From Guest to Member

2006-10-31T14:42:00.000+05:30

Starting a Toastmasters Club is easy but keeping it with the spirit and the enthusiasm is very difficult and a real challenge. Toastmasters Clubs gain importance from the variety of the meetings and the cornucopia of members who tend to put in their efforts and energy to gain from the club. It is important that when a guest visits a club, they are taken through a proper path to get acquainted with other club members as well as made to convert into a regular club member in a way that has very smooth transitions.

As a new club, we faced this and here is the text of the mail that was sent over to the officers to make certain that each guest is treated properly and made into a club member...

What should we do when some guest converts into a club member?

This might be a simple protocol we might need to follow when someone joins our club - so that we do not miss out on any important tasks a new member should undergo....

1. VP-Membership:
- Fill the appln. form for the member.
- Include the sponsor member name - it will be beneficial to the individual member later.

2. Treasurer (Make Money !!!):
- Calculate the money the new member needs to pay.
- Pay the fees in TMI website.
- Update Club Roster at Twiki/Website.

3. VP - Membership:
-Add name to mailing list alias.
- Send welcome mail to the member cc-ing alias.

4. VP-Education:
- setup a mentor for the member.
- fix a date for the ice-breaker speech, preferably in the 2nd/3rd week after joining.
- provide a copy of the icebreaker speech.
- as the new member to do some roles assisting GE in the first 3-4 meetings. No major roles till then.

5. Secretary:
- Get details of email, phone number, birthday, anniversary, etc. from the new member.

6. President/Seargent-At-Arms:
- Introduces the new member to the club in the next meeting.

Hope this helps us in getting the new members on track with our club proceedings and we, ourselves have specific responsibilities by which we don't forget / do multiple times a specific task.

Innovation

2006-10-31T13:48:00.000+05:30

Last week, I had some time off to read a couple of papers. This time, I took to papers from Strategy+Business. I liked the kind of topics they cover and I was hooked on when I saw a paper from C.K.Prahalad. I had wanted to read his books, but quality time to read a book that needs a lot of thinking was well off my agenda, atleast now!

I grabbed the paper on 'The Innovation Sandbox' and there was a lot of zen in that. Strewn with examples of how lost cost innovation mattered, he was once again getting to the point of where innovation really made sense to make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Quoting the results from Jaifpur Foot, Narayana Hrudayala & Aravind Hospitals, he had given a new world on innovation and entrepreneurship that is coming along targetting at the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Even Tata's new concept of $20 hotels was discussed and it seems that all these really make up a great new world of innovation. The world is Flat - but it might be more better than being a flat. The World might be tilting towards business aimed at the pyramid concept.

This was the same thing being disussed by Netcore CEO, Rajesh Jain, in his interview with K@W. Here he states that the new mobile business in India is aimed at people who have the "mobile only" rather than the "mobile first" or "PC first" segment - makes sense.

I also had some time to go through the paper "Innovators without borders" paper - seems there will a flat world, but flat from a bird's eye, but it will not be flat when it comes to reality - atleast when you see software and IT being concentrated in India, engineering being concentrated in Germany and research being held up in US. - can we really call this flat?

Leadership

2006-10-29T08:23:00.000+05:30

Being a leader is very difficult. Many prepare so for being a leader. But when it comes to the ultimate - they being a leader - their preparation starts to show of - only a few, who have the natural skills embedded in their blood seem to come out of the dark and emerge as true leaders. Irrespective of what they lead, a leader needs some qualities - there are a lot of nice articles, nice books, etc. about leadership, but this one was nice and sweet summarising the important qualities a leader needs to have.

For me, currently leadership is something that I practice as a form of being my Toastmasters Club's President - well, this is really something that I admire to a lot great extent - a lot of factors in me have improved after becoming as a President - the art of communication, teamspirit, motivation, goal setting, etc.

Engineering Graduates

2006-10-29T07:46:00.000+05:30

Recently I was involved in a debate with my old college friends about an issue that got importance in a bad manner. Most of the engineering graduates in India come not from the creamy and famous IITs, RECs & IISc - but from a lot many private engineering colleges. With so many engineering colleges around the states & the country, there is a wide disparity in the level of graduates being churned out each year. This brings in a lot of commotion and helplessness when companies go in for recruitment - on and off campus.

With the number of engineering grads coming out each year, for a country like India, it is easy to handle any situation. But, the quality of the grads coming out is so pathetic that only one out of four of the passing grads are eligible for employment in the industry. If this is the case, India, inspite of boasting that it is the host for a lot of organizations, may inturn have to admit that it is not able to handle the needs of it's guests here.

Opera on Os X

2006-10-13T11:14:00.000+05:30

For the past year and above I had been using Firefox on my iBook. It had been a wonderful browser especially from the users point of view - tabbed browsing, customizable search engines, etc. But of recent, since, both me and my wife are logged on to the iBook simulatneously, there was a pretty noticeable memory hog. Inspite of my hard disk having around 2.5g of space free, Firefox running from both the logins easily consumed more than around 800M. This was pretty huge and also resulted in significant slowdown of the machine. Even the Os X's faster user switching seemed to go slow.

Switching from one application to another, even moving across different tabs on the browser was also painful given the memory hog. I'm a person who generally has atleast 6+ tabs open in a browser - this is the main reason I shifted to Firefox as I didn't want multiple windows open at the sametime - navigating between multiple windows is seriously a big task!!! Opening more tabs on the Firefox - especially with lots of images and lengthy webpages started to eat a lot into the VM and the disk space. Lot of thrashing also took place.

