Technology, Money & Questions

Confessions

2010-01-31T19:07:00.000-08:00

You leave me with no choice,
I really don't have a choice,
I love you.

When I watch you sleep like a baby,
I feel reborn, you make me forget all my past.

When you wait for me in the porch,
Sipping your coffee, counting seconds,
I wish more, you make me feel alive every time.

When we sit in our backyard,
shoulder-to-shoulder, watching sunset,
I talk more, not with words rather with my silence.

When you tell me how stupid I am,
For getting you the best pearl set,
I love you, I wish I could tell you.

I love you and I know, you love me too.
Why can't you give me a chance?
I'm waging a war, knowing for sure I'll lose.
You leave me with no choice,
I really don't have a choice,
I still Love you.

Take a breath and hold on!

2010-01-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

On an evening with blazing sun,
Painting the sky with jubilant colors.
I felt like a kid and I was full of fun,
That's when the sky filled me with its colors.
I let my mind fly high with my wings spread wide,
Over the mountains, sea and sky.
Don't you look for god anywhere,
For she is nature, present everywhere.

Yes, God is nature and we could sense her presence everywhere. Mother nature is amazingly beyond explanation with words. Even if we try our best with all our linguistic skills, we would still diminish her majesty. I'm not religious; I don't claim to be a great follower of any religion or ardent believer of any god. But, after all these years of living my life in this planet earth, I just can't shake the idea of a supreme power. Everything you see is beautiful, everything that is unadulterated by us - human beings, are indeed really beautiful. Right from the early morning sunrise to sunset to a night full of stars and ivory moon, everything is beautiful. There is nothing in everything and everything in nothing. We are always too busy to admire simple but beautiful stuffs around us.

One such beautiful natural event was last week's annular solar eclipse. Though the solar eclipse itself was pretty much interesting, what made it more intriguing was the way people reacted to it. There was anxiety, wonderfulness, strong arguments, altercations, finding out facts and what not.

On top of everything there is a subtle lesson to learn from this eclipse. YOU JUST CAN'T SHINE BRIGHT ALWAYS. YOU MIGHT FEEL SUBDUED AT TIMES, BUT UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS JUST TEMPORARY. That's what I heard the sun say to me on that day. It just applies to every one of us. It is not always clouds and candles for all of us, we all have our fair share of blues. Instead of whining about our temporary plight, we should believe our abilities and cross the hard path. We are not alone, we need not be. Reach for help, those who look for it, will get it. Take a breath and hold on dearly to your life. You will succeed!!!

Be HAPPY, It's more important.

2009-11-30T09:24:00.001-08:00

Whatever we do, wherever we are, we all wish to be happy. What is happiness though? After a strenuous thinking, I'm sure about one thing. HAPPINESS is not the absence of SADNESS. They are not opposites, you just can't say that someone will be definitely happy if you wipe out all the sad feelings from him/her. She might be happy or she might end up not feeling anything, just feel empty from inside. Why is it so important to understand this? Because, human mind is a intoxicating mixture of different feelings, often in disproportionate measure. You should be able to figure out and celebrate when you are happy.

Being happy is not just about the raw feeling of content, its much more glorious. Happiness can revitalize every part of your body and change your attitude towards life. To be happy is very simple, but to figure out what makes you happy might take a life time . If you are lucky enough, you can figure it out in a fraction of second, though. Just, ask yourself a simple question, "What would make me the happiest person in the world?"

Initially, the question will seem to be very simple and more simpler will be to get an answer. Some might say more money will make them happy, another might say that buying a house might make them happy and they might be right in a way, of course, everybody will be happy to make more money or to own a house. But, think about it, does making more money or buying a new house make you happy every single time? Do you feel excited to the same level as you were when you bought your first house when you are buying your second one? May be you might be, but there will be a big difference in the quality. First time, its an achievement. Second time onwards its an investment and it doesn't hold any emotional value.

If you wish to be happy and wish to feel the happiness, you should work on figuring out what really makes you happy. It is as equally important as being happy itself. You should know what gives you real happiness, not happiness just for the sake of it. Once you know that, being happy is nothing but doing the same stuff that makes you real happy, over and over. And I'm telling you, this time your happiness would not fade away over time. Rather, it will radiate ever so powerfully over time.

We all are moving very fast to keep up with the world running so fast and hence, have no time appreciate the small things in our day to day life. Though we actually know what would make us happy, we just pretend to know not and chase something else since the world is going behind it.

