Chinese New Year Shopping

The shopping mall was empty as the crowd is still away on a long extended holiday until 01.02.2009. Anyway I managed to get the snap shot of the stage for the cultural show and also a man dressed up in ancient Chinese attire like one of those opera actors or singers. If I had got any closer to him, I should control myself from pulling his beard.

Quotes of the Week

"I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other man's rights." --Abraham Lincoln

"The cave you most fear to enter contains the greatest treasure." --Joseph Campbell

"Life is not measured by its length, but by its depth" --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chinese New Year Dinner

Nice Tasty Prawns and it was succulent.

Shark's fin soup and it was yummy...

"Yee Sang" or Raw Fish Salad in celebration of the upcoming Chinese New Year at our office dinner. Yee Sang is made from thin slices of raw fish, shredded vegetables, herbs, spices and oil. In Malaysian Chinese culture, Yee Sang is believed to bring good fortune and wealth in the upcoming year to those who toss and mix it while shouting"Low Hei," which symbolizes liveliness, prosperity and longevity. Anyway this was the first dish served and oops....I forgot to shout....there goes my luck...BTW I was busy with the camera...

My ramblings

It's been awhile since I had written anything on my blog and since today is Chinese New Year, I am on leave today until Wednesday. So before I forget I would like to wish all the Chinese readers "Happy and Prosperous New Year" on this year of the Ox.

On Saturday I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" on DVD, don't ask me how I got the the copy of the DVD. My take on the movie is that I liked it and the soundtrack was good. What I liked about the story line was that it was based on the experience of Jamal who is from the slum and how he learnt everything that one has to know through the harsh reality of his existence.

Whenever I was flying into Mumbai, I can see the slums (Asia's largest) which shares the common boundary wall of the Mumbai Airport. I have also seen beggars in Hyderabad carrying babies in order to beg for more money based on the sympathy from the public. And I knew that these babies were actually for hire and the beggars are part of a syndicate (this was depicted in the movie).

On my work front, things don't look that rosy as the new management in my company is controlling us with a whip. The old staff is not given their due credit for the work (which I don't mind) but we are being pushed around like a football. I am multitasking and I am seriosly contemplating on looking for a new job even if the pay is lower. All I want at this point of time is 'job satisfaction' and not be treated like dirt. And I also know that if I leave now, most of the work that I do would be jammed up. Sometimes I feel someone should teach them a lesson and people are the assets of the company too and they should be treated with respect, money is not everything in life.

I am going to use this holidays to reflect and contemplate on my next move in my career and also to put my foot down. I guess enough is enough and I should test the waters by giving in my resignation letter on my Directorship for three companies that I am appointed.

Guess I will stop here ortherwise I would be whining about my predicament on this blog which has no end and I hope to hear your comments or suggestions on what I should do.

Quotes of the Week

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." --Michelangelo Buonarroti

"The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs." --James Allen

"Your perception is your reality." --Matt Dunlop

My collection of plants at home

Well I had chopped of my banana tree and hey...presto....I got a few more tiny trees sprouting....it's now...to cut...or not to cut....what do you think?

Thought of writing on some other topic....but then I got lost in my thoughts and had decided to post some photos on the plants that I have at home... not much of a choice anyway for my blog...

I am having a long break from this Sunday until Thursday next week because of Chinese New Year break and I promise to update my blog with better stuff...

till then....have a good week ahead....and happy shopping if you are a chinese....

btw ....which plant did you like from the pics above and why?

Quotes of the Week

"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Either you deal with what is the reality or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you." --Alex Haley

"In our desire to impose form on the world and our lives we have lost the capacity to see the form that is already there; and in that lies not liberation but alienation, the cutting off from things as they really are." --Lao-Tzu

WHAT ARE YOU WORTH?

Wealth is not an absolute. Its worth is relative and keeps changing, say Jug Suraiya and Narayani Ganesh

