sukku

I like Paulo Coelho's writings...and I am sure you would enjoy this blog. read more | digg story

A nice place to park after a few drinks. So bottoms up and cheers.

Seems like I am stuck on what to write and where is my tea to perk me up? I am sitting in my cabin at my office and wondering what I should write. So far nothing interesting happened to me as it has been work, work and work. I was appointed as a Director for one of our subsidiary as a corporate nominee from my company. But the catch is, I am appointed as a Director with all the liabilities minus the extra cash. Am I being foolish? I leave that as it is and now I have to unblock my writer's block. Come on ideas, flow. Looks like it is dried up and maybe I should meditate and something might creep in while I am in bliss meditating. But then again, meditating in my cabin is not a good idea as it would construe that I am sleeping on my job or they might think that I have turned into a zombie. Yeah, I got my trip to Hyderabad on 09.11.2008 approved by the Directors and I am going to be there to wind up my residence and office, I would be there for a week (aha...paid vacation). Well that...

Memristor circuits lead to ultrasmall PCs. Intel and AMD unleash massively multicore CPUs. Samsung TVs respond to your every gesture. These and other developing technologies will fundamentally change the way you think about--and use--technology. read more | digg story

Guess by now I would have collected one of those and it's like getting closer to "home" that is if you get my drift. Woke up pretty early in the morning and my son from Moscow wished me "Happy Birthday" on MSN chat and it was about 1.30 a.m. there (God knows what he is doing up so late). My wife just wished me ...... It's a sad day for me as I know I am getting older and nearer too....(should I say grave....) Here are some quotes that I spotted on the net and would like to share them with you, to at least cheer me up..... Emily Dickinson We turn not older with years but newer every day. Bill Clinton When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old. Cherokee Expression When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. Paul H. Duhn You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your des...

Have you ever got up in the morning feeling all drained out of energy? What do you reach out to rejuvenate yourself? For me I guess it is a strong cup of tea brewed by myself as I like it no other way. Now after the strong cup of tea I am ready to face the morning and I have also started on my multi vitamin and mineral supplements too as I feel it has helped me to feel alert. And what sort of breakfast do you have? I prefer my two slice of wholemeal bread with a thin spread of margarine. Would listening to music perks you up? It does sometimes for me depending on my mood and right now I am listening to REO Speedwagon " I can't fight this feeling" and I know it is helping me fight this day. So tell me what gets you going?

CHENNAI: It’s Deepavali in Tamil Nadu on Monday and Diwali in the rest of the states on Tuesday. Intriguing? While the festival basically celebrates the triumph of good over evil, there is a difference on what the day signifies for people of the State and for those in the rest of the country. In Tamil Nadu, the day is observed as ‘Naraka Chaturdasi’ — the killing of demon king Narakasura by Lord Krishna’s wife Sathyabama,— which falls on October 28 this year. For others, Diwali marks the return of Lord Ram to Ayodhya after 14 years of vanavas. For north Indians, the day after Diwali is Annakut — New Year Day. So,merchants open new account books on Diwali. The Tamil New Year begins at a different time of the year and is in no way linked to Deepavali. So is the case in Kerala (Vishu) and in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (Ugadi). However, Diwali commemorates Rama vanquishing Ravana. Hence, the festival has come to symbolise the triumph of good over evil also. The people of Ayodhya placed ...

"Mastery is not perfection, it is journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again." --George Leonard "I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It's seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It's seeing what other people don't see and pursuing that vision." --Howard Schultz "Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, a can-do attitude, a capacity to focus on a vision and work toward it." --Barry Rogstad

These pictures were taken from the Star newspaper Kuala Lumpur and Diwali is celebrated today in Malaysia and I guess it is slotted for tomorrow in India. So here's wishing everyone a very "Happy Diwali"

Paulo Coelho I MET Mick Brown at Frankfurt airport. A journalist with the London Daily Telegraph, he was sent to interview me at a stop-over between two flights. He is such an interesting person that when the interview was over he began to tell me some quite fascinating stories. Once he received a pamphlet saying that a guru called Mahaguru Yogi Arka would be giving a series of lectures in England. He discovered that he was staying in London, and set out to visit him for his report. He rang the doorbell, a young woman with oriental features opened the door for him, and made a sign for him to follow her into a sitting room. Arka was sitting there, his legs crossed and his eyes closed, apparently deep in meditation. Mike did not know quite what to do, and then the master opened his eyes and made a sign for him to come over and sit in front of him. “Do you have any questions?” He had several, but they all seemed to have slipped from his thoughts. The only one that came to m...

