wordcreates's posterous

05 · 23

5 ways to overcome the petrol rate hike

Okay did I say five? I said it because there cant be just one way to solve human problem. And moreover the tutor in the social media workshop told me to use numbers in my headline to attract more attention. Honestly there is only one way to overcome petrol hike which is not to buy it. Well that is a dumbass kind of solution and you will not take me seriously.

I want you to spend more time reading this and at the end feel good. The last think I want people to say of me is "here is another cheater!!!!' so i will surely give you the best solution.

First way.

Assume that you are a person who is already careful about using your car or your two wheeler. You dont make casual trips or detours and you dont use your vehicle for short distances. So you are a conservative person already. How else can you save on petrol? Think of 4 days a month and call it a no vehicle day. Now you try going to your work place with a combination of walk, bus/train and auto. Make sure you use minimum auto. Try to make 4 days into five days and you can do a maximum of upto 7 days a month.

Second way.

Set up a nice home office environment and convince your boss that you will work from home. Try to do this 5 days a month .. but start small 2 days and then move it up to 5. And make sure you really work hard and make your boss happy and make them beleive that its well worth it.

The above two ways are good but you still have to go to the Petrol Bunk pay money and fill in gas. Now here are 3 more solutions, before you read them I want you to stand straight. Now look down. Do you see your legs? These two legs that you see has unlimited stock of energy they are like a two petrol tanks that will never go dry. Please use them.

Third way.

Buy yourself a good cycle and cycle to office atleast 5 days a month. This is real good.

Fourth way.

Buy yourself a good cycle and cycle to office atleast 15 days a month. This is ever better.

Fifth way.

Buy yourself a good cycle and cycle to office everyday . This is the best. By doing this you will not only save money on petrol but also on medicines. Cheers

Dont curse the petrol hike. It makes us think.

05 · 03

KING OF BOOKS

Here,take it.Kept for you" said the king of books

opening his draw,bringing out one of his newly arrived troops

few moments down, watching the little one scamper away

he felt happy,having made someone's day

From Salad Ceaser by Venu Menen

01 · 29

TO DO Trap

If there is one thing that can put in chains and dump you in the darkest dungeon its the TO DO LIST. It quite funny when we look with hope of our future and decide that a set of tasks needs to be done and sit in the present and work that out. How often have u hear people talk high of a planner, the one who plans for the tommorow, chartering his life course skillfully avoiding all the mishaps and storms, sailing through. He is governed by the TO DO LIST and the future that is not in his control. His mind is filled with possibilies of rewards and dangers.

Well there are those who are committed to the present, and we are not concerned about that.

There are those who walk the earth free and rather die to give up their freedom, no chains can hold them. They care not about the past, or the present or more so the future. Yet they would want to do whatsoever they are mandated to do. They go about doing and what they need to do goes about happening. It looks like their entire being is one, their mind, their hands, their feet all function as a single entitiy. If the mind were to pull them away from the mandated task to seek pleasure their hands and feet will rebel, they combine and harness the mind towards the desired goal. It would seem as the they have deeply ingrained their mission into every cell of their being.

Well science will say its embodied cognition. When you are in love, passionately, the emotional areas in your brain is overworked, it secretes what is called the Dopamine (feel good chemical) every time the image or thot of your lover crosses the mind. A regular secretion of these feel good juices in the brain actually makes you happy and elated and you want to think more and more of your lover. When the intensity of the thought of the one whom you love goes beyond a point the messages get transferred to all other areas in your body. That is when you realize that you want to live and live for that guys sake. You are completely immersed in love. Whatever your body does it does it with him in view. Sexual arousal is a result of this. Sometimes this arousal takes over the entire responsibility from the brain and starts thinking and acting on its own - this we call lust. When the noble dopamine rush is replaced by pleasurable orgasmic juices. The feeling of elation nevertheless.

When one is committed to a task, be it wanting to have school or restraunt or farmhouse or write a book, you actually engineer the entire process to proper planning tools and go about the task in a systematic manner. This must be the undergirding, with out this your desire will soon diminish. But is that all ? is it merely doing those things that need to be done to reach your goal? Such engineered, mathematically precisioned tasks works on a time frame. Unforeseen happenings are inevitable and the time stretches but never shrinks. Time stretching or shrinking is again a factor of ones own mind. So how does one actually work on this ?