I didn't want to move out of Firefox given that it had a lot of features and also it had a nice pop-up blocker that I found very useful. But I didn't have more real estate on my iBook to expand the RAM - already my extra RAM slot was filled up with a 256M. Neither do I have an idea to upgrade my system to a recent config.( Honey, I need money!!!). I checked out few sites that gave a reasonable thumbs up to Camino and Opera.

I opted for Opera browser after going through the comparisons. I downloaded the latest Opera 9 for Os x and started using it from today morning. It seems sleek, it starts faster than a Firefox. Lot of customization was also available. I liked the graceful integration of widgets in the browser - but i think it needs to grow up significantly if it has to catch up with Tiger's Dashboard widgets / Yahoo widgets. Also, the ability to open links in background tab is a cool feature. The best I liked was adding search engines and the mouse gestures.

To add a search engine (similar to Firefox integrated search), you go to any site that has a search box, ctrl-right click inside the search box and you have the option to add a search engine. This seems to be a great idea compared to what firefox offered - you have to go to the extensions website to get your search engine on to your system. Mouse gestures was cool - but I haven't yet explored the idea fully.

Day one was great - but I had to wait & see if I can go with Opera / have to revery back to Firefox.

Tirupathi & Kalahasthi

2006-10-08T17:50:00.001+05:30

Revisiting my blog after a while - almost a month, to be precise ....

Deadlines at work as well as time spent on doing an update of my resume and doing some job hunt took some toll out of my blogging time. Also, on the personal front, I managed to sneek in some time to make a visit to Tirupathi and Kalahasti with my wife.

The only aim for the travel is to perform the Rahu-Ketu Sarpa nivarana pooja at Kalahasthi - I could have very well avoided this, but pressure from both sides of Gen W (Gen X - 1) was increasing and had to do the pooja for their satisfaction atleast. And since Tirupathi is near to the place, we decided to take a trip there also to have a rendezvous with Mr. Balaji.

We got the tickets from ITDC, but the bus for our trip was provided by APTDC. The bus started from the Race Course Road office, Bangalore at around 9.50 pm - the scheduled bus time was 10 pm - but since we were the last to come in, they didn't wait for the specified time and they started the bus - this was really a positive appreciation on the organizers part.

The bus was not good - a few mosquitoes even tasted us - we were a bit worried with the vast spread of chikungunya & dengue in various parts of India. Luckily we didn't get one for free!!! The bus was not that comfortable. Inspite of a 30 minute break at 11 for dinner, the driver landed us at Tirupathi at around 3.45 in the morning. Half asleep, we checked into the hotel of APTDC. The rooms were neat and had three cots - we had just enough time to stretch our legs, take bath and get ready. Great that they provided nice hot water for the bath, else it would have been a bit difficult to take a cold shower at 4 in the morning.

Next, we were taken to Tiruchanoor to the Alamelu Manga Temple. We were told that we will be taken for a special seva after the morning abhishekam. but inspite of that, we had to wait in the queue for about 2 hours before we were let into the sanctum sanctorum together with people from other queues. It was totally frustrating to wait for two hours without any worthwhile task and more frustrating was the fact that we did not even have a proper rest before starting to the temple - I think the organizers have to work on this time management to provide a more satisfactory experience to the tourists.

After the darshan at the temple, we were taken to the TTD's Sreenivasam Complex at Tirupathi for our breakfast. Unfortunately, there was only one restuarant and that too we had to have a self-service for our food. This was totally a ridiculous approach given the fact that there is a lot of visitors / tourists coming to Tirupathi staying at the complex. I think the APTDC / TTD have to look into this for a better approach to the tourists. But, inspite of the less choice of food, the taste was really good.

After the breakfast, we had a change of bus - only specially designed 'ghat eligible' buses (apart from cars, jeeps, etc.) were allowed over the ghat route to Tirumala. After reaching Tirumala after a solid 45 minute+ journey, we were asked to deposit our electronic items at a shop that had some sort of an understanding with the tourist organizers. After that, people, who were interested to tonsure their head were taken to the place for the same.

Generally, it is the Kalyana Kata, where the main tonsuring takes place. But, a heavy rush is generally prevalent there and hence we were taken to another small - but not so neat place. After having my hair tonsured and a post-tonsure bath, we joined the rest of the batch to get into the temple. Since the package cost also included a Rs.100/- darshan ticket, we stayed in the queue for only about a hour-and-half to get the darshan of the opulent Balaji. During the stay in line, we had a chat with some other devotees in the free darshan line. It was shocking to hear that they had come to the temple at 9 pm the previous day and they were told that they would be having the darshan only at around 9 pm tonight. But, luckily, they had a darshan almost at the same time like us - around 11.30 am.

Finishing the darshan, we were taken once again through the ghat route to Tiurpathi for our lunch at the same place. Since me & my wife had plans of going to Kalahasthi and the package did not include that, we took a break from the package.

We had thoughts of booking a room for the night at Sreenivasam and then visiting Kalahasthi the next day morning, but the 30-minute or so wait at the booking counter at Sreenivasam, made us change our plans. We checked in our locked luggage in the cloak room over there, booked the tickets for a Volvo bus to Bangalore and proceeded to have our lunch, get refreshed a bit and then start to Kalahasthi in the evening. The sun was scorching hot and even walking the half -a-kilometer distance from Sreenivasam to the bus stand was very tiring and sweating. Getting to Kalahasthi was by a town bus from Tirupati. It was a solid 45 mintue journey in the hot sun, in a crowded bus, stopping at a lot of places en route, we reached Kalahasti at around 5.45 pm.

