The Maths Notebook

We are all set to curtain off the turbulent 2011 with a new zeal and hope for a soothing year ahead, but amidst all these turbulence we forget the small nitty gritty things about our life which sometimes we get to know from our youngers. It's new year eve, where I am sitting thinking to write something to welcome 2012, in my balcony. Children playing in the street and their noise on one hand disturbing me to think something potential, on the other hand amusing me to see how energetic and hopeful about the day ahead. Probably they don't know the harsh reality of the world or I am highly pessimist about tomorrow. whatever...

Rinku my neighbor's son is also there enjoying his winter vacation full on now a days. This boy suddenly remind me a small happening when I visited his home for some work. That day in morning his mother was bargaining with scrap collector on the price for old books and newspapers. I had some work with Rinku's father. I completed that and was coming out when I noticed Rinku arranging his notebooks in two piles. I just tempted to ask him why we was doing so, because all those books were to be given to scrap collector finally. When I asked him he told me in one pile there were his previous year math notebooks and in other pile the scrap books to be given to scrap collector.

Meanwhile his mother came in and told me Rinku never let his old math notebooks sell. It was a different experience for me to see a child loves his maths notebooks so much. I asked him to let me see his previous years notebooks. He brought all which had collected till then. I saw that dog-eared notebooks with pale yellowish pages, embellished with pencil, somewhere with pen too. I asked him why we collect those old notebooks, what could those be use of ? He told me that those notebooks comprises the maths formulae which his teachers made him write down, which is useful for him in new classes too. He doesn't need to rewrite all those again. I pass him a smile and return back to my home.

That day I learnt a very beautiful lesson about life. Over the years we have learnt lessons from our teachers, our elders, our colleagues but it's really amazing to learn from a child. A child with all his thoughts are so contagious. We elders reside more towards probability and predictability unlike a child who never believes in all these things. Rinku never thought about the number of formulae, would be useful to him in future, which would decide whether that notebook being sold or not. He just put it aside because in his sense it's useful and that's enough.

We like the fresh smell of new book, but we should always remember the dog-eared pages comprises the real stuff. In the end I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. May we have a prosperous and cheerful 2012.

Cheers !! 

At Another End

It's around 1 Am when I am in some fix. I think approx 90% of the population is in their bed at another end of their own world. This figure 90% is not a kind of hypothetical figure but it's from my observation to my surrounding. From where I am sitting right now I can see around 15-16 building around me and around 13-14 are in dark, some 2-3 buildings are in light at this time. So I assume this figure as a global. But it's not that rigid though if you don't like my concept you can forget about it and can enjoy the rest post.

Things are always best when they are at their extremes. I don't know who was the guy whether, a genius reader or a writer who said "Books are the best friends of human being" It's like whether there was an egg first or a hen. But it's for sure that he/she was a tremendous thinker. Thinking is a kind of process which starts churning out thoughts without any pre alert. We are taken to some new world where only we and our thoughts rule. I can say it a sandbox where we are testing our thoughts. Most of the time we think because we are bound to and sometime we think because we want to bind ourselves. I am not a consultant or any carrier counselor but I realized this talking to some guys in general who were in sort of dilemma about the next.

I remember, when I had to select a stream after passing matriculation for my future. At this time I had to thought because I want to bind myself with something essential for me. Now when I am full grown up and can feel the heat of future responsibility, I am thinking because I am bound to. It's a kind of sensational thinking process when you at one end and thinking about the weather at another end.

So till now what I wrote is something general I realized but what's the fix I talked about in first line. Well it's that what feels a person happy when he/she is reading anything. Whether it's the writing skill of a writer who wrote it so beautifully that the person just can't stop himself reading it or the reading ability of a reader that sensed the real essence of the testimony and stamped it as a worth reading text. I know most of us would be agree on the fact that it's a group task, accomplished simultaneously. But here I think when you are be a reader or be a writer, you are the only player in the field, this time what feels you justifying your work. I am till in fix. The answer is supposed somewhere from first generation reader/writer who setup some guidelines to which we are following till now. There is an analogy to this as we know in business the first success principle is "make it in cheeper place and sell in costlier" we can generally read at first page of any business book but the person who had said this first had certainly not read it in any book but he/she earned it from his/her experience. We are at another end and I want it to get fixed.