Evolution is the key. You have to comprehend, what is called the 'sexuality of ideas' , when you actually take an idea and passionately get involved in it that it actually has an intercourse with your being. Well in simple terms we can say you have to be emotionally aroused by what you want to do. Sexuality, we know takes its course, when the 'seeds' are sown then the fertilization the embryonic implantation and then the growth begins and eventually the appearance of a new life.

So a robust sexuality of thoughts and ideas is the reason why you find some moving towards their goal, with that orgasmic smile willing to take on an challenges. Its because thats the only way they can be. To be efficient, even at their weakest hour. Such people are not governed by the TO DO LIST thats all within them, all those lists have been written in scroll and chewed up. They are just Doers.

01 · 28

Responding to The Hindu Ad campaign

While Iam critical of this latest The Hindu campaign directed against the TOI, I see a lot of people with positive reactions here are some I found in facebook

The Hindu's ad campaigns are EPIC!!!
i must say ....they gave it right to The Times of India :P

this is so awesome.. i had to share it again. cant stop laughin! :D

Smart advertising by "The Hindu" in answer to TOI's ad... But I read neither of them ...

Super Cool Nethi adi By The Hindu.

Obviously most of them havnt thought through before responding. Wonder how The Hindu readers can react this way. See the language used. I people are going gung ho about this campaign Iam sure they dont read The Hindu or they dont read at all. Chances of these people becoming TOI readers sooner or later is very high.

Round one for TOI

01 · 26

The Hindu Times of India war at chennai

And have your back taken off...............

I just saw the 59 sec Stay ahead with The Hindu commercial on Facebook... and I am appalled.

Monumental Blunder. Casuality List Candidate. Thats what occurred to me when I saw the commercial. it is weak and flatter than the flattest beer. i joined TOI way back in the late 80's when they were shedding their OLD LADY OF BORIBUNDER image to become a girl in skirts. Mr Samir Jain was the one who orchestrated this entire image revamp. The ideas, the imagination, and the resources they invested was mind boggling. They pulled all the stops and the campaign addressed the working of the organization, not just the cosmetic aspect. TOI did all this under the sesquicentennial banner (150 yrs) and it was out of the world.

30 yrs have gone by now you have this campaign my The Hindu. Did I say the TOI campaign was orchestrated??? Well then The Hindu campaign can be just a DOG WHISTLE compared to it.

The change of guards in The Hindu, I assume, was the reason for this silly set of videos. What have they done?? I can’t understand??? I am sure some simple minded people rolled out this strategy. Pardon my outpour on this. I am a hardcore Hindu reader and i was proud of the paper for holding its nerve and for not being blown away by the market forces. Now its all over. TOI will respond and they will respond in such style that you will reminded of the half burnt papers newspaper strewn on the road the morning after the Diwali fireworks carnage. Why did The Hindu even dare to take on TOI on its strengths?

The Stay ahead with the Hindu should have stayed as a Vision statement for employees to press on with purpose . Now they have muddied it in the market slush. MOUNT ROAD MAHAVISHNU are you trading your divinity for money and fame. RAM RAM RAM...

01 · 25

Management Lessons from the Indian Team

The current Indian Team has probably got the best players. But they are washed and white washed so badly in Australia that as an Indian I feel utterly humiliated. Humilited not because we are weak, its because we are strong and yet playing such bad cricket. Contrast this Indian Team which is wealthy and comfortable to the Pakistani Team. The Pakistani Team has been accussed of match fixing that it reached a point that two young players were jailed. Then the bomb attack in Karachi and Pakistan cannot even play in their own country anymore. The IPL, worlds richest league, boycotted all pakistani players. Imagine a time like that torn to shreds and brought down. Yet they perform, in a neurtal venue last week they pasted the talented English team by beating them by 10 wickets.

Now this is something that we get to see staring in our face every day in our work life and yet we tend to believe what ever gives us comfort.

1. Past form or experience has no place in the present.

Time and again it has been proved beyond doubt that one cannot rest on ones laurels. The minute you think our existence for long years give us the depth of experience to take on the challenges of the present you have lost the plot. So what about experience? How does it help?

Experience is useful only if it teaches a human being to be selfless and bold. If experience were to make a person proud and haughty and give him/her a "I know everything auro" then like a two edges sword the experience factor can be self defeating.

Good experience managers or leaders are willing to do what they have to do even if it were to hurt them. They are commited to the cause or the organization. If they have to give their head to the guillotine block they will first to do it. Do they fear professional death? not at tall. In fact they beleive that nothing can bring a man down, there is always an after life. They also know that by them laying or willing to lay down their position they send the right message of boldness to the team.

