Tid Bit from My Diary

There are a few unwritten rule based on underlying philosophies that we assume governs the Universe or more aptly our world. In effect majority of we people abide by these including many who does not believe but still practice. As a result we co-exist in this world happily or worriedly. One such governing factor is based on the principle of “Give and Take”. You give something and you take something else in return, a barter arrangement, be it for goodies or for favors. But that probably is only true for person to person dealing. Sooner or later you will realize as I did is that the interpretation of “Give & Take” for a company is you give and the company takes.  I have never met an organization who believes otherwise. Please give me the address and details if you happen to know one! Often one ends up having to do more than one project at a time. While they never forget to bill the clients separately, they never remember to pay you anything extra. So how do you get it b...

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 m...

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 silen...

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 ...

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!

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 ...

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 to...