We waited for a few mintues for getting the pooja tickets. There are three categories of tickets - Rs.250/-, Rs. 500/- & Rs. 1000/-. The least one was done in a batch and only one priest would be presiding over the whole batch and then following the pooja, we would be allowed for a free darshan of the deities. The next level had the option that the pooja was performed in a separate hall and then the devotees allowed a special darshan and also given a set of prasadham that included some cloth material and some ladu & vada. The next level had the special service - the pooja was conducted inside the main temple premises with a separate priest for each of the ticket purchasers and also the special priveleges of darshan and prashadham (as the Rs.500/-) was also applicable.

The pooja was almost like a timetable followed procedure. The pooja tickets included a bag of pooja items that included three coconuts, a few betel leaves, some flowers, a pair of small cloth strips - one in red and the other in black, and small idols of Rahu, Ketu. The notice boards at the ticket counter specifically said that there was no need to buy any additional pooja items. But actually, we had to get a bag of lotus flowers, Vilvam leaves and a pair of lamps.

The pooja took only 30 mintues followed by the darshan of the main deities at the temple. Following the darshan, we took a bus to Tirupathi and reached Sreenivasam at around 8.45 pm. Once again, we didn't have a choice for our dinner, but the APSTDC restuarant. Finishing the dinner, we had enough time to catch the Volvo to Bangalore starting at 10.45 from there amd reaching the garden city at around 4 in the morning!!!

Pepping up the club ....

2006-09-13T16:31:00.000+05:30

When starting a Toastmasters Club, there is a lot of enthusiasm. But on the run, people tend to move off because of personal reasons, professional overload and more often people really find it challenging. Only few of the members strive to overcome the challenge. Especially with a new club, there is none who is experienced and like what companies complain about, attrition starts to take the hold.

Moreover, like any startup, a new club also needs to define what it expects out of its members. For many giving 10 speeches would mean getting a CTM/CC. But apart from the 10 speeches, there is a lot of meaning to a CTM certification. Similarly, when someone comes and says that they have got a Ph.D., it implies a lot - a mind for striving to get a solution to the problem, ways to reserach, ways to propse a problem, means to identify the latest technologies for the problem, ability to write and present their research topic, patience, etc.

In a new club, even after a few successful meetings, there are lot of misunderstandings in picture and some take giving speeches/evaluations to be for the namesake. I have seen members not coming back when they were suggested to repeat the speech and this had been evaluated based on the speech objectives suggested by TMI. This clearly shows an incapable mind to take a feedback.

Even after 40 meetings, as VP-Ed., I faced quite similar problems in my club. Being a corporate club, had its own unique pros and cons. I wanted to express the same and hence penned the following ....

It has been 40 weeks of interaction among us in terms of a platform called "Toastmasters". I think it is time that we revisit the thought why we meet every week for about 90 minutes and find out where we have improved and where we need improvement. The audience of this mail includes everyone on the alias and so I'm also the target of the subject!!!

(Toastmasters should not apologize!!! ... but I apologize for this long mail flooding your inboxes ...)

Let us follow the Sandwich approach of feedback on the club (one great lesson from Toastmasters)....

There has been a significant increase in the variety of the topics selected - both for the speeches and the topics sessions. Some Toastmasters bring in humour wherever and whenever necessary and correlate the topic of the day to the Toastmasters event - this brings in more enthusiasm and liveliness for the meetings. The choice of questions in the topics sessions have improved a lot. This enables us to think on our feet and our urge to fit in the word of the day in our impromptu talk gives more work to our brains.

Protocols are an important feature in the TM meetings. The handshake protocol as well as addressing a person with their appropriate roles (during that meeting) and calling them appropriately (as Mr., Madam, etc.) have given the importance to the need for a formal mode of addressing during the meetings. All these protocols show how well we adhere to a formal meeting - great job and we have to keep up this work!!!

Having a small break before giving out the evaluations is a small step. But speakers and evaluators utilising that short break to understand the speech better and its correspondence to the speech objectives is a great task that needs appreciation. Giving an evaluation that is too critical / giving a plain vanilla evaluation is not good for the speaker as well as the evaluator and the club as a whole. Rather than providing such an evaluation, if ALL the evaluators discuss with the speaker before giving an evaluation and also provide an evaluation that is in line with the objectives of the speech, it will be a great bonus for everyone in the meeting to know how the speech corresponded with the objectives of the project. PLEASE never say that everything is perfect. As an evaluator if you can give any suggestion to the speaker by making the good speech into a better one, you are doing justice to your role.

Coming to the speeches, many of us lack the preparation and the enthusiasm to give a speech. Many speakers have given wonderful speeches earlier but have faltered in their later speeches. There may be many reasons for providing not such a wonderful speech, but with proper preparation and rehearsal, any speech can be delivered with more zeal and enthusiasm during the meetings. This will make the meetings as well as the club a very lively place to be in.

Next is the important feature of keeping our club going - members and their attendance. Many members turn in only to give their speeches and disappear before they are ready for their next speech. This is strictly not a welcome feature. We are in a club to help each other grow and Toastmasters is not about giving speeches alone - but a potpourri of various other skills like Leadership, Time Management, Evaluations, etc. Also, with a club roster strength of 25, only the regular faces of 15 or so turn for the meetings. Remember TM is not like other communication/leadership programs - you improve only if you participate and provide enthusiasm during the meetings. Each speaker - whether he/she gives a prepared speech/impromptu talk, it is the responsibility of everyone of our members to be present during that time, analyse the speaker and the speech and provide constructive feedback. This is how we can improve individually and as a club.

