What in God's name is happening to Mumbai?

Been seeing what was happening in Mumbai on CNN-IBN my heart really bleeds for all the innocent victims. Why and how did this happen. What was the intelligence doing? Each time the terrorist introduce a new way of terrorising, it really takes the Indian Government by surprise and why can't they be better prepared and not take action after the damage has been done.

My neighbours called me up late last night to inquire about my wife who is in India at the moment but I told them that she is in Chennai and not to worry. Everyone panics and I am wondering who knows even the South some day may not be spared and the terrrosist would look at new ways and means to terrorise. When are the Intellengence or security in India going to wake up to reality and at least prevent such dastardly acts? Look at US after 9/11 things and the publics mindset has changed but in India even after all the attacks, nothing really has changed. And next the opposition would start the blame game instead of being united in solving this problem and working as a team in times of crises.

I feel sorry for the public and the tourist who happen to be there and those who were affected by these incidents. I guess enough is enough and from now on the Government has to take a tough stand. I know I am not entitled to comment on this but I feel something has to be done soon so that it doesn't occur again.

Oh what a life!

Time seems to have lost it's meaning and I was busy with lots of things that is happening to me. First I got the news that I am finally approved as a Director for not only one subsidiary but two and also there was an increment as Directors fee and they are changing my Pajero to Nissan X-Trail but the only thing is that I didn't have the time to collect the car.

I also attended my second round of interview this morning with the CEO of the future company that I intend to join, possible posting at Sarawak (East Malaysia) or Abu Dhabi, just keeping my fingers crossed. This is the first company that I had gone for interview after I returned from Hyderabad India.

And with my present company, we are looking at re-structuring it and I have to play a major role in it and also I am hoping to get the other job soon. So I am waiting as either way it is a win-win situation.

I have been coming back home late due to the extra workload and also I have to make sure I am back by 9 p.m. as my son would be waiting for me to get his dinner. The weather has not been helpful as it has been raining very heavily for the past few days and the traffic gets real heavy and sluggish.

Hope to get some good news soon.

Quotes of the Week

"Life simply is. It follows its course. Give yourself to the moment. Let life reveal itself to you." --Jerry Brown

"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live." --James Truslow Adams

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Click here to email these quotes to a friend | More Inspirational Quotes

A different kind of weekend.

This weekend seemed to be different from the others as my wife had left for India on Saturday for 10 days and I had to be with son who is 16 years old. We had a quiet day on Saturday night, I had bought dinner outside and it was a simple "Char Keow Teow" and I bought 2 DVDs for the weekend. We watched "Taken" a movie about a kidnap by some Eastern Europe mobsters and trade them as prostitutes by making them become a junkie. This is the only time that I can watch my movie with the surround system volume louder that normal (as my wife doesn't approve it when she is here). And I was watching it with Jack Daniels(again another disapproval) for company and the movie was about the father(parent) who would do anything for his daughter whom he loved so much. The hero was Liam Neeson and I would recommend this movie if you are a thriller buff.

Well Sunday was a quiet day too, got up and I had my breakfast of 2 slices of bread and later I got some "nasi lemak" for breakfast for my son. We went out shopping late in the morning, I bought bread, cooked salami, breakfast ham, fruit juice,cup noodles, other korean and chinese noodles for my son so that he can have his lunch over the weekday as I was would be in my office. We had our lunch together at an Indian restaurant "Kanna Curry House" and it was served on banana leaf, my son had fried sears fish,tofu and I had mutton "varuwal" with the usual rice, vege, rasam and curry of your choice.

Now I guess I know what it feels like being a single parent and there are a lot of responsibility and work to do. I have to take out the garbage and make sure that everything is spick and span like washing all the dishes. I guess my wife deserved the break and I really appreciate what she does in order to keep everything well oiled in the house without complaining (she was like the anti-virus in the background keeping everything in order).

With regards to my son, I have no problem with him as he does his own stuff and since it is his school holidays, he spend most of the time playing games on the internet, he also reads his novels. My wife had washed and ironed all my clothes for the next 10 days and I guess I have enough for 20 days or more.

Well I have stated reading a book by Obama titled "Audacity of Hope" and it is a best seller. So far the book is okay. This morning I left early for work and I know it would be another hectic day for me. The weather is fine outside as it has been raining most of the night and it is pretty cool, not good for a construction man as it would hamper some of my works.