Now look at the Indian Team, we have venerated players of yore like Sachin, Dravid, Laxman who are good and continue to be good in all respects. But can they become better ? Their reservoirs are more or less dried out. Yet they want to hang on. Why do they do this? They have shut their eyes and do not see the present. They are blind to the talented players who are waiting in the wings with immense potential. Cant they just pass on their experience to few of them and sit at the side and enjoy them play?

2. Comfort Kills hunger

When comfort sets in the murderous rage (kolaveri) to take on challenge diminishes. They talk about reaching the pinnacle called 'self actualization' in Maslows pyramid. The closest I can get to the meaning of the word SELF ACTUALIZATION is vegetable patch. Most people get so comfortable as they make money, they keep improving their lifestyle and pay no regard to their life. Then they reach of imcompetence and try to run their life by flashing the best cares and clothes and parties. They call themselves accomplished and then sail across to the end of time.

The Indian players including the respectable ones, allow themselves to be traded like commodities. They would not mind it as long as their bank account bloats. As some point in time these players have earned enough to take care of their entire life with out working. What drives them further is a mystery? The only thing that probably gets on the field is their hunger for publicity certainly not the love for the game or money.

We need to be challenged constantly for the juices to flow. Leaders will not look for challenges to happen they will constantly challenge themselves for they know that without challenge there is no learning.

3. Strong People are not strong.

I have told the story of the Vinayaga and Kathekeya race to many audiences. Before telling the story I always give the the scenario of a thin strong guy and a fat flabby guy getting ready for a running race. I pose the question who will win and the obvious answer is the Thin strong guy. We all know what happened the Fat man won the race.

In most organizations the so called strong senior people are the ones who do the least amount of work and create the most amount of confusion. The low paid staff at the bottom of the pyramid tireless and silently perform most of the work and keep the engine running.

Successful organizations acknowledge this and make sure the ones who really work are provided with the right climate for them to work. In fact they understand the power of the weak. This is probably the reason why most Indian companies and homes keep the Vinayaga statue upfront.

01 · 25

Facebook and Low self esteem

The first thing I read this morning was a Facebook post by a friend on Low Self esteem of Facebook. They specifically call it the Facebook Depression and then the article goes on to quote some study of sorts. It looks like a carefully crafted press release by a bunch of retards. Check it out here. LINK

There was very smart friend of mine who was very proud of her low self esteem, she was quite pleased about it since it pushed her to do many things to over come it. Thats when minds eye opened too. When I analyse the non facebook users I find them to have abysmally low self esteem or depression or they are plain simple idiots who think highly of themselves. On the whole they come out as unimaginative and boring and as the sort of people who blow dark clouds where ever they go.

Now as I am writing I realize that for me Facebook or Twitter and blogs actually make me think and make me accountable to a group of people on an hourly basis. Yes I love feedback and more eyeballs, but certainly I dont want to write for that sake. The red dot indicating that someone has responded or commented on my post doth excite me. But then I sit and wonder how a red dot that was used by my teachers way back in school to indicate disapproval of low performance of disobdience has today become a blotch for excitement and endorsement. I wonder how times have changed the meaning of colors too.

01 · 22

To Gnana Vidyalaya with Anu

Anu called me up and asked me if I can arrange anyone to train some teachers. I put up a facebook update and within minutes 3 of them responded. But then this girl vanished. She did not respond. So on Thursday evening the responsibility fell on my shoulders to do the training. Friday we spoke briefly but nothing about the training as such.

Anyway I agreed so on 21st Jan 2013 morning we left to Thiruvellore to go the school. On we way to school we caught up with some stuff on what to be spoken.

The training session went on well. I had a bunch of Teachers, all of them were women, who gave full attention. The two men who came and sat quite detatached went away. Actually Iam glad they did for they did not seem to want to capture what I was talking about. The response was good I must say.

Now when Anu told me she does not talk in public, though she is comfortable one on one, I dint want to believe it. She spoke of her aversion to microphone, strange girl aint she? There are ppl who grab the microphone and dont want to let go and here is someone who does not want to hold a microphone. Well thats not the point, I liked the way Anu was effortlessly candid about it. This actually opened up the way for some interesting conversation on various issues, and not a minute did we find ourselves in silence.

Seriously a person who has language skills has to be sharp on the cognitive front. Strangely the ones who are good on languages take this point casually, not knowing how tough it is to acqure a language. She also shared with me how she learnt in English while in school ... I was mighty impressed. Fluent in Hindi, Tamil, English and also can handle Kannada and Malayalam.... boy she now has to know what she is.