Taking up roles is also another area where we lack enthusiasm. Please DO NOT consider taking roles as a burden. This is a chance to improve yourself in that role. You can learn swimming only if you are in water - similarly you can benchmark yourself only if you take a role. Try to take big roles - like TM of the day, Topics master of the day, General Evaluator - these give you more opportunity to talk before an audience as well as give you a platform to put across your thoughts and ideas to the audience.

A skill that TM meetings teach us is Time Management. Hardly have we seen meetings start and end on time, especially recently. We need to improve on this and make certain that we do not miss out on an important skill that TM adds to our skills portfolio. If there is a feeling about changing the timings during the meeting, please contact the VP-ed so that it can be accommodated, if applicable.

Finally to conclude, at 40, we are young as a club, but we have the great potential to be a great club in the near future. To make it to that level, we need to raise the bar - give interesting and lively speeches, provide better constructive evaluations, bring in more enthusiasm in the meetings, take different and challenging roles but have variety and the formalness of the meetings. I'm certain that we can make this club achieve great success if WE, as a team, do our club and every other member justice to their being a Toastmaster.

Noise free zone

2006-09-10T11:49:00.001+05:30

A couple of days ago, I was at the Agadi Hospital in Bangalore to assist a near and dear in an OPD case. I was waiting outside the Operation Theatre waiting for the results of the diagnosis. One of the outer doors of the Operation Theatre was removed to be worked on. This almost allowed a free passage for noises and any sound outside to be transmitted without any hindrance to the patient and the diagnostic table on the other side of the inner door. It was not sound proof as I could easily percieve from the wooden door with it's own creeks as the sides.

When I was waiting outside for about 30 mins, I could see the facility people coming up and repairing the door. Atleast they should have had the consideration to move the door down, get the bolts and nuts fixed, basically get it assembled fully, in order to fix it with a move onto the hinges on the fixture. But, they almost spent quite sometime trying to show their muscle prowess in driving the nails and screwing the bolts down the wooden door. A few times, the assistant in the operation theatre also came to check out what was happening. But inspite of this, even with the specialist inside the diagnostic centre, the sound was still on with the guys trying to show their presence in fixing the door.

The other half, the working half, of the operation door ironically had a "This is a noise free zone" sticker. But, like all Indian posters/boards/banners, it didn't make any sense. On the other side of the walkway was the ICU and even that should have been affected by the noise.

During my waiting period, there was also a funny incident where two nice looking -English-fluent- Bangalore babes came to see someone in the ICU. The ICU had a notice board outside specifying that the shoes/any footwear be removed while going inside. But, inspite of the suggestion and a few footwear lying outside, the girls went in and came after a sweet 15 mins. Like what they say in Tamil - "you do a Surya namaskar after you become blind", the girls started to talk, adding to the already existing noise, that they should have left the footwear outside before they had to move in.

I'm not certain why people do all th havoc and then start to repent. Well, English has a nice word for this - "Sorry" - Why don't you think "Prevention is better than cure" - after all if you can say sorry and talk/write big apologies, why don't you try to prevent the bad thing first rather than bringing all the nicities later?

Indian News Channels

2006-09-03T16:27:00.000+05:30

It had been almost two weeks since I had blogged. More work at office and also a visit to my hot and dry native place took time off from visiting the net. I had been watching a few of the new Indian news channels lately - they have started to show a lot of exclusive news. But, on close inspection, it seems that the news is just been sold to the channel or only being covered by that particular channel.

I was seeing a channel covering the accident at Almatti dam, but another not even giving any clue to the accident. Also, the channel was stating that they had the exclusive right to bring in the news from the accident site. I'm actually bewildered how an exclusive access about an accident could be in place - after news channels rush to a place to cover the accident/mishap. From where did the only news channel get the 'exclusive' access?

This is just an example about the news coverage provided by these channels. Not only this shows the priority shown by only a few channels to a few news.

Another type of show that irritates me nowadays, is the interview based shows - they try to provoke the personality being interviewed to lose their temper and in the result state that the interviewer was 'so shrewd' enough to nail down the personality. The more efficient, delicate and diplomatic form of interviews have lost their place in this current war on news coverage and interviews.

Well, you don't have much of choice if you want to know about Indian news. But, I still try to rely on BBC for international news, but not CNN/Fox!!!

Worth the title

2006-08-22T10:31:00.000+05:30

When a new Toastmasters Club is in place, there are usual errs and mistakes. All the  new members are in the same boat - they need to improve their communication skills.

But, the new members might not know the efforts needed to be put in to achieve success. For some of the members, it seems that if they get a CTM (or CC) it is a great successful step. But personally I feel that getting any degree, not only in Toastmasters, but any degree - education-wise, sports, arts, etc, the person should demonstrate that the degree is worth being conferred on the person. Getting a degree  just by passing exams and reading books is not worth a penny. Demonstrate your abilities that you have achieved after obtaining the degree and this is the true worth of the qualification.

Also, on various occasions, people are shy to come forward to know what is really in store for them. To encourage such members to give their speeches and also to show them a roadmap of how the prepared speeches in Toastmasters ought to be, I decided to play on the logisitics used in getting the members come forward and deliver their speeches. This is what I wanted to say to my fellow club members as VP-Education...