Well it's that time of the year that all the Hindu's get to celebrate Diwali and here in Malaysia it is celebrated in a very grand manner too. I remember how I used to get up very early and help my parents with the decoration and all my new clothes would be lined up in the prayer room so that they can bless them and after that I get to wear my new clothes. Usually the prayers would start after our oil bath. We would have open house and my friends would start coming over to visit us from late morning until late in the night. My mum would be busy with the preparation of food and usually it would be Briyani, Kurma and lots of other stuff. Well that was many years back and this Diwali I would be in my sisters house for lunch and later at night with my parents. It's been awhile since I was at home in Malaysia for Diwali but on this special day I sure would feel nostalgic as I enjoyed this festival during my childhood with all the "ang-pow" that I would receive from my ...

I was just pondering on the subject of guardian angels and do you believe in them? I can relate a bad accident that I had a couple of years back, I was working almost every night until mid-night as I was involved in the foundation and basement work of Hotel Mandarin Oriental which is adjacent to the Petronas Twin Towers. Our earthworks for the four level of basement involved the excavation of massive amount of earth which can only be carted out from 7.00 p.m. until 7.00 a.m. every day (I stayed back until 10.00 or 11.00 p.m.) and coordinating these works really took a lot from me physically as in the mornings I was in charge of the foundation works. So I was pretty tired on the fateful Friday somewhere in 1997. I was driving a red 4wd Vitara Suzuki and after work which was about 10.30 p.m. I left my site. I was driving back on the Federal Highway and I was feeling rather unusually tired. I know I was exhausted but never have I felt like dozing off. And I was pretty close to my house an...

I would like to share this collection that I had come across the net and I find it amusing the way the kids completed the proverbs. A first grade teacher collected well known proverbs. She gave each child in her class the first half of a proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. Their insight may surprise you. Better to be safe than....................Punch a 5th grader Strike while the .........................Bug is close It's always darkest before............... Daylight Savings Time Never underestimate the power of..........Termites You can lead a horse to water but........how? Don't bite the hand that................. looks dirty No news is................................impossible A miss is as good as a...................Mr. You can't teach an old dog new............math If you lie down with dogs, you'll.........stink in the morning Love all, trust..........................me The pen is mightier than the........

Saw this cartoon on Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad Edition dated 22.10.2008. It sure did remind me of my stay in Hyderabad. I stayed in a bungalow in Banjara Hills where I had my office in the Ground Floor and my residence on the 1st Floor. I actually didn't have water supplied by the utility company as my landlord didn't pay for the water bill and I had to call the tankers almost every 4 days for my water supply. The coordination was done by my servant and I would have this fear of waking one morning without water but things went on smoothly except when on one occasion the tanker drivers were on strike. I really had to ration water and it came to a stage where I had to use my 20 litres drinking water supplied in huge cannisters to have my bath (expensive bath though). I remember after I shifted from Banjara Hills to Sainikpuri and I had water, plenty of it and all I have to do was switch on the pump for the well water. And the water was hard and I know how the feeling would be whe...

Yes I had my 2nd round of interview yesterday afternoon with the Managing Director of the company that I intend to join and I spend about 1.5 hours with him. He went through my resume and we chatted about old friends in the industry and it so happens that one of the person that he had in mind was my ex-Boss. Half way through the interview he had called him and after he had spoken to him he had passed the phone to me and it was nearly 10 years since I had spoken to my ex-Boss and he still recognised me. Now I am wondering whether this was part of the interview where he was checking or verifying what I had told him on the people that I knew. Anyway I had a small discussion with the Director too and he had some problem that his Engineer had posed and he wanted me to have a look at it. So there I was looking at the problem and joining in the discussion. It looks like they want me on-board but they have not confirmed on anything yet. The Managing Director had informed me that he would let m...

"The guidance within evolves the world towards a heaven that's already here. To know this is to know our destiny." --from The Celestine Prophecy "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." --Steve Jobs "How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on – man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines." --Krisnamurti

Guess you must be wondering how Monday could be cheerful, what happened to the Monday morning blues? It was raining very heavily last night and the weather is cool this morning and I had to wipe out the dew from my side mirrors on my car which I had parked outside as my wife parks her car in the porch. But somehow I woke up today with a nice feeling as I know it is a special day for me. I have my second round of interview at 2.30 p.m. with the Managing Director which I guess is a formality. So you see that's why I can't wait for the morning to fly past until lunch time and after that I can leave for the interview and hopefully get the deal signed off by today. There are so many things that is going on my head, like when I should leave my present employment and I am eager to start 2009 with a new company as I know things are not very pleasant here with the corporate war that is going on and we are being dragged in. What better way to start my morning then by listening to Baby Fa...