There is no single rule for everyone here. What works out for me, might not work out for you. Otherwise, we would have never had Gandhiji and Subash Chandra Bose in the same era. Don't take your life for granted. It's going be to only once and you should give your best to make it worth. You can do it only by figuring out what makes you happy. Once you are happy, no one can stop you from achieving your dream.

Happy mind is god's heaven. Don't neglect something because its too less of an importance to your career. There is a life waiting for you out there, get out once in a while and fly high with your wings spread wide.

Make your own future

2009-11-27T05:40:00.000-08:00

We always wonder looking at how our life has shaped up. When we think about our past and see the road we traveled, there will be many places we would like to go back and change the way we crossed it. If you don't feel that way when you look at your past, you may not proceed further. I guess you have figured out everything correctly in your life and your present is exactly what you wished to be your future, in your past. I'm very happy for you. In case, if you do feel that something had gone amiss and more so, your life is not exactly how you wished it to be, please continue.

We do not have control over everything in our life. But, certain things are under our control and if we mess with those, our life is gonna be doomed. All the big problems of our present life are the effect of many small stuffs we missed to do. I'm not talking about people who never got a chance to do certain things. I'm talking about people who missed the opportunity given to them. A person who did not concentrate on his studies during his schooling, for example. Someone who never got to go to school is entirely different.

Wherever we are now is not because of chance. Chances doesn't make your destiny, but choices do. You are whatever you are now, is simply because of the kind of choices you chose. Nothing is superficial or coincidence. Everything happened in your life happened because of some solid reason and most of the time your actions heavily influence them.

Think about it. If you fail in an interview, most probably you didn't qualify for their requirements. The reason could be that you didn't prepare well for your interview. Now the big question is, why you didn't prepare for your interview? There might be N number of reasons and one could be that you didn't have time. Now, why didn't you have enough time? This is a game that's not going to end now.

If you just think about it, you will get the bigger picture of what am trying to say. CAUSE and EFFECT, your past actions have influenced your present and your present actions will surely influence your future.

You did not land wherever you are because of some mere chance. That's an after effect of everything you did in your past. But still, I won't say that there are no other factors which might have influenced our life. There are, certainly there are. But what all I have to say is, don't ever leave certain things out of your control.

Dream your future and work hard to achieve it. Leave no stones unturned and no doors opened. After all, its your life. Lets not worry about the past anymore, anyway we can't change anything now. All we have now is our present and thus, our future.

Think about your future, see where you want to be, sketch a plan, see what needs to be done. Upgrade yourself, educate yourself if need be. Try to improve yourself so that you would be fit for your dream job. If you want to improve your financial condition, think what you need to do. Of course, am not assuring that there is not gonna be any deviation. Of course, there are going to be mishaps, unwanted situations, unnecessary efforts, but remember you have a plan now and with that its easy to know your deviation. It will never be a surprise for you anymore. At any given point of time, you will exactly know what you have to do to get yourself to the destination.

Remember one important but often unsaid rule of life, your present actions are the causes for the after effects you are gonna face in your future, majorly. Your future is not totally uncontrollable. Life is a journey, we can't foresee the entire course of the journey, but at least we have the liberty to decide our next big stop. And when you know where you want to go, it becomes easy for you to manage any sort of mishap.

Take proper action and control your own future. After all, its your life and there is nothing wrong to want it to be the way you wish.

Appreciate yourself, you are better than you think.

2009-11-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

I always believe in celebrations, however small it might be, one shouldn't deny the fact that celebrations do bring happiness. According to me, Life is all about being happy. Though, we have managed to set aside handful of dates every year for festivals and celebrations, the number is still very less when compared to the 365 odd days of an year. You should just grab every chance you get to celebrate. Because, celebrations helps you to rejuvenate yourself, redefine yourself and refine yourself.

Of course, its not easy to be happy always. Life is not very fortunate for everyone of us; we all have our share of hard blows. The will to live and survive every blow is what going to help oneself in the darkest hours.

We all try to give our best in everything we do. I know I do it, I also know that you do it, but do we really exceed the expectations always? It's a good question to ask ourselves. What do we do when our yield doesn't match our expectation?

I have observed people behave broadly in two different ways. Almost, all of us should have walked these roads for sure.