I hope the week would be smooth and I can't wait to get back to my books at night as I intend to finish the Obama's book by this weekend.

Economic Problems and Facing Our Fears

By Julie Melillo

With the recent collapse of two Wall Street giants, speculation of doom seems to hang in the air especially here in New York City. Between gas prices, politics and financial crisis, it's amazing anyone seems to be able to get on with their day. And my clients are definitely feeling the strain, with the situation affecting their careers and pocketbooks.

In spite of all of this, I want to point out something. Tragedy can be a time of great growth. Our lives, dreams and families don't have to be demolished -- they can instead take flight.

That might sound crazy, and yes, you're right that Wall Street does affect Main Street -- all of our Main Streets. And yes, the economy is all linked together, etc, and it may trickle down. But that does not mean your life is ruined. It could even mean the opposite.

Times of tragedy are times of change. There is nothing inherently wrong with change, but bringing in something new does always mean letting go of something. We associate letting go of something with sadness, and so the situation seems bad.

But all times of change really are, is a reminder that it is natural for life to be in constant flux. Life is not stable, for all of our attempts to make it that way. And accepting that it is natural to need to adapt, to continue to grow, to re-assess, will connect us deeper with what it means to be alive and human. It can even connect us closer together, as we remember we are alive, and we are not so far removed from natural forces of life.

Instead of clinging on to what material things we have, let's instead remember to let go of the fleeting things in life that are never really ours. And hold tight to what matters.

We don't have to be victims of the world and the evening news. We have a choice to do things differently. Each of us are alive and we all have a shot. Why not take it?

You logically know you are not actually sitting still. You know the world is moving. So don't resent this fact. Or get angry at Wall Street. Accept that we are all surfing here, and we need to do our best to be strong enough to ride out the waves -- the easy ones, and the tough ones.

Change happens so gradually most of the time. We don't notice it. Like the turning of the earth or the smooth transition from season to season -- but growth is always there. Sometimes these changes are sudden -- we lose a job. We lose someone we love. And other times, these changes are gradual -- we become unhappy at work. A relationship becomes distant over the years. But that change is always with us. Even when nothing appears to be happening, things are still changing (both inside of us and in the outside world). We never stop growing and the world doesn't either.

It is the nature of life to change -- empires rising and falling, ocean waves swelling and crashing, financial charts increasing and decreasing -- this is the nature of life. We don't need to be victims of nature and the outside world. We don't have to cower with fear as we list the factors we can't control. There will always be things outside of our control. But we are extremely powerful as individuals, once we decide to be. We can choose to make a choice -- our own choice.

The less we cling on to the things we can never really "own," the more free we will be. And the more we take charge of our lives, assessing what is there and what is not, seeing situations for what they are, and keeping our dreams in sight, doing what is best for our happiness and that of our families -- and doing all of this in the midst of whatever is happening.

Humans have been through terrible times, and Wall Street is not the worst of it. So let's be happy for the strength, intelligence and adaptability we have as people -- and find a way to harness difficulty and turn it into success.

The outside world, as big as it seems, is not as large as the human desire to live happily. And nothing can hold you back from getting what you want if you choose to make it happen, regardless of anything else. If you own it and take responsibility and accept it, both for your own mistakes and the world's, there is a way.

"The caterpillar thought the world had ended, and then he turned into a butterfly..." --anonymous

Copyright © 2008 Julie Melillo
Julie Melillo is a Certified Life Coach in Manhattan. She coaches in-person in the city and offers phone and online coaching sessions across the country. Ready to make your dreams happen? Visit her web site: Your Dreams - Life Coaching

I just finished reading this article and I felt that I should share it with you as I am sure all of us are going through this uncertainty caused by the global meltdown and for those who are directly affected, the question is "why me". I had a lot of plans but right now everything is put on the back burner and I really don't know when we would come out of this mess and your guess is as good as mine. But all things does have a cycle and I hope this phase passes over as soon as possible. So just hang on....