For the time I get my all fixes fixed, think mill is on and workers are at work.

Cheers !!

The last few things

"The last few things, things forever"

I don't know who said these words or had said ever but these words just popped up into my mind when I was thinking about the post. These are the days or I should say last few days of my graduation life. Everyone around me is as crazy as I am. Some composing friendship songs for his/her friend. Some just stumbling upon facebook and twitter to show their sentiments and some who has nothing to do (like me) is just scratching his head over these last few things. We are partying, we are hanging out with friends, we are nostalgic but this is all about life.

Most of the time I realize the curiousness about the last few moment in our life is more than than about the first few. Children curious about the last day of their school more than the first day. People like to see the last sight of the sun (sunset) more than the first (dawn). We are more curious about the final results than the initial preparation. It's human tendency that we want to live our future and we get to know that there is an end in near future we want to make that moment immortal. But these last days are more scarier than the first day.

Last moments are never easy to handle. Sometimes it's like an unknown feeling that makes us more confuse about our plans. We don't know whether we are happy or sad, exited or nervous, clear or vague about things. A very simple example, I often see my youngsters even experienced the condition, when we are in examination hall. We know it as exam phobia. These are the last few moments we are thinking about future, how my performance would be. It's really never easy.

Through out our college life we spend some quality time with our friends but last moment is like we were living in a house as a paying guest, we used things, some of them became a part of our life and finally we have to move to another city and leaving those things for others. But we enjoy these moments. This enjoyment is amorphous but relations are not. We not only spend few moments together, we actually share few moments of our life with some special people and perhaps this is the reason why we love these last few things so much. :-)

Cheers !!

Authenticity is directly proportional to Goodwill

It's going to be a very quick post because of some time constraints. Actually it was going to be a tweet before but hard luck twitter, you just allow me to sum this up in 140 letters, but it's not that quick too.

From my childhood, we are being taught about authenticity and goodwill in concern of a person, in concern of an organisation. At that time it seemed to be little impractical. We hardly notice these notions more than just another english words, but now it feels immense sense in these words. Your authenticity in work pays you in form of your nice goodwill in market, your trust in your customers and life long credibility. We can say the more you are authentic, the higher is your goodwill bar. Authenticity never comes in a day. It depends on your work. One day when I was talking to my friend searching for some fund raising for his work, I feel that it's true.

Actually this post is about another experience of my life related to local news channels. Being an MBA aspirant I often discuss with my friends about the Indian news channels' way of working, the kind of news telecast but today this was the day I felt this.

This was an another morning and at breakfast table as usual I switched on my T.V. It was a local news channel there telecasting the news about the death of Osama. I stopped there a while and listen to them what they were actually saying. It was really unbelievable news for me. Last night when I was on internet till 12 AM, there was no signs of this kind of news in air, what happened in few hours. I moved to BBC channel for the confirmation of news. The same telecast was going there too. At that point of time I found confirmed with the fact that 'Osama is really dead'.

Actually it was not my fault. Perhaps I am not the first person who has doubt over the credibility of local news channels' news. For the sake of TRP, for the sake of audience ENJOYMENT if you are compromising with your work, I would not allow it to my life and perhaps that's why I had to switch over to some really authenticated news channels for the confirmation of the news.

Cheers !!

Information and Affection, The Dangerous Duo

The greatest differentiator of humans and our triumph as the alpha species on the planet has been our increasing ability to record and share our collective knowledge and information. We are living in a kind of universe where information is begin to be counted into the list of the fundamental requirements of a human being. Sometimes the situation seems me as we are dipped into a pool of information at our throat. When I saw the daily startups growing in the different corner of the world, I found one thing common to all, that's most of the startups tend to process this information and present as a beautiful gift to their customers rather than a raw. From wikipedia to wikileaks everybody is ready to do the job for you. You just need to know the exact URL and that's it, rest is on them.