Patna Shabnam was stunned when her husband’s friends told her that she would be handed over to them In a story akin to the Pandavas’ tale in the epic Mahabharata, a Muslim man allegedly staked his wife in gambling after he had lost his money and possessions to some people, police said on Sunday. Mohd. Mokhtar, in his 40s, of Shekhpura town, about 150 km from here, gambled his wife Shabnam, 35, to four of his friends Friday. Ms Shabnam was stunned when her husband’s friends told her that she would be handed over to them. “They told me that Mokhtar had lost me in gambling. It frightened me,” she told the police. The men assaulted and abused her when she refused to go with them.She, along with her two minor sons, met sub-divisional police officer Rajesh Kumar and sought help. Mr Kumar has ordered an inquiry into the incident. Came across this article on Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad Edition and I just couldn't believe it. How could you gamble away your wife or an...

Paulo Coelho SRI RAMAKRISHNA tells of a man who was about to cross a river when the teacher Bibhishana approached him, wrote a name on a piece of paper, fixed it to the man’s back and said: “Fear not. Your faith will help you to walk upon the waters. But the moment you lose your faith, you will drown”. He trusted Bibhishana and began to walk effortlessly across the waters. He had an immense desire to know what his teacher had written on the piece of paper fixed to his back. He got hold of it and readwhat was written on it:“Oh God Rama, help thisman to cross the river”. The man thought, “who is this God Rama anyway?” As soon as doubt entered his mind, he was drowned. The girl and the storm The worried mother phoned the school and was told that the girl had already left the school despite the storm. Seeing that she had not arrived home yet, she put on a raincoat and went out to search for her daughter. As she turned the corner,she saw the girl walking towards the house; but ...

Wow Firefox 3 really has a lot of cool add ons and I just installed myself ScribeFire. I can actually blog from my FF3 browser without opening my blog site. I just wanted to do the test run and voila here I am posting this. I had clips yesterday along with the widget to post whatever I like from the net but somehow I found that it was clashing with my browser and it slowed down the browser along with the coordination too. Let me try this for a couple of days and maybe I can review this ScribeFire. So far it's easy as I mentioned earlier that I am blogging from my browser.

A team of students from Houston's Rice University are a virtual lock for a Nobel Prize with their latest research. They've bioengineered a beer that has anticancer properties. read more | digg story

For the past couple of days it had been very hectic for me as my son is having Chicken Pox and he is in Moscow doing his first year medical. It is full blown and I can feel the loneliness that he is undergoing as a first year student. He is just 18 and this is the first time that he is away from home and my wife wanted me to make a trip to Moscow to see him. But somehow we managed to get our niece (who has done her MD and now doing specialisation) to visit him and get some medication for him. I know he is finding it tough as everything is in Russian and his room-mates find it difficult communicating to the pharmacist in getting the right medicine. I did speak with the Doctor in charge of the Malaysian students there (our agent) and he suggested that he should be hospitalised for 2 weeks because that's what they do for Chicken Pox cases. Anyway we decided against it and we are talking to my son everyday and he is doing okay now and I guess he needs another 4-5 days of rest. I know h...

A mathematician, a biologist and an engineer were sitting in a bar and had been for four days. All this time, they were observing a building across the street. On the fifth day, they agreed that the building was empty. On the sixth day, they observed two people entering the building in the morning and three people exiting the building in the afternoon. "Aha!", exclaimed the engineer, "the building was never truly empty!" The biologist said, "No, no - they must have procreated." The mathematician pondered the situation. He slowly said, "If one more person enters the building, then it will be empty." Reproduced from the net

Frequent mobile phone users could be at risk of 'mobile phone rash' on the face or hands, warn doctors. Increasing numbers of cases of the new allergic skin disorder are being reported, according to the British Association of Dermatologists. read more | digg story

Received this in my email today and I thought of sharing it you. Profit from the Panic! October 10, 2008 | By Adam Khoo | Dear Investors What you are seeing now in the market is a PANIC!!!! People who have seen their stock value drop by 50% or more cannot take it and are just selling at whatever price they can. Hedge funds, institutions and people who have borrowed heavily to buy stocks in the last few months, are not able to meet margin calls and are forced to sell. As individuals run to the banks and withdraw whatever money they have left, mutual funds are forced to sell their stock and raise cash to meet this withdrawls. So everyone is SELLING SELLING SELLING at whatever price they can get. On the other hand, many people with cash are sitting on the sidelines not daring to buy anything for fear that it can go lower.So what happens when you have got millions of sellers and no buyers? Stock prices plunge like a stone! The Dow (8579 pts) is down almost 40% from its highs and the...