Hello all,

 Most of the members have completed their 2nd speech (read project) and some are ready to give their next. In this regard, i'll be going ahead and doing the allotment of project slots on a random basis. I would like to bring to your  attention some of the factors that will be important regarding the projects...

1. Selecting a topic will become difficult if you are going to give your  project at a later time - probably one of the other members would have delivered a project on the same and you have to present it in a better manner to attract the audience attention - So, rush up to book your slots. If you are ready, you can even finish all your remaining projects in consecutive weeks!!!

2. Some members are ready with their next proejct and are waiting to deliver their project - so if you are not ready to give your project at the alloted date, pl. let me know in advance so that I can get in speakers who have their projects ready.

3. Each of the projects should meet the objectives given in the CTM manual. Only some topics will be relevant to some projects. Below are the  objectives of each of the projects and I would suggest that you choose your topic in a manner that it achieves a maximum correlation with the objectives of the project you would be delivering.

Speakers who can be backup speakers, pl. mail me INDIVIDUALLY so that I can suggest your name to the TM of the day, in case of a dropout of a speaker.


Speech number 1 - The ice breaker (timed at 4-6 minutes)
* To begin speaking before an audience
* To discover speaking skills you already have and skills that need some attention

Speech number 2- Organize your speech (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* To select an appropriate outline which allows listeners to easily follow and understand your speech
* Make your message clear, with supporting material directly contributing to that message
* Use appropriate transitions when moving from one idea to another
* Create a strong opening and conclusion

Speech number 3 - Get to the point (timed at 5-7minutes)
* Select a speech topic and determine its general and specific purposes
* Organise the speech in a manner that best achieves those purposes
* Project sincerity and conviction and control any nervousness you may feel
* Strive not to use notes

Speech number 4 - How to say it (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Select the right words and sentence structure to communicate your ideas clearly, accurately and vividly
* Use rhetorical devices to enhance and emphasise ideas
* Eliminate jargon and unnecessary words and use correct grammar

Speech number 5 - Your body speaks (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Use stance, movement, gestures, facial expressions and eye contact to express your message and achieve your speech's purpose
* Make your body language smooth and natural

Speech number 6 - Vocal variety (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Use voice volume, pitch, rate and quality to reflect and add meaning and interest to your message
* Use pauses to enhance your message
* Use vocal variety smoothly and naturally

Speech number 7 - Research your topic (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Collect information about your topic from numerous sources
* Carefully support your points and opinions with specific facts, examples and illustrates gathered through research

Speech number 8 - Get comfortable with visual aids (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Select visual aids that are appropriate for your message and the audience
* Use visual aids correctly with ease and confidence

Speech number 9 - Persuade with power (timed at 5-7 minutes)
* Persuade listeners to adopt your viewpoint or ideas or to take some action
* Appeal to the audience's interest
* Use logic and emotion to support your position
* Avoid using notes

Speech number 10 - Inspire your audience (timed at 8 to 10 minutes)
* To inspire the audience by appealing to noble motives and challenging the audience to achieve a higher level of beliefs or achievement
* Appeal to the the audience's needs and emotions, using stories,
anecdotes and quotes to add drama

Israel & US

2006-08-19T11:59:00.000+05:30

My colleague, Alok, recently pointed me to the If Americans Knew site. The site contains a doc detailing the start of the Palestine - Israel conflict. A good read, and it gives a lot of details about the conflict, accompanied by a lot of quotes by various authors and experts in the field. I personally, felt it as a good eye-opener, irrespective of the various critics the site and the document have.

Despite the document written by Jews, there is still condemnation about the document raising questions about the facts given by it. Inspite of the critics, I think, anyone interested should get hold of the booklet to know what is really happening there. I suppose that the support of US towards Israel might change the scales in favour of Israel, but the references in the document, still would give a lot of indications of what happened in the early years when the conflict actually came to life.

Most of today's news are censored and biased and what we come to know about the conflict as a news is what the news reporter, the news channel and the country as such would like to filter and provide us. We are not certain if we get the gist of the extract, but it is how you see it through their lens.

The origin of the conflict also shows a similarity to the conflict in Sri Lanka. The Jews claim the right to the state of Israel based on the fact of their ancestoral home. In Sri Lanka, it is a bit more - no ancestors and heredity, but a mere presence of the Tamils there have started their freedome movement.

Recently in Toastmasters meeting I had a chance to talk about freedom and I think that freedom is not only struggle - but if one has a freedom of thought, that gives freedom in every sense. This what I had on freedom ......

Dear Toastmasters, for many of us, freedom is the ability to do whatever we want, eat whatever we like, talk whatever we want to say and move about everywhere we want to go.

It is mostly the desire of want without any oppression/suppression that defines freedom. But freedom, as I personally see it, is a capacity of our mind. For an year old kid, freedom is the ability to move to any corner of the house without being scolded, for a seven year old, freedom is the ability to play whatever game he/she wants to without being questioned by parents, for a 12 year old, freedom is the state where they can see a movie/read a book according to their taste, for a 20 year old, it is the ability to choose a partner according to his/her state without being questioned and so on and so forth.

Similarly, according to the work we are in and the work we do, freedom gets defined. For an engineer, it is the ability to do a project as he sees it, for a carpenter it is the ability to use as much wood as possible to get a good furniture so on and so forth.