Quotes of the Week

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." --William Butler Yeats

"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great." --G. W. F. Hegel

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Time flies

I guess it is an apt title on what I am going to say. Time flies and I have actually lost track of it ever since I came back from Hyderabad and I have been as busy as a bee. I know I had a tough week after coming back from Hyderabad as when I was away, the evil gossip mongers had started their trade and the worst thing that I hate is when it happens within your organisation. I know we had a new contractor taking over our scope of work as directed by the Ministry of Housing but when the new contractor came in and I had made all arrangements for a smooth transition but there are those who would like to find faults in everything that has been done.

I received a nasty email from my HR on telling me what and how do things but I had send my reply back to the HR Department telling them not to interfere with the operations part of the work. You see the HR Department was acting on gossip that was spinned from my site and what I was pissed of was, why can't the HR Department call me even though I was away in another country to clarify whatever that was that they wanted to clarify with me.

Anyway I had identified the culprit and I am giving him the cold shoulder treatment, my policy is very simple, you mess with me, you better watch out. Otherwise, they take you for granted and to me an empty vessel makes the most noise and they are the gossip mongers.

Looks like I have deviated from what I set out to write, yes ...time flies...is that good or bad? I had a good piece of news today, signed up the papers to be a Director and hopefully my former Director won't place an injunction on that because he is on a rampage after losing the company.

Looks like I have to take things easy and find time.....

Back to work

Yes I am back to work after a hectic week in Hyderabad and all I can say now is "Thank God" I am back home. Now why do I say that is very simple, I have closed down my office, gave up my residence and sold the company car as all these items were bothering me for the past few months. But now I have completed my transition from Hyderabad and it's back to work. I had a lot of things to sort out in Hyderabad and the biggest headache was the office files, but I have somehow managed to pack up all my files, 15 big boxes and placed them at my accountants office.

I know I still have to go to Hyderabad but this time I would stay in a hotel and don't have to worry about such mundane things like my breakfast and what not. Anyway I hope the need doesn't arise for me to leave for Hyderabad in the next couple of months.

Back to work and it's like a hell hole here with a lot of uncertainties and I am really pissed out with the global meltdown, it has affected all of us and I hope the economy would pick up soon as I have to find a way to get out of my present employment. So this time I have to start all over again looking for a better employment. I know I was rattling about interviews and other jobs in my previous blogs but so far nothing has come my way and as I say it, thanks to the global recession. Hope things would pick up or else we are all doomed (at least me)....

Back from Hyderabad for good

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (below)
Well it was a hectic week for me as I left for Hyderabad last Sunday and reached their Shamshabad International Airport by mid-night. I was feeling rather sleepy as I had quite a few pegs of whisky. I took the cab from outside the airport as my neighbour told me, it is cheaper that way but it was foolish of me to do that in order to save a few bucks for the company. I remember the cab driver was taking me a long route and I was so dead tired that I dozed off in the cab. I don't even have the drivers name or the cab number, but I just dozed off. They woke me up as they got closer to the place that I stayed for direction, I only realised what a fool I was to doze off in the cab, what if those guys had driven me somewhere and robbed me of everything and after that just dump me on the roadside, but I guess there is still some goodness left in Hyderabad. The picture on my right is taken from the Shamshabad International Airpotrt and I waited for at least 4 hours on my return yesterday, as I went early to the airport.

I was reading my book which I bought in Hyderabad last Monday and the book is titled "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga and the book was fantastic as I just finished reading by this afternoon (It's a winner of Man Booker prize for 2008) . Here is the:

Synopsis

Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.

The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

The rest of my trip was hectic as I had to close down my residence and office. I put all my files in big cartoons and gave away a lot of my stuff. Most of the major stuff like tables and air-conditioners, my accountant had taken it. And I finally got to sell the company car on Thursday for a good price and what a relief it was as I left Hyderabad as the same way I came here, with a suitcase. So bye-bye Hyderabad.

Leaving for Hyderabad

I would be leaving for Hyderabad tonight for about 5 days and I guess I am going to be in isolation from the rest of the world during these gruesome days. Not that Hyderabad doesn't have any internet connection but I am going to be staying in my old house and since I wasn't around for three months, most of my accounts has been disconnected or suspended for:

1. Tatasky (Satellite TV)
2. Airtel post paid mobile number
3. Tata USB Modem
4. My company car Insurance & quarterly road tax.