A Greek king once asked Solon, the renowned lawmaker, “Tell me, have I had a good life?” Solon replied: “No one can say.” The point that the jurist was making was that no life could be considered either happy or sad while that life was still continuing because a sudden reversal of fortune could, overnight, transform happiness into sorrow or sorrow into happiness.
The same holds true for financial fortune as well. As any good finance manager will tell you, all wealth is notional until you cash it in. For example, if you own shares or property, the value of these is only in the mind. You derive no immediate actual benefit from it. The value only gets actualized when you sell the property or shares and convert these into cash and exchange the cash for goods and services. Had you held on to these assets without cashing them in, their value would have always remained purely theoretical. They could have either gained or lost but without affecting the material quality of your life in any way. It is only when you cash in assets and convert them into money their value is actualized. However, even this cash value is relative.
First of all it is relative to individual status. For instance, a cash realization of say Rs 50,000 would be very significant and substantially change the lifestyle of someone whose net asset value was Rs 1 lakh. But an infusion of Rs 50,000 in cash would make no real difference to someone whose NAV (net asset value) was a crore, ten crore or one hundred crores of rupees.
This is not all. A lakhpati in the 1950s, for instance, was considered a wealthy person indeed. Today, many young IIM graduates are snapped up in jobs which start them on a salary of Rs 1 lakh-plus per month. Yet their sense of achievement or level of contentment might be at great variance with those of the previous generation who might have started with only a fraction of the amount of what youngsters in the same peer group earn today, and yet they probably experienced a far higher degree of fulfilment.
Money and wealth are not absolutes. They belong to the realm of relativity. Just as to a six-foot tall person someone who is of average height of five feet six inches is a ‘shorty’, but would be considered tall by someone who is four feet ten inches, there is no real person who is absolutely rich but is rich or not rich only in comparison to someone else. Which is why we have these voyeuristic “richie rich” lists grading individuals in terms of their guesstimated wealth. Such lists of course give you a distorted picture because to use the phrase of Jean Paul Getty who in the 1970s was considered one of the richest individuals in the world: “A billion isn’t just what it used to be.”
It’s not just that inflation debases currency. Technological, scientific and medical progress also alters the concept of wealth. For example, in Akbar’s time a heart surgery would have been out of the question even for the great Mughal himself. In the 1960s, a well-heeled, adequately insured person could easily afford such a procedure. Today such surgery is within reach of the middle class. Much the same can be said for goods and services as diverse as foreign travel, long distance communication, sanitary fittings and climate control systems.
Once we establish that profit and loss are part of the same process and actually not just two sides of the coin but often the same side of the coin, we’ll begin to put the current economic downturn into its proper perspective.
Even in the grip of this financial crisis the world, by and large, and most, if not all the individuals in it, are richer by far than they have ever been before in terms of access to food, shelter, medicare and other amenities of life.
This is what we need to bear in mind and not lose heart because someone tells us that Anil Ambani has developed a huge hole in his pocket where a fortune used to be. He is reported to have lost $30 billion in 2008 on account of sliding markets and is being described as topper in the list of ‘billionaire blowups’ of the year — in less than a year of being feted as the biggest ‘gainer’ in the world.
But Anil isn’t really poorer by so many thousands of crores any more than he is suddenly shorter by so many inches. Because, since wealth, like height, is not an absolute and can only be gauged in comparison to someone or something else, Anil’s so-called loss is compensated by the fact that his peer group has equally lost. If everyone is made financially “shorter” by six inches, everyone ends up being of the same economic stature.
What is truth and what is untruth? Philosophers say that there is no such thing as an untruth because no truth is absolute. There are as many truths as there are perspectives. And every one of them could be right. To the host, the bottle is half-empty whereas to the guest, it is half-full. Both are right, of course.
Fortune and misfortune, loss and gain, they're not permanent states; neither is existence permanent. And going by the Anekantvad school of thought, existence itself has many sides; what we get out of it is what we make of it for truth is relative to the perspective.
So when things look bleak and you feel that the future holds nothing but ruin, remember Solon who saw that both sorrow and happiness are notional values — as are the financial ratings of an individual’s wealth on a “richie rich” list like that of Forbes that described Anil as the world’s biggest gainer before dubbing him as the world’s biggest loser even before the year ran out.

Article taken from Sunday Times of India Hyderabad Edition dated 11.01.2009

Quotes of the Week

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation." --John F. Kennedy

"Love without action is meaningless and action without love is irrelevant." --Deepak Chopra

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." --Barack Obama

HAPPINESS IS HOMEMADE

We are able to perform better at work when our family life is happy and contented, says Stephen R Covey