Finally, when it comes to a leader, freedom is the ability to put forward his thoughts and execute it without anyone else control. Freedom falls back to liberty - the ability to express yourself freely and without anyone to oppose / control / question your actions. Still, for most of us, it the actions and the suppression of actions that define the concept of freedom. But with the world evolving, I see freedom not as the suppression of actions, but the suppression of ideas and thoughts.

In today's world, if your ideas can transcend boundaries, then you are free. With the digital revolution, freedom has gained new insights. Now you can write whatever you want and that is why we have around 5 million blogs - the storehouses of freedoms - the freedom to think, the freedom to express, the freedom to write and the freedom to say. The importance blogs have achieved in the current state of world is tremendous. Blogs have turned into free press. With Blogs, we can see what is happening in the heartland of the Israel-Palestine conflict without any censorship, we can hear what a CEO thinks firsthand about the company and the industry.

Lalbagh Flower Show

2006-08-15T14:40:00.000+05:30

Bangalore does not offer much of a relaxing place compared to other cities. Most of the weekends are spent in shopping, visiting malls and restuarants. Getting fresh air is tough and seeing a smokeless zone is becoming a very costly affair. Trying to get away from pollution and population is a big record in Bangalore. Even on I-Day, there is no freedom from the rush of vehicles on road and independence from the smoke they emit.

But, unlike other cities, Bangalore offers a lot of parks to bring down the smoke and the air hazards they pose. These green patches in the city are a gift and with the overwhelming population of hte city, they have become the haven for a significant number of people to spend relaxing times away from the haphazard traffic - atleast you get sometime to admire nature, breath fresh air and get rejuvenated by nature.

Lalbagh and Cubbon Park are well known green spots in the day-by-day decaying city.

The I-Day Flower Show at Lalbagh Park this time also took place inspite of the heavy and huge terrorist attack-warnings. To beat the traffic out in the park, me & my wife took to the Glass House early in the morning. There were a lot of exhibits and already prizes announced. HAL had a cornucopia of exhibits - the chrysanthemums, ferns were great. Also, for the first time I was able to see a King Protea. The central exhibit of a globe with roses was great.

Some photos that I shot at the event ..... I was not very satisfied with my new camera, expecially when I wanted to take macro shots of flowers. :(

Grand Master

2006-08-15T13:54:00.000+05:30

In college and in school, I used to be a very ardent fan(atic) of participating and conducting quizzes. But while onto US for my MS, I had missed this fervor and enthusiasm solely, because I found a very few quiz programs conducted (compared to that in India) and not much of people who came there for studies did really have the interest to explore this field.

.... Thus, a nice ascending summit started to saturate - but still, whenever I found time, I used to pen some quiz questions, see the Millionaire (hope my dreams on becoming one does become one!!!), KBC (the Indian Millionaire) and browse through various sites to get and grasp knowledge of the same.

With quiz, also comes 20Q(uestions) - this is a very intelligent game and I was very tactical in getting the questions and trying to figure out hte personality/place/.

Recently on Vijay TV, I started to see the GrandMaster show that was a more 'better' version of the 20Q. I say more better as I find that the stage setting and the guy ('GrandMaster') who asks the question are good. But I certainly don't understand why you need a 'tall and elegant' Gayathri Jayaram to host the show. Not only does she not know more in GK, she also kills the beauty of the spoken Tamil Language - wish they take her off and entertain a few more participants on the show.

Also, more intriguing is the 'is the personality approved?' part - I wonder that if anyone comes for a challenge, they should be able to handle any Tom, Dick or Harry and not restrict it to the famous in the field.

Web IMs

2006-08-14T19:43:00.000+05:30

I work on a Sunray at office with Solaris as the OS. Most of the time, I have trouble getting a good Messaging client to work on Solaris. I have to use the inbuilt Gaim with Solaris and try to configure it to work, or the worst case, have to get a decent application client to get it installed on Solaris and then start to communicate. At home, also, I have problems, but at a lesser scale - I have Os X. Recently, I found the web based IM sites .... koolim and meebo. I haven't explored both of these much, but for the first try, i could get intomy different accounts from these site .... good start, I suppose - but this was on my ibook at home - at office, I have yet to explore and find which one works - especially with the proxy and other settings configured. - but one great idea i liked is the need to avoid downloading any specific IM client application to the box you work and then use it - this is really a gift when, you work on different OSes at different times, but still want to be connected to your friends !

One request to both the sites ... try to include an interface for Skype also :)

Hungry?

2006-08-10T20:07:00.000+05:30

Came across this site ... Hungry bangalore - seems like a nice venture - atleast, it will be a good one considering the state of bangalore and the appetite people have here.
With the IT boom (or the bubble?) becoming big and big, people only think about enjoying and most of the homes have their gas cylinders and stoves covered by cobwebs. One of my friends mentioned that his cousin & his wife actually celebrated a party when their gas cylinder got over after almost 3 years :)

On Fridays, all the restuarants in Bangalore get filled so quickly, that even the worst are hard to get :)

Hope this venture goes good ... I haven't yet tried ordering from them, but seems they are adding restuarants very fast - I saw only a few on my earlier visit a couple of weeks back, but now I find that the number of choices have increased.
I hope the restuarants can handle the online order, considering the fact how lazy Bangalore is and how net-savvy the Bangloreans are :)

Toastmasters

Bangalore

Nice Puzzle

2006-08-08T17:25:00.000+05:30

Came across this post on some orkut community ...

I don't vouch for the genuity of the disclaimer of the puzzle, but anyways, it is really a nice one ....