Play the pass-on-the-blame game:

Most of the time, we try to find some external factor to which we can attribute our failure to. It indeed does some good in a way, you don't get succumbed to your failure. Rather, it gives you an false protection which may not cover you perfectly from a much bigger blow. Mainly, it blinds you from the actual reasons and basically, you stop reasoning.

Whenever I give in to such a false security, I feel a burning sensation deep down my heart. Still, I don't worry about it much. Fear of self depravity. Suddenly, one fine day, it would be very obvious that I'm the one who faltered and there will be no turning back when I realize this. I'm doomed.

We all go through this phase in our life. This is not that bad when compared to the second scenario we're going to discuss now.

It's all because of me syndrome:

At times, due to over self-realization, we end up accusing ourselves in every first chance we get. When you are low in your self-confidence, every single simple failure will resonate in a high pitch scream within your mind and in no time you'll decide that you are good for nothing. This is the worst thing you can do to yourself.

When you do not reason with yourself, you deny yourself a chance to explain. This might have very serious implications in your actions and reactions. Whenever you start accepting blames without any reservation, you are doomed in no time.

The right way, in my opinion...

So, most of the time we either blame someone else or oneself for every single mishap that happens. When I think about this, I do see a problem in both of this approach. In both the cases, we do not give due appreciation that we deserve to ourselves.

Yes, you heard it right. I said, "You do not give yourself the due appreciation." Whether you fail or succeed, it doesn't matter. You should learn to appreciate yourself and give enough credit to your actions because you are better than you think.

If you happen to fail, instead of blaming yourself right away, first of all think about everything you did to keep up with the journey. Think about it. And appreciate yourself for everything you did. When you think about everything, you will be very clear about what went wrong or what you did not do properly or where you actually missed your course.

Life is hard, we struggle a lot to keep up our pace with everyone else. We might stumble here and there, it doesn't mean that we are out of the journey. We might be a bit late, but still if we are persistent enough we can make it with the lead. All we need to do is to throw some goodies at ourselves from time to time so that we do not wither away.

Teachers

2009-11-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

"A teacher should pour out his soul into every one of his students and should water his students as if they are the last surviving plants in the Universe."

Teaching is one of the highly acclaimed and noblest profession on the face of the earth. Teaching is such an important profession because teachers shape the future of a society and thus, the country itself. In my opinion, teaching is a little more than any job available in the market; teachers do not only work to earn their living, they also carry a moral responsibility with them. They are not only responsible for their students academic education, they truly hold responsible for the moral and ethical values of their students. Of course, its their job, isn't it? Once you start your schooling, you spend one third of your day at school and that's where you pick up most of your values and belief system.

A good teacher [Of course, everyone of them out their in the teaching profession are good, at least, all of them are good at heart] can easily mend their students at their will. Students will follow their teachers if they really like them, if the teachers really mean something to them. But, tell me earnestly, how many such teachers have you had? In my almost eighteen years of schooling, I could recollect and remember only three such teachers out of ?!?!? I leave the math to you guys. So, why do not we get quality teachers?

As I said earlier, teachers should not work only to earn their wages. They have to look beyond that, they should understand the kind of responsibility they hold in the society. But, I'm not sure how many teachers out there actually appreciate their work. Most of the time, they end up teaching only because they didn't get anything better to do or simply with a notion of leading an easy life. Blimey, how in the heavens can shaping up a child for a better future could be a simple job?

Teachers should understand their himalayan responsibility and wholeheartedly dedicate themselves for the cause. In the very first place, they should know how to lead the students. Students are like a herd and they need someone to guide them. They do not need some i-only-do-it-for-money junkie.

How many teachers actually upgrade their knowledge to keep with up the changes happening out there? Of course, many of them, but still for a country like India, many is not too many. We need teachers who can motivate students to do great things; teachers who can inculcate humanity into the young generation; teachers who can improve the creativity of their students; teachers who can imbibe morality and ethical principles to whoever they teach.

If education helps us to be civilized, teachers should help us to remain human as much as possible.

"When god created humans, everyone of them were good people. They did not have any problems between them. When time went by, a group them separated themselves and called themselves the bad guys. This two group fought with each other eternally. And then, good and bad people started living together. They were not two different groups anymore, they became more cunning. But, now-a-days, every human being personifies both good and bad qualities. They are not totally bad or totally good. What they feel defines what they are at that moment."