Sounds bad huh! It's like I will be transported back to the stone ages. The positive thing that I have is my laptop and DVD player with lots of my old collection of DVD. Anyway I still can access to the internet at my accountants office, if I am there. With regards to my mobile phone, I am using my Malaysian number which is roaming but would cost me a bomb to call anyone in Hyderabad as I know how the guys in Hyderabad would like to yak, yak and yak.

As for my transport during my stay, I am going to hire a car to get me around in Hyderabad as I am staying quite far away in Sainikpuri in Secunderabad. I am not going to risk driving the existing company Scorpio and God only knows whether I can dispose of the car within these next few days. Otherwise the car goes to my accountant and he has to figure out a way to dispose it (not by burning I hope).

I have to clear all my office files as my accountant is willing to store it in his ofice. Last on my list is that I have to clear all the other items(bed, air-con, etc...) in the house. So it's going to be a helluva working week for me and given the choice I rather be at home, hoping that everything in life gets reformatted by itself.

By the way I won't be blogging for about a week and I hope to be back by next Sunday. Yeah since I am going to be Hyderabad, can anyone suggest a good book for me, which has to be a must read book because I love to buy books in Hyderabad.

Corporate thieves

Which side are you on? The robber or the victim? Isn't this happening to us all over the corporate world today? We are bailing out someone's bad business judgement by using our hard earned cash as a tax payer.

The Coming About Of The American Dream

Martin Luther King, Jr

In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvellous new militancy which has engulfed our community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realise that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And... even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character... I have a dream that one day... right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers....
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing./ Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,/ From every mountainside, let freedom ring!/ And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true...
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!/ Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Excerpted from the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech delivered on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC.

Advice of the Day

Obama makes history

Congratulations Mr. President...elect.....Obama...need I say more?

Advice of the Day

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitch-hiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Stuck in the rut

Everyday seems to be the same old day but with a different date on it for me. I am drifting into a state of oblivion and God only knows where all this is going to end up. This morning I was quite eager to get moving at work but by mid-day, I realized it was just like any other day and it sucks.

My meeting with the purchasers last Saturday went on well for me but then the purchasers were disappointed with us on our lack of commitment in really getting the work started. I know that I can't move forward as there are a lot legal tangle that we have got ourself into with the old management not letting go of things that easily.

I did call up the last company that I had gone for an interview and it sounded positive as he told me to call him on Wednesday. I know I am running out of options and I am beginning to feel that I am stuck in this rut that was created by my old management and all of us are sinking slowly with it.

My trip to Hyderabad is on Sunday but the present financial conditions that we are in, I really don't know whether I can actually make my trip and also with the uncertainty of the whole scenario.

Bananas anyone?

This tiny looking banana was taken from my house and it is a tiny banana tree. The story behind this banana tree is that it came along with the turf. We had actually got a contractor to do the little bit of turfing at my house and to our surprise the tiny banana tree was growing along with the turf. So we decided not to chop it off and again to our surprise the banana flower was there followed by the tiny bananas. I have to wait until the bananas start to ripe to see how it taste.

Such a wonderful life?

I would like to share this video with you for a wonderful Sunday and God Bless you.....

Obama vs McCain Dance off

This was posted on Natasha's World blog site and I found the video "real" funny ...what do you say?

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Advice of the Day

Stage fright

Do you ever get stage fright? I have a meeting today and I have to chair the meeting between the  purchasers and developer. Well I represent the developer against maybe a bunch of angry purchasers. A lot of things is actually going around in my head:

What are they going to ask? 

What would their reaction be?  

What if their demand is unreasonable?

How would I handle angry purchasers?

I know the situation is explosive as we as developers had failed to deliver their houses for the past 3 years and it could be attributed to bad management by our former management and the new management that I represent is quite sincere in getting on with the job but the only crunch is that we have a very bad cash flow situation. And hence we have to appeal to the good senses of the purchasers in working with us as a team on a win-win formula.

We have identified a contractor willing to re-start the project again but now we have to get the "angry" purchasers to agree on some terms and conditions so that we can start work immediately otherwise I think all of us would have a slow death(project) or the situation would be "status quo".

So it all depends on how I am going to pull it off with them and I am really feeling jittery. I have conducted meetings, but never with the public and that also when it concerns their life savings.

So God, please help me. Let me come out of this in one piece.