I came to know facebook is using users' private information , wikileaks is continuously threatening world and lots more, but what scares me a lot about information is it's non static nature. Information has no boundaries at all so as the form. We sleep in a kind of world and wake up in an another kind of world. You never know how many new apps have been created mean while. For the code you were searching a night before, has been baked till morning. Apple launching a new i-product daily may seem to be cool but it's not that cool, atleast for persons like me who have to think twice to change their two year old cellphone just because the newer version is little slim :-) . Thanks to these information vending machines, who process all the raw material so nicely that we even can't say how far we have traveled in time. Was this the Time-travelling concept ?

Now when I say the rapid changing form of information, I would like to say the rapid change of information riding on the shoulders of those before to reach further. This is still interesting. No doubt generation is thriving information rapidly, but how much information has reinvented their own wheel, that's important and this scares me too because today we are doing better and faster but ultimately where we have reached it's difficult to say. It is said that globalization in India is one of the main reasons why there is irregularities in money distribution to different class of people. Some how I find the same situation with information across the globe and it scares me about the future.

There is an another thing which seems me as a better half of information, that is affection. I realized how even affection can be dangerous to us, while I was watching the movie Kung Fu Panda. Conditions are not much different in our surroundings The affection of parents towards their children, sometimes make them no more than a dump. It's been such a long time experiencing this so called 'affection', specially in India you will never feel recess about this. This really scares me when I relate this to information because information has a pace and affection as a speed breaker, either slow down your car or be ready for accidents. Affection can be related to anyone. The affection of a father towards his daughter, the affection of a girl towards her boyfriend or of boy towards his girlfriend, a nostalgic affection for youth, affection to money and even someone says an intensive affection towards your startup is equally dangerous.

At the end of this post I would like to say Information and Affection, these are the two most dangerous vital things we'll need to survive in future, only a better rhythmic and balanced ride can get us reach to the ultimate destination.

Cheers !!

Jal, Jameen aur Japan

Basically the meaning of the title of the post is 'water, land and Japan'. Actually the title represents the kind of crisis occurred in Japan few days back in the form of Tsunami (Water) and earth-quack (Land) and after that the form of Japan. First of all I would like to pay my homage to the people who unfortunately been a prey of this catastrophe. May their soul remain in peace.

Well in recent time there have been lots of happenings such as Egypt freedom, Libya crisis and now this natural calamity. We know Japan not only because of America's nuclear attack at the time of world war-II but Japan is the kind of country which teaches us lots of important things which sometimes we lack. Sometimes I am so astonish that how this low populated country abled to manage itself after world war-II destruction. Just few million people stand up with in 6-7 years on their feet and challenged world as the third largest economy of the world. This time the total population of Japan is just 127 million far lower than other countries. These facts certainly astonish anyone. When I read about this, I came to know that there was a study to know what propelled Japan growth so fast and results were really amazing.

What study told is that the working philosophy of Japan and other countries is far different. It's this philosophy that stimulate the growth so fast. This philosophy includes-

1. Zero Defect Japanese believes in zero defect policy in their product which raised the bar of reliability of their products up. We have so many examples in our day to day life too, such as in electronics media Sony has still no competitor if we talk about Indian market.

2. Just In Time This is a management term I read somewhere which Japanese follow in their work. JIT policy restricts them to procrastinate the work. They understand the value of time so as the preparation of their product.

3. Kaizen This is another management term which means 'continue process management'. This policy tends them to work continuously for betterment of the product, to improve the employee management for increasing the work efficiency.

4. Total Quality Management In businesses, this term is frequently used and thus Japanese work on this strictly. This philosophy says to work continuously to improve the quality of the product. This is complete customer satisfaction philosophy of working.

Besides these few policies points Japanese has a vast lexicon of management skills which certainly useful for a user who wants to learn how to work exactly and efficiently, such as Japanese has a value of their employee even at the age of physically non working. There is a Life time employment philosophy which cares their employees at every age.
One most important and personally I feel great, policy is that Japanese don't have hierarchies at their workspaces. That means the status of a fourth grade employee is equal to a first class employee. Which makes them continuously focus on their work rather than their position. If in any case it's there then it's not that rigid that in other countries of world is.

So these are few points I feel to share with you about this mammoth economy, about which we just talk but in actual sense it's something to be felt. Every country has its own work philosophy but it becomes interesting when you have a deep thought and study over that philosophy by others that's what Japanese has.

I salute the spirit !!

In my concluding notes I'll pray to almighty for Japan and its people.