In this 21st century, I believe, teachers have a greater deed of infusing more good qualities to subdue the bad guy within every human. It's the job of the society and the government to give all the sophistication to these noble professionals. What say people?

A lonely old man

2009-11-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

I'm here, lying in my bed,
I'm really old, with no hair in my head.
The day comes to an end, the sun so red,
I'm all alone, lying in my bed.
I don't know why am not yet dead,
I'm really old, with no hair in my head.

Lessons learned from Mr. Harry Potter's story

2009-11-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

I'm an avid reader and a great fan of J. K. Rowling's master piece "Harry Potter Series". I should say that I re-invented my reading habits through J. K. Rowling's books. According to me she is the next best imaginative person to Leonardo Da Vinci. Of course, no one can best Leonardo Da Vinci. I should write a separate article on him, now back to the topic. I don't think we need any introduction for the Harry Potter series. So, I'd right away get into what I want to write here, the lessons I learned from reading the Harry Potter series.

1) You are what you are because of the choices you made. Chances doesn't dictate your destiny, rather choices do. When it comes to proficiency in magic, Tom Riddle, the Villain is as good as Dumbledore, the teacher. But Tom Riddle chose to be the bad guy, very simple.

2) If you are gonna wait for you to be prepared to act, you are going to wait forever. Because, you are not gonna be fully prepared at any point of time. We age daily and with that, we improve our knowledge base too.

3) Do not be judgmental about anyone. Prejudice is preposterous. Keep your opinions nimble enough to change them at will if necessary.

4) Find what you are best at and try to work on improving it. Know your strengths, more than that know what you are weak at.

5) Give everyone their due respect. No one is inferior to any one. Everyone have their fair share of dirt with them and all of them are as good as anyone else.

6) Always do your best to help others. It is the best happiness you can earn yourself.

7) Stand up to fight for everything that is worthy enough. If you do not stand up for yourself, probably you are not going to stand up for anyone or any other thing in your life.

8) Love your friends as much as you love yourself. And learn to forget their misdeeds because no one is perfect in this world, including you. Always give them a chance when they come back and buy yourself a chance when you need it.

9) Always try to keep your head on your shoulders. Do not let your attitude rule your mind. Think before you act. Never let your principles die, because they maketh what you are.

These are the nine golden rules I learned from my much favorite Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

My Love, My Pain

2009-11-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

If I've known, If I've known,
Flowers are such a beauty,
Rain brings more happy,
Being in love feels so lively,
I might not have been late
To say you, how much I love you.
Only, If I've known.

If I've known,
How much I love you, or
How much you love me,
I might have saved our love,
From the treacherous evil,
I let out as a question.
Only, If I've known.

If I've known,
I just cannot die, without
killing my "you" in me,
I just cannot live, without
holding "you" in my hands,
I'd have killed myself - when
I was in my mother's womb.
Only, If I've known.

Don't go away, Never go away,
Too far is not very far,
For a heart racing behind you.

I still hear you breathe in me,
I smell you wherever I go,
You are safe now, so as our love,
For I treasure both of you,
In a golden chamber in my heart.

If I've known, If I've known,
How much I Love you...
Only, If I've known...

Our education system kills creativity

2009-11-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

I just can't imagine I was once a kid with unwavering doubts and questions almost about everything. I'm pretty much sure that you were also a child with curiosity and eagerness towards every simple thing life threw at you. Why wouldn't you be? Our thoughts were pure, our ideologies were not skewed, we had a really broad acceptance range; mainly we all had a burning curiosity that is not judgmental and we're not afraid of being wrong.

I've always marveled this peculiar characteristics of children, the ability to come up with an answer never worrying about the relevancy towards the context. Indeed excellent. Though we surely know the child wouldn't know the answer for a question, we still ask. Just to marvel the beauty of the child's handy work.

It is the annual day celebration of Sophie play school. Three kids, dressed up like fruits, slowly ascended the stage with a timid look on their tiny fish eyes. The first kid wore a bright yellow banana dress, the dark red apple dress made the second kid ravishingly beautiful and the third one had a plump orange dress. Too afraid of the crowd, they tried to stand as close as possible in vain because of their larger than life fruit costume. All they have to do is to speak two lines about the fruit they depict. Mr. Banana is slated to start first and the bell rang, yes that's the cue.