Einstein said 98% of the people in the world cannot solve the quiz. Are you among the other 2%?

FACTS

1. There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.

2. In each house lives a person with a different nationality.

3. These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.

4. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.

2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.

3. The Dane drinks tea.

4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.

5. The green house owner drinks coffee.

6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.

7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.

8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.

9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.

10. The man who smokes blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.

11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.

12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.

13. The German smokes Prince.

14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue House.

15. The man who smokes blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

THE QUESTION IS....WHO KEEPS FISH?

I managed to solve this in abt 30 mins - don't know where it would lie on the scale, considering the time limit :)

Toastmasters

Puzzles

Meetings Quality

2006-08-08T17:10:00.000+05:30

When a TM club is started, there is great enthusiasm, but if the spirit is not kept steaming, members will wane, meetings will loose life and the club will start to go into doom. When the club started at my company, there were a lot of people who came forward. But as usual, with the corporate deadlines hanging over our head like a Damocles' Sword, and the challenge posed by Toastmasters, people started to drop out.
A few even thought that being of part of TM is like being part of a class, where you get automatically promoted. Seems they got the message wrong ... Sorry guys, there is no free lunch!!! You practise to improve in Toastmasters - that is why I like it very much. For people who are not greatly motivated, attending a class / course on public speaking for a few days/ weeks really does not prove good unless and until you practise it - well, here is where Toastmasters kicks in ... you improve yourself, even if it is in small steps, by continuously getting exposed to the TM meetings and getting the small tidbits of feedback you get from various members. There is continuous evaluation from the moment a TM meeting starts till it ends.

To make people understand the nature of Toastmasters and to get them to know how they can thrive in Toastmasters, I penned this following mail ...

Hi all,
It is around two months since we started the Toastmasters Club here.It is a great step taken by all
of us towards improving our communication skills. With great enthusiasm put in by every member, we could see the improvement in the speeches and soft skills of the speakers.

But I suppose that we have taken just the first few steps towards achieving to be a better speaker. Toastmasters is __NOT__ about getting a certficate (CTM/ATM/etc.) but it is about improving our skills over time and Toastmasters club provide the board neccessary for our improvement. Hence it is neccessary that we produce good quality speeches and good evaluations.

Over the time frame of our club, there has been a large variation in the quality of speeches. Some speeches were impeccable and others were not that interesting. It is time that we focus on our speeches. Getting a CTM without even getting atleast 2-3 best speakers award is not worth
mentioning. We should focus on speeches that utilise the time alloted effectively and efficiently to deliver the message to the audience.

Few things that we need to keep in mind while delivering/ preparing a speech are:

1. Focus on a good opening to capture the audience attention.
2. Have a nice structured body for the speech - have only 3-4 strong points that will make the audience remembers what you talked about in your speech.
3. For each of the points in your speech body, add additional material to get the point stronger into the audience' mind.
4. Have a nice closing to put emphasis on what your have talked about in your speech for the past few minutes.
5. In the body of the speech, don't try to jump back and forth from one point to another.
6. Do seamless transitions from one part of your speech to another.
7. Put in tonal variety and appropriate body language.
8. __PREPARE AND REHEARSE YOUR SPEECH__
9. Put up a smile before you start your speech.
10. Concentrate on your grammar.

As important as speeches are to Toastmasters meeting, so are evaluations.

Only if we give crisp, neat and to-the point evaluations, the quality of the speaker and the club will improve.

Here are a few links to giving effective evaluation, I would like all of you to go through them and try to provide better evalautions.

http://tritt.bizland.com/tc_berne/evaluate/index.htm
http://www.d26toastmasters.org/better-evaluations.php
http://www.parramattatm.org.au/pdfs/elizeval.PDF
http://www.toastmasters-sa.org.za/beth/downloads/eval0001.ppt
http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/toastmaster/EVALUATE.pdf

Bottomline, give evaluations that are effective that make the speaker bring him to the podium for a better speech.

Note to evaluators: You __MUST__ use your 2-3 minutes alloted time to give your effective evaluation.

To bring into effect the quality of speeches and the evaluations, once the icebreaker speeches are over, all the speeches and evaluations will be strictly monitored for their quality and speeches may be required to be repeated if they are not upto their level.

I would also like to put emphasis on the point that whoever gives a speech/evalaution/ does a role in a TM meeting, please do come prepared and do not commit mistakes on your part during the meeting.

I would also encourage everyone of you to attend other Toastmaster Clubs' meetings - this is a great oppurtunity to see how the clubs function and know about the quality of speeches they deliver.

As I mentioned earlier, we have taken just the first few steps. I would encourage everyone of you to put in your efforts to deliver quality speeches and evaluations and make each one of us and the club a great success.

Toastmasters

Toastmasters

Robert's Rules

2006-08-07T16:55:00.000+05:30

Here is the next post I sent to my club members about the need and importance of using good parliamentary procedures during the club meetings .....

Hi all,
The TM meetings follow the Robert's Rule of parlimentary procedures.These  set of rules lay forward the ettiquettes that have to be followed in the meeting - which results in the meeting being a formal and a professional one. Some of the rules are related to how you vote, how you interrupt a speaker, how you give your feedback, how you adjourn the meetings, etc. It is really imporatnt that we follow these rules (atleast start implementing the rules in a step-by-step fashion) and make certain that the meetings are formal and enthusisastic.