This is the follow up to my series on interview and I got a call just now for an appointment to meet up with the Managing Director of the company that I had attended an interview yesterday on Monday at 2.30 p.m. and it sure sounds promising. Just thought of letting you know as I can feel that the job is within reach and it's just a matter of sorting out a few glithes.

Robin Sharma OKAY, YOUR shoes don’t need to shine for you to be a superb leader. And please remember, leadership isn’t about your position, it’s a way of being — “Leading Without Title”, to be precise. Leadership is about holding yourself to world-class standards, taking personal responsibility (versus playing the victim), being excellent within the sphere of your influence, building beautiful relationships and elevating others by your example. My point is simply this: The way you do the little things says a lot about the way you will do the big things. And resigning yourself to mediocrity around your minor pursuits sets you up for mediocrity when it comes to the major ones. If your yard or home is well organised, I’ll bet your life is well organised. If you are attentive to details like remembering the birthdays of your friends and sending thank-you notes after every meeting, my guess is that you will be attentive to the details around your larger projects and bigger opportunities. ...

Since I am waiting from 11.30 a.m. until 12.10 p.m. for the so-called Boss (that's what the staff said) I decided to blog and wanted to share how I feel sitting in a different environment for my interview. Its lunch time and I see the staff going out for their food. Now I'm thinking "What the hell am l doing here" away from my comfort zone and I'm feeling hungry like hell. Why can't anyone just stick to timing or appointments? Is it a right thing for me to do? Am I jumping from the frying pan to the fire? I just went out for lunch and the Boss called me. I told him that I'm in the middle of my lunch (I had a bowl of fish ball noodles) and here I am waiting for him again. I have got used to this waiting, thanks to my years in India. I just checked with the staff and they told me that he is in his room but I can't get him on his phone. Thanks to my Pocket PC phone otherwise I won't be able to blog this while waiting. Let me call him again. The ...

For middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet could be a boost to the brain, a new study suggests. read more | digg story

The photo's above were taken last Sunday as we went to Little India at Jalan Masjid India in Kuala Lumpur and it is all decked up for Diwali shopping. I bought muruku and mixture along with some Indian savories as this is the time of the year where it is readily available.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said on Tuesday the U.S. housing sector faced more losses and the economy was in recession even as authorities moved to stabilize the financial system. Volcker said the priority for... read more | digg story

Don't have much time to say anything but what the heck I might as type a few words. I have a management meeting at 10.00 a.m. and God knows how long it will go on. This time they have changed the venue of the meeting from Head Office to our Development Office which is about 10 minutes drive from my site and it is toll free too. Day's are flying fast and nothing concrete has been firmed up with my company yet. I am sure you have noticed that all my blogs are somehow connected to my predicament that I am facing now and I bet you must have got bored reading my stuff. I believe our mind is a very peculiar thing as it dwells on the problems that we have in hand and it looks for a way out by looking for solace and sympathy. I have an interview tomorrow morning and hope things work out well and this time I shouldn't be asking for a fat pay. Just have to find a way to get out of this rut and maybe grab whatever that is being offered. I am still fine here sitting in this sinking shi...

In today's uncertain and, well, terrifying economic climate, it's good to think ahead. While we don't want to alarm you, basically your company could go broke at any second and you'll be out on the street. Even worse, it's in their best interest to keep it from you until the very last moment. All you have are the emails that arrive in your inbox, t read more | digg story

Climate change and quicker-melting snow cover will allow forests to encroach on meadows and, ironically, eventually aide in cooling the planet. read more | digg story

All over sunny San Diego, tough economic times have forced people to cut back on their $4 lattes and sushi dinners.But one new business is booming -- and ka-booming. Welcome to Sarah's Smash Shack, where pent-up patrons can relieve stress by hurling dinnerware and bric-a-brac against a wall, as hard as they can, day and night, seven days a week. read more | digg story

Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. The dot over the letter i is called a "tittle." A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was albino. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode. Most lipstick contains fish scales. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants. Ke...

Society has determined that service a restaurant is worth between - of the final bill but is it ever acceptable? read more | digg story

To my friends who enjoy a glass of beer or wine.. And those who don't.. As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, In water there is bacteria. Very wise man, this Ben guy. In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. Coli bacteria) found in faeces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of of human and animal shit. However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, Whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting. Remember: Water = shit, ...........Beer and wine = Health Therefore, it's better to drink beer and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit. There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service. This...