My suggestion to her was to take up reading as a habit to improve processing and sequencing skills. Surely she can touch and giving to many lives. Her language skills and her candid talk with sprinking of honesty can endear her to any audience and take her places.

To me it was a weekend well spent.

01 · 22

Felix Chandran and Hannah Lauvanya

Today (21st Feb 2012) two of my friends got engaged to be married. I met Felix through a friend of mine -Vinod Simon - and met Hannah at the Social Media Meet up for the first time. After that may be twice or thrice I had met her, yet I cannot say that she is an acquaintance because of the interactions I had with her on facebook.

With Felix I could talk just about anything. So when he picked up his new bike I actually took and challenge with him. I gave him 6 months to get a girl for himself and if not the bike needs to come to me. Well I knew that Felix is not the kind of guy who will go around trying to get a girl for himself that was what I was relying on. Well this guy is so obsessed with and photography andf other creative pursuites so where will he have the time for a girl? I mused.

But then a little bird once came and told me about this the Felix-Hannah affair, I did not take it seriously and in fact I completely forgot about it, till he blurted out one day that he has got a girl finally and that he is serious about it. Two simple questions, and I got to know it had to be Hannah, but respecting Felix's privacy I did not want to probe further, hoping that he will tell the name. Apparently for some reason, I reckon it must be general shyness the young lovers suffer from, he never mentioned the name and he left hanging in a limbo.

I decided to use the power of facebook. Its like this if you go into facebook with something concrete in your mind and want some confirmation you are sure to get it. Those little comments and likes will let the cat out of the bag. I really dont remember what I saw on the comments side but I had my confirmation. What actually nailed it were the photographs of Hannah. I saw a lot of pictures wonderfully taken, skillfully color corrected and casually uploaded. Dude you have spent a lot of time with those minute details with the girl and that was a huge give away.

Dont I sound a bit like Holmes? Now its confirmed. And I wait for that day for the horse to neigh the name... Hannah Hannah... and then one day the Man did it. Over a phone call he quietly he broke the news, he uttered the Hannah word just once and with a bit of wobble in his voice. I pulled his leg and cracked some jokes and after 30 minutes I patted my self on my back and said "Benny ur good u have sluethy qualities"

Though I havent seen Hannah and found her to be light hearted, pretty and attractive. There was a time I used to enjoy the friendly banter she used to have with Prashanth and Vinay. Dunno who got exhausted the guys I assume.

I hope both these beautiful hearts and minds will build a great union that will help many lives. I also hope that they dont get sucked in the religious feel good stuff.

Congrats guys. Stay blessed

01 · 07

My wishy washy 2011

I have been through 53 christmases and new years. As a child I had those regular fun times... putting up christmas tree and gifts and new clothes and goodies to eat etc... we then as the Bee Gees sing "But we're tall and christmas trees are small..." Maybe its those years that have rolled by. But looking back I felt anyone gently handing over a wish for a Birthday or New Year made me a little uneasy..... yes I did respond with the same lines adding a Thank you to it. I have tried escaping from this 'wishy washy' activity but alas iam too much into it.

Just when I thought i have sidestepped I have realized that the most unexpected of people utter those wishy lines.

Well this year I responded with most of those wishes by saying " hey I take the hint " and then I look at a puzzled and often disappointed face. I say WTF and laugh it off and respond with the customary and expected response. Its a pain when you have respond to mails, texts messages and facebook updates. But then this year I decided to write a nice customized stuff to a friend of mine, who actually interacts with me on a regular basis on many life issues, I poured myself into it, dealt on somethign called 'polar pairs' and sent it as a PDF ... by mail. Maybe its what I did made me expect too much out of it. But trust me it was a whimper. I was delighted when I got a call to say how wonderful the gesture was. That made me want to believe that - i would rather have some one who could rip my entrails out after reading what I have written than have some one view it casually and give those warm fuzzy words. MEANINGLESS I felt like screaming .. That was my start for a 'Wishy washy 2011' . I need to really work hard to reverse this disappointing start.

These wishes that you get is an indication of the people around you. If you get more of it and you get submerged by it... either you are successful, rich and popular that you have attracted hoards of simple folks all around you who feast of the sugar candies of life. But if you dont receive any then you are either a recluse, a complete loser, economically weak that you havemanaged to keep away the sugar candy varies in a distance. Let me join hands with Fernando Pessoa and say " I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory"