WE

One really doesn’t understand the true meaning of the word WE unless he start to work under a boss who happens to be a manager in the true sense.

Every time when the boss comes from a high level management meeting, he usually starts sharing the information about an upcoming submission. The statement that comes out expresses the determination to succeed while evoking a considerable amount of team spirit. “We will have to submit it tomorrow… come hell or high waters!” … a dialogue many people are accustomed to!

It doesn’t take much longer to discover that this particular “WE” is correctly spelt “Y-O-U”.

A decade back the parting speech used to be “don’t forget to place it on my desk before you go home today (read late night)”. Today it has changed to “do remember to email it to me as soon as you are done”.

Good thing about all this is that I am learning the trick of the trade and hope one day soon enough I will master the correct spelling of this magic word ....... "WE"!

You Said It

Shakespeare.."Coins always make sound, but currency notes are always silent. So when your value increases, keep yourself calm and silent"

John Keats.. "It is very easy to defeat someone, But it is very hard to win someone" 

Einstein.. "I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. It is Because of them I did it myself.."


Shakespeare."Never play with the feelings of others, because you may win the game but the risk is that you will surely loose the person for life time". 

Abraham Lincoln. "If friendship is your weakest point, then you are the strongest person in the world"

Shakespeare.."Laughing faces do not mean that there is absence of sorrow! But it means that they have the ability to deal with it".


Willian Arthur.."Opportunities are like sunrises, If you wait too long you can miss them".


Napoleon.. "The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, But because of the silence of good people!" 

Toothpaste and Forwarded Emails

I still receive forwarded email once in a while though I would admit that with the ever increasing popularity of social networking sites, this has remarkably gone down. A few months back I received an email with the subject as 15 Brilliant Uses of Toothpaste. And that declared that toothpaste's cleaning capabilities work wonders on many things besides our teeth. The same ingredients that help polish our pearly whites can also soothe some common ailments, make household items sparkle, and even get rid of stains and pungent smells. 

I am glad that I did not delete this mail without reading it as opposed to my usual action with such mails. As I glanced through, a few of the uses mentioned caught my attention and particularly the one at number 11 in the list.

Recently my daughter's DVD of Barbie movies stopped working and she was visibly unhappy. I  remembered this email. Nobody at home had any faith at this remedy but Voila! it worked. This over used DVD got an extra lease of life! Maybe another day soon enough I would be writing about my experiences about a few more of these odd uses of this morning ally......

As Received:

1. Relieve irritation from bug bites, sores, and blisters: These skin irritations all tend to weep and, in the case of bug bites, often itch. Apply a drop of toothpaste to a bug bite or insect sting to stop the itching and decrease any swelling. When applied to sores or blisters, it dries them up, thus allowing the wound to heal faster. It's best when used overnight.

2. Soothe a stinging burn: For minor burns that do not involve an open wound, toothpaste can deliver temporary cooling relief. Apply it delicately to the affected area immediately after a burn develops; it temporarily relieves the sting and prevents the wound from weeping or opening.

3. Decrease the size of a facial blemish: Want to speed up the healing of a zit? Apply a tiny dot of toothpaste to the affected area at night before bed. Wash it off in the morning.

4. Clean up your fingernails: Our teeth are made of enamel, and toothpaste is good for them, so it stands to reason that toothpaste would also be good for our fingernails. For cleaner, shinier, and stronger nails, simply scrub the underneath and tops of fingernails with a toothbrush and toothpaste.

5. Keep hair in place: Gel toothpastes contain the same water-soluble polymers that many hair gels are made of. If you are looking to style and hold an extreme hair creation, try gel toothpaste as your go-to product if you are out of regular hair gel.

6. Scrub away stinky smells: Garlic, fish, onion, and other pungent foods can permeate the skin cells on our hands. Scrubbing hands and fingertips briefly with toothpaste removes all traces of smelly odours.

7. Remove stains: Toothpaste can make tough stains on both clothing and carpets disappear. For clothes, apply toothpaste directly to the stain and rub briskly until the spot is gone, then wash as usual. (Note that using a whitening toothpaste on colors can sometimes bleach the fabric.) For carpet stains, apply toothpaste to the stain and scrub it with an abrasive brush, then rinse immediately.

8. Spruce up dirty shoes: This tactic works great on running shoes or scuffed-up leather shoes. As with carpet stains, apply toothpaste directly to the dirty or scuffed area, then scrub with a brush and wipe

clean.

9. Remove crayon stains on painted walls: Rub a damp cloth with toothpaste gently on the marked-up wall and watch the Crayola marks disappear

10. Make silver jewellery and other silver pieces sparkle:Rub toothpaste onto jewelry and leave overnight. Wipe clean with a soft cloth in the morning. Make diamonds shine by giving them a gentle scrub using a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a little water. Rinse thoroughly to remove all traces of toothpaste. Do not use this method on pearls, as it will damage their finish.

11. Remove scratches on DVDs and CDs. This remedy has been used with mixed success rates, but it seems to work fairly well on shallow scratches and smudges. Apply a thin coating of toothpaste to the disc and rub gently, then rinse clean.

12. Tidy up piano keys before tickling them: Piano keys retain oil from the skin, which then attracts dust and dirt. Clean away grime gently with a damp, lint-free cloth and toothpaste; after rubbing in the toothpaste, wipe the keys clean with a second lint-free cloth.