Mr. Banana took a step forward, looked at the crowd, smiled and happily said, "I'm banana. I'm very yellow and I'll make you a strong fellow."

Next it is Mr. Apple's turn. Panic struck him as soon as he saw the crowd. For his surprise, he felt good after a couple of hard minutes. He let out an audible sigh and said, "I'm Orange. I'm round like a ball and I'm good for all." Everybody laughed and clapped, which made Mr. Apple very happy without realizing his mistake.

Of course, Mr. Orange is in the line of fire now. Mr. Orange could not fathom what to do next, it's his turn and his friend spoke his dialogue. Poor boy. He moved forward, saw the crowd and loudly said, "I'm Apple, but orange in color." and looked at Mr.Apple, "I do not remember his dialogue." The hall was deafeningly silent and later everyone broke into an hilarious laughter after grasping what Mr. Orange had said.

This is what a child can do, face the situation without any fear of being wrong. As we grow up, we lose this ability because of our education system. Our education system teaches us how to be correct all the time and we get our due punishments every single we are wrong thus creating a mental block of aversion towards being wrong. We miss something terribly important, if there are no mistakes, there would be no new inventions.

All the education system around the universe advocates similar kind of preference over the subjects. Almost everywhere, Maths gets the highest priority followed by Science and then other subjects. Irrespective of the place or culture, mostly, art comes at last. Even in arts, music and instruments is preferred more than dance and drama. Why is this disparity? Is this what our current civilization wants?

All these education systems are the outcome of the Industrial age of the 19th century. The education systems prioritized its curriculum mainly based on the available demand for the knowledge. In the industrial age, Maths and engineering skills were in very high demand and hence, the importance for this stream. In the 19th century, all you need to get a job is to have a degree. If you had a degree, still you were unemployed, it just meant that you did not want the job.

We no more live in the industrial age, the requirements and demands have changed, but our education systems are not reflexive enough to grab the changes.

We are in a high state of "education inflation". With more and more people graduating year after year, college degree and the traditional subjects lost its value. Education system is designed based on the needs of the industry and the current information industries requirements are multi-fold. We need a change, a change for brighter future of the next generation.

Why don't our education system teaches dance as the way Maths is taught? Creativity and intuition are equally important now. Education system should not preempt the children, rather they should nurture their creativity and help them to take it to the next level.

Amazon web services - Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud - EC2

2009-11-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

Amazon provides several services over web and one among them is Amazon EC2 - Elastic Cloud Computing - Infrastructure as a Service. Amazon EC2 is a web service that enables you to launch and manage server instances in Amazon's data centers using APIs or available tools and utilities.

Using Amazon EC2 you can deploy hundreds of servers within minutes and you can also reduce your number of servers as easily without any hassles. And the best part is, you will have to pay for only what you actually use. Yes, Amazon charges these services on hourly basis. The main advantage in choosing Amazon EC2 is its support for instance types of various configurations. You get machines with configurations as small as a PC to a machine which can host a heavy database server. Also, you can enable security restrictions as per your requirements.

With Amazon EC2, you no more have to put endless hours of chewing enormous amount of data to figure out your peak usage. Also, you are relieved from investing a huge chunk of your capital investment in provisioning the hardware infrastructure. You are now at the door step of an enormous transformation in the computing world. You can provision hundreds and thousands of servers in no time during your peak hours. Also, you can just get rid of those extra additional servers when you are no more in need of them.

Moreover, you get complete control your virtual PCs in the Amazon EC2 cloud. Once you create your instance in Amazon EC2, it is certainly like your pretty plain old traditional host. You will given root access to it via SSH on Unix based machines or Remote Desktop for Windows machines.

Most important, the Amazon EC2 is built on top of a highly reliable environment. Also, you can distribute your instances over various availability zones in order to keep your service up. In this case, the failure in an availability region will not affect other regions. Individual regions are well engineered to be insulated from other failures.

You have a variety of instance types to chose from. Different platforms configured with multiple vendor products. Everything at a very cheap price. No matter what, Amazon EC2 will be boon for small and medium sized players in the information industry. They surely need not worry about the capital investment needed to build their hardware infrastructure when Amazon EC2 can provide the world class infrastructure at very affordable price.

Amazon EC2 allows you to configure your security firewalls as you need them to be via web services. All your transactions and data transfers between your EC2 instance and the cloud are encrypted. Your machine in the Amazon cloud can't be anymore endangered than when it was physically present in your organization. And when it comes to vendor durability and reliability of service, the ability to survive depends totally upon the monetory base of the vendor. I do not see any reason to worry with a big player like Amazon.