The online version for the rules are available at:

http://www.rulesonline.com/start.html

Toastmasters

Toastmasters

US & Castro

2006-08-05T15:49:00.000+05:30

Recently read an article on Castro and the various spoiled assination attempts on the leader. It would be a very pathetic scene fro the US considering that it had not got an upperhand in removing Castro over these long years. Nice article ... wish they release the film soon - would love to see it .... This true story almost seems like the case where the movie hero is tried to be got rid of, but finally after all the various hardships the hero surfaces again - that too without any scratches/ blood spills - Castro's story would be great gift for any of the Indian films - especially for Super Star!!!

Thanks to Hindu for getting the article from Guardian and publishing it. Nice joke to end the article, btw.

Toastmasters

News

Wild Beauty

2006-08-04T15:26:00.000+05:30

As I have already posted quite a number of posts in a very short time, I'll leave you now with a picture I treasure a lot ....

With my team (I'm still in the same team and the same company even after about 2 years!!!), I had gone to Deverabetta on a trek. Just on the return from the trek, I sighted this flower and clicked it, not even wondering if it got focused properly! Voila, it was a great shot - I still wonder if I had actually focussed on the flower to take the shot ...

I had not got my current Evolt-500 then. I was using a Konika Minolta Dimage Z1. I liked the camera very much except that it was bulky and you could not slip it inot your pockets like what most others can.... Well, go for a 10X lens, then you should not be ashamed to carry your camera in a separate bag and not hide it inside your pocket!

Toastmasters

Photography

First Mail .....

2006-08-04T15:17:00.000+05:30

This was my first major posting to the club members ... making certain that the club has a good quality in its members & meetings is a pivotal point of any TM meetings. .... And in a TM Club, the VP-Education is the person who makes certain that the meetings are great. Meetings are the place to showcase the talent the club has!

Just go through the mail ...

Hi all,
As a VP(Ed.) it is my duty to make sure that the Toastmasters meetings run properly and that every member has oppurtunities to develop his/her communication skills, time management, evaluation skills, etc.

In this regard, I would like to know your feedback / suggestions on how the meetings can be run - if there are any improvements required etc.

I would like your answer for these following questions:

1. Do you like the current format of the meetings conducted?

2. Is there any specific area you want to focus on to improve any of your skills?

3. Do you get enough oppurtunity to talk during meetings?

4. What other resources do you need to improve your skills?

5. Any other factors on how we can improve our meetings and also our softskills.

FYI, there is an idea to form subcomittees for each of the roles that we have during the meetings. We will have 3 members in each of the subcommittees and they form the ground rules on how that role helper has to present himself / herself during the meetings.
After forming the ground rules, any member who is new to that role can get the help from the sub committee members on how to do that role in a much satisfying manner during the meetings.
By having these subcomittees in place, we can avoid repeating any mistakes and also get to know more on what a role helper's responsibility is.

I would encourage all of you to be part of atleast one subcommittee.

The various roles we need to focus are:

1. Toastmaster of the day.
2. Table Topics master of the day.
3. General Evaluator
4. Timer
5. Speech Evaluator
6. Ah-Counter/Posture Bell operator
7. PLG
8. Ballot Counter/Listener's Question
9. Jokemaster of the day.

If you are interested in being part of a sub committee, pl. let VP - Memb. know about that.

Reg the feedback, pl. send your replies only to me and don't flood others' inboxes.

Feedbacks are an important part of any Toastmasters meeting and this is what I personally liked in the Toastmasters. Whenever I see management people, I hate them to the core ... because whatever feedback you give to them goes into trash - but still they need feedback. In TM meetings, most of the feedback obtained are implemented and I think that is also due to the organisation of the club - no one is forced - it is a voluntary and non-profit organisation. People join there to improve their skills.

Toastmasters

Toastmasters

Toastmasters

2006-08-04T14:11:00.000+05:30

Here's what I wanted to write more about - Toastmasters. I know that this is a very famous and worthy organisation to be in if you want to improve your communication skills. I had been involved with TM for sometime - about two years - but, as many say, "Opening a Toastmasters Club is easy but keeping it open is tough". I had been feeling the challenge day by day with the Club I'm in. Atleast for a few more posts, I'll keep talking about the various mails I had been posting to my club on keeping the club moving ....

..... A few more stuff about my link with TM .... I started attending a TM club when I was in my last semester of MS program. I found it very needed as I had fumbled and feared about presenting a paper and my thesis earlier. Believe me, I had worried more about these presentations compared to my thesis report / the writing of the paper.

After a short six month stint there, I moved back to India and joined the ocean of IT professionals in Bangalore. But still I thought I wanted to get the TM movement going in me. I didn't have an idea about the community clubs in Bangalore and hence I started to work on opening a Toastmasters Club in my company.

Being a corporate environment, the TM club has its own challenges .... this is where my mails come in .... let me start with a few of them from my next posting .....

Toastmasters

Toastmasters

startup

2006-08-04T13:58:00.000+05:30

I had been taking quite sometime to get into this blogging arena - some procastination and some fear to xpose myself!!! Anyhow, after all the trepidations, I'm here. Yet another blogger (YAB) right? - might be - but I'll also try to contribute to some diskspace, some bandwidth, some discussions, etc. on the net - why should I be silent when I can make some slight moves here & there? - After all, it is a free world right?

About me ... I'm an engineer, working on some system level stuff ... wait, this is no place for tech stuff unless it is very important - well, my new passion is Toastmasters and public speaking as well as trying hands at photography with my recent Olympus evolt-500 DSLR.

Toastmasters