13. Deodorize baby bottles: If baby bottles develop a sour-milk smell, a good cleaning with some toothpaste and a bottle scrubber will clean away residue and deodorize. Always make sure to rinse well.

14. Remove the burned crust on irons: For those of you who still use an iron, you may find that after time, the plate of the iron develops a burned crust. The silica in toothpaste gently grinds away this rusty looking layer.

15. Defog goggles: Scuba divers, swimmers, and athletes may already know about this handy little trick: Rub a small spot of toothpaste into each lens of your goggles, then rinse thoroughly, and voila! There'll be no need to ever buy expensive defogger gels again. Avoid rubbing too vigorously, though, as the abrasive ingredients in toothpaste could scratch the lenses

Safety Factor

Did you ever wonder what is the price we pay for safety. Safety should unarguably top the list of priorities of every individual. But today I would like to draw the attention to another aspect of safety. This one does not relate to life safety but relates to mental peace than anything else.

Many a times we have to go out of the office for a meeting or a conference. It the meeting starts at 10 o’clock, we want to be safe and reach the venue 15 minutes. Though we know that the normal travel time to that place is 15 minutes, we usually leave with 20 minutes in hand. Again the logic is the same, we do not want to reach late and get embarrassed. Now if it happens to be a carpool we can easily add another 10 to 15 minutes.

We spend those extra minutes to buy mental peace, so that we do not rush, so that we are safe. But do we keep track of all those time of our life, that we earmark as safety factor, never to be spent productively!

The Hope Of Winning

When I look up for the definition of the word HOPE, the dictionary lets me know that it is: longing; dream.

This definition perhaps couldn’t do enough justice to the feeling generally associated with this word. So I looked up for the words synonymous to this. And this is how it goes.....    

“Utopia, achievement, ambition, anticipation, aspiration, assumption, belief, bright side, buoyancy, castles in air, concern, confidence, daydream, dependence, desire, endurance, expectancy, expectation, faith, fancy, fool's paradise, hopefulness, light at end of tunnel, optimism, pipe dream, prospect, reliance, reverie, reward, rosiness, wish”

I am writing about a particular instance of this feeling: The Hope Of Winning.

For the past many years I have filled up hundreds and thousands of raffle coupons in countless marts and mall outlets. 

My routine has always been this: collect the coupons; fill in the details; drop them in the box and preserve the counterparts; wait for the draw; check the winning numbers and then discard those with a heavy heart. Till date this routine has remained consistently the same. But this has not deterred me from filling up another coupon the very next day.

And I know that I am not alone in this Game. We all HOPE to Win tomorrow. This hope is not limited to filling in raffles tickets but it applies to every aspect of life! That's how we keep walking...... 

And then God created China....

One day last week I took my daughter to a Hobby shop here in Doha. It was a visit that happened rather by chance than by design. Once inside I was scanning through the displays while the little one was running around shouting occasionally “give me this” and “Give me that”. Nothing much interested me till two boxes filled with sconces and shells caught my attention. I have been looking forward to own a nice sconce for some time and was delighted to have a bounty with endless selection. I picked up one in my hand to have a closer look. I was very thrilled and my mind started to race to finalize the place that it would occupy in the living room and the accessories that it would require.  Then my eyes caught the sticker that said “made in China”.  But we no longer get surprised to find this sticker as majority of the merchandise originate from China these days. I quite got used to seeing a “made in” or an “Expiry date” stamped on every imaginable product but today it made me curious.

Was it made by God in China or was it made by some Chinese hands? After scrutinizing it a little bit more I found out that my suspicion was justified. It was never a living and breathing creature that moved around in this planet. Going back to the aquariums on display I discovered that alongside the underwater bridges and wreckages the sconces and shells were artificial too. Imitating the life that never existed!

A few forgotten bytes came back to my mind. I remembered someone had once sent me an email about artificial chicken eggs being made in China. On another occasion there was a big scam of making artificial milk powder. I dropped the idea of buying those anyways and returned home a bit puzzled. Have the Gods started to relax now that they have created China…….

Back at home I noticed a banana, artificial though, lying among other toys. Once again it is very easy to get deceived. But to find a replica of a banana was not shocking for my eyes. … and no credit for guessing where it originated from!!!

Cost Of Change

I am reposting a very very old post [published on Wednesday, April 6, 2011] in response to this week's option prompt, "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

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While studying project management, I came across the concept of sunk cost. It explains that if a cost has already been incurred due to a wrong step, that cost should not influence future decisions. The loss needs to be acknowledged, booked, and we must move on without letting it dictate the change of course.

I believe this principle applies equally well to life.

Often, we continue in a particular direction simply because we feel we have already invested a great deal of time and energy into it. We fear that changing course would mean losing all of that investment. But that past investment should not be part of the equation.

At times, there is a strong temptation to continue doing things in a certain way simply because we have always done them that way. Nothing has gone unmanageably wrong so far, and it is easy to cruise along this familiar path within a cozy comfort zone.

Yet, it is far easier—and less expensive—to correct our course early rather than wait for a major crisis to force change upon us. Delayed course correction often comes at a much higher cost.

I hope the nuclear energy agencies around the world took lessons from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Japan following the tsunami.

The message is simple: proactive change can be uncomfortable, but it is essential for success and survival in a fast-changing world.

I leave you with a few random pictures taken from the city I reside in.