Verdict: Amazon EC2 is a real good deal.

Five reasons why YOU may not have enough MONEY

2009-11-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

By the end of every month, if you end up thinking that you do not have enough money then this one is probably for you.

1) You are not earning enough MONEY, it is just that. If you do not have enough in-flow of money, obviously you will not be left with enough money.

2) You are living above your means. By that, I mean your lifestyle. Your expenditures to maintain your highly sophisticated lifestyle goes well beyond your monthly cash in-flow.

3) You are not frugal in your expenditures.

4) May be, you are in a deep debt trap. Chunk of your monthly income goes towards your debts.

5) You have not started your investments to build assets which will get you money and make you wealthy.

What should you do increase your MONEY in-flow?

1) Start leading a life with expenditures controlled well below your means.

2) Live frugally.

3) Do not depend on only one source of income. In this information age, there are a lot of different opportunities available to establish a passive source of income.

4) Pay off your debts. Prioritize your debts, concentrate on one debt at a time and pay it off fully then move on to the next one. By this way, you would be debt free in fairly less time compared to paying some of all the debts every month.

5) Understand your cash flow pattern, take full control over it and avoid unnecessary expenditures. If there is a flaw in your cash flow pattern, no matter how much you earn, you will still be in need of more money.

6) Learn to pay yourself first. Start investing at least 10% of your monthly income.

No body would want to work all their life time to see paycheck after paycheck. Make hay while the sun shines.

learn to say a NO, it is equally important

2009-11-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

Alwyn started his day very well, with high spirits. He had properly planned the tasks for the day as he does everyday. He started with his work and never cared to keep an eye over the time. He was totally engrossed in his work, when his telephone rang in a very high pitch making everybody around him to look at him sheepishly. Embarrassed, he picked up the receiver and he didn't expect the caller to be his manager.

"Alwyn, can you meet me in my room in another ten minutes?"

"Sure, Naveen. I'll be there!"

He put the receiver back in its place and started pondering about why his manager would want to meet him. Anyway, he walked over to Naveen's room.

"Ah, Alwyn. Come on in!", greeted Naveen. "Nothing serious. I'm just wondering, will it be possible for you to prepare the annual transactional document for Irvin & co before you relieve for the day. Is it okay?"

Alwyn, thought for a moment and it didn't take a long time to understand that its a laborious task. "I already have a lot of stuffs to do, and this is such a time consuming task. It's already 12 noon now. Its highly impossible to finish it off by evening. I should tell him that it could not be done", he told to himself.

Alwyn looked up at Naveen, thinking of saying a no but said, "Sure, Naveen. No issues."

"Good Alwyn. I'd really appreciate your efforts. I'll catch up with you in the evening."

"Sure, Naveen." Alwyn came out of the room wondering why he does this every time. He cursed himself for letting himself to fall into the same old trap once again. He knew, there are no other options available now. He has to finish it off whatever it may take.

The ability to say a NO when it is highly appropriate has a tremendous impact on many a things in one's life . Lets take Mr. Alwyn's case. Alwyn is very good in keeping up time, a goal based, career oriented, high spirited person. Alas, he is an I-Won't-Say-A-No maniac. Though he has many good qualities, his inability to confront people with a denial doesn't allow him to be what he wants. It doesn't takes a genius brain to understand his problem. All you need to do is to sit back for a while and think about it. You are sure to find a bit of yourself in my friend Mr. Alwyn.

Being bad at saying NO is an universal problem. Every single human being around the globe faces this issue and those who master this specific skill always have a clean conscience and a better lifestyle.

Time to hit the grapevine. Read carefully.

Why do most of us hesitate to say a NO?

Because, we are human beings and we've been accustomed to live in a society. The answer is just that simple. Remember, more often we say "yes" to someone in order to please other person. We do it many a times in a row, we increase the expectation of the other person and also, with that the dependency level. And one fine day, we may not be able to do it and we will feel guilty, leaving the other person fuming over us. Both of us will suffer.

Why is it important to say a NO when it is necessary?

1) You should be able to stick to your plans, goals and strategies.
2) Helps in better planning and finding out alternate solutions.
3) Avoids eleventh hour surprises.
4