Cheers !!

Understand your itch

Great ideas come up from your itch.

It's well said that you have to scratch your own itch self. But what this itch actually is ? Is it natural or due to any itch powder, you have to understand before scratching it. I am surrounded by some geeks who have tremendous ideas. They know very well how to work and what to work. I must say they don't have the word 'compromise' in their dictionaries. I have learnt this nice sentence from them 'Scratch your own itch'. It's rightly said and I think most of the startups are also based on the same theory.

I have a problem, I want to get it solve, in-spite of wandering here and there keeping problem on palm let me solve it and that's what scratching own itch means. We are living in a fast and furious world and that's the biggest problem around. You don't have any other option instead of being fast and furious. Neither others have time to time to take a look at your problems nor you should have to show them. It's not about surviving because if it were how can freelancing be so successful. We don't have all the fingers of equal length in our hands so as we are. We all have our own thinking, own way of working and interpreting the problem. Suppose what happens if your thumb pretends like your little finger or your middle finger as your index finger. The situation seems little terrible.

To have an itch is a nice thing but to understand the nature of that itch is most important. You are living in a community surrounded by some extra-ordinary geeks. You are living there not because you want to but because your parents work there. The geek environment is their need. You see your friends coming up with some fabulous ideas with full of adventure and innovation, but you can't think like those, because you are different. You are baffled, because you are not praised by anyone like your friends are praised. Now you start continuously thinking. You want an idea to come into your mind which you can say is your itch, and finally you get an idea which some how is a skewed form of an existing one and you say it your itch. You start working on it, enter into market but you realize your mistake when you are kicked out of there.

I think this is not a natural itch, this seems like you are powdered by someone and you interpret it as your own itch. You were actually prey of your own. You tried to be someone that you are not. That is how I feel sometimes when people start doing what they are not meant for. I think compromise can a well suited word for them. They 'compromised' with them. An itch never generates on the body of those who compromise in fact they tend to scratch others itch. So better be what you are and try to understand the nature of your itch.

You seems like itchy ... just share it :-)


Cheers !!

Brand ... What does it means to you ?

A freshly baked post from my school of thoughts about what I think of brands.
Enjoy !!

The True Opportunity

Hello friends,

Here is a new post at my business blog 'The True Opportunity'
Enjoy !!

Social media, worth loving

'Social' the word is so tightly fastened to us from the very primitive age that in my view this is most oldest thing we are carrying with us till now.
The meanings of the word are different for everyone that i wonder how firmly one can define 'social' word so easily at wikipedia. But I hope those are the writers own thoughts not a rigid fact.
For me social media is like a coin whose at one side you have information regarding the value of the coin on the other side it's who, about whom everyone has their own views some bad some morose. At the value side you have some rigid facts you can never deny those, on the other hand you are free to put your own thoughts regarding information actually it varies.

Social-ness comes out from our socialities, now it's up to us how we define our socialities. One of my friends who is an art student loves surrounded by drawings, sculptures and all those amorphous things which even don't have any sense for me. He rarely likes social gatherings and noise. It's his sociality.
On the other hand my room-mate for whom a day without a social gathering just like a waste. No age limits, no friend circle barrier matters him. Facebook and twitter like social pubs are the vital part of his life.
For my uncle who is a businessman every social gathering are where you have a chance to discuss about your plans, your business, your work no more than it.
and so on. These are few examples in my life where I see how people define their social life according to them but one thing I like most is, there is no place for religion in their social life at all. So as the social media. As the economy revolutionizing, world changing so swiftly, technology changing it's side social media emerging like a super start.what used to build brands and business once is not what builds them now.

One can certainly wonder how it's happening at lightning speed, I think it's because you don’t have to choose sides, social media is not a 'Religion'. Everyday alternate day I find myself with a new startup advocating it to be something different from the recent ones, with a bright idea, molded into a social jar which will serve its users full comfort with lots of apps icing on the cake but I would simply say I love this non religionist. We already have a very vast lend for religion, cast, gender, colour altercation, but this digital world is not that vast. Keep it noise free. We certainly have much more reasons to love this social media but as I said it's not a rigid fact, this is the reason why I love social media.

You say what makes YOU love 'Social Media'.

Cheers !!