Regardless of whether we live in the US, India or anywhere else, family is the building block of any society, and our greatest fulfillment lies there. Of course, one needs to give due importance to work. But if any society works diligently in every other area but neglects the family, it would be the same as straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.
We all seek happiness but what most of us discover is that happiness is a home-made product. If you have strong and effective relationship with family members — whether living together or apart — the resultant good vibes and mental solace tend to overflow into all other aspects of life. When your family is heading in the right direction, you are better able to perform and focus at work. On the other hand, if things aren’t going well at home, it is difficult to be deeply happy anywhere else. Thus, it is supremely important that at home, with your family, you concentrate on creating a beautiful family culture.
Marriage is more than a contractual relationship — it is a promise from each individual to stay true to their love and commitment. While I can’t tell you how to choose the right mate, I can advise you to determine what your values and principles are — and who might be a complimentary companion. Write a personal mission statement, outlining what is important to you, how you envision marriage and what family means to you. When the time is right, share this with your companion and encourage him/her to do the same.
Happy marriages don’t just happen — they are created with body, mind, heart and spirit. No one can afford to get lazy in their relationship with their spouse. It must be nurtured and tended to. And when it gets off the track, as all relationships tend to, from time-to-time, we must correct our course and come back on track.
You will find that going back to your own mission statement can act as the guiding force that brings you back — because you will live according to what matters most to you.
One of the best ways of keeping a marriage and family effective and healthy is by living the “Seven Habits”. These embody universal, timeless principles — they belong to you, to me and all the people in the world. They are not my creation. You already know these principles because you know them to be true and already exercise them to varying degrees. I have simply put a framework around principles and organized a systematic way of living them. Committing to these principles may help you strengthen your marriage and family ties. Here is a quick overview:
Be proactive The power to make a difference in your family lies within you. The place to begin is not with other family members, but with yourself. You have the freedom to choose your actions and you have four unique endowments to guide your responses to people, situations and your environment:
Self-awareness: Step outside of yourself and be aware of your motives, thoughts, feelings and you can decide what you need to change.
Imagination: You can envision what you can be and do. Conscience: Listen to the inward voice that prompts you to do certain things. Develop it. Independent will: You can choose what you desire to do, and you have the freedom and the power to do it. Begin with the end in mind
Decide what you desire for yourself and the culture you would like to develop with your family. This vision is more powerful than any problems you may have in the past or present. Write down your vision in a mission statement and clarify your values, and principles.
Put first things first
Organize your priorities according to what matters most to you — in alignment with what you envisioned in Habit 2. Make certain your family has four basic systems in place:

• Selecting goals and making family plans;

• Teaching and training at home;

• Communicating and solving problems together;

• Completing tasks and disciplining within the family
Think win-win
Win-win is mutual benefit. Win-lose is authoritarian – “I’m right and you’re wrong; I make the decisions and you lose.” In a win-win family culture, difficult decisions can be made but they are not implemented in a way that violates the larger context of thinking win-win. Thinking win-win is at the heart of an effective family culture.
Understand, then be understood
Seek to understand what other family members feel or think – from their frame of reference – by listening with your ears, heart and mind. When you truly understand, then you can better explain your position or ideas. Listening and understanding is the catalyst that makes effectiveness possible.
Synergize
Cooperate and seek third alternatives that neither single family member could come up with on their own. Through a willingness to communicate, to understand and think winwin, family members can solve most difficult problems or create opportunities that could not have been achieved individually.
Sharpen the saw
Renew yourself and your family by taking care of your physical, mental, social and spiritual needs. Do not neglect these important human needs, or you will eventually pay the price. A beautiful family culture can deteriorate unless the batteries that give it its power are continually re-charged.
India is a beautiful nation with a rich history, traditions and legacy. Your families are at the heart of your nation – do not neglect your most precious resource.
I know with great surety that living principle-centered lives promises to strengthen us individually, in our marriage, in our families, in our communities and places of work. Stay true to your path and remember what matters most to you.
(Stephen R Covey, vice-chairman of Franklin Covey Co, is the author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’)

This article is taken from Sunday Times of India Hyderabad Edition 04.01.2009.

My New Year Shopping

The photos were taken at Mid-Valley Shopping Mall and I was there to get an Ipod Classic for my son as a New Year gift but there wasn't any stock at the Apple reseller and I didn't want to get it anywhere else and I guess I have to wait until after the first week of January 2009 for the stock to arrive.

The shopping mall was spruced up for Christmas and New Year as you can see by the pictures and the Christmas trees were lovely and the whole shopping mall had a Christmas atmosphere.

We had our lunch at the food court and after that I had to get a shorts for my son at Jusco and boy the cashier really pissed me off. Just because it's a holiday, don't tell me that the hypermarket wants to cut cost by running on a skeleton crew and we had to wait at least maybe 20 minutes to pay for it.

So what did you do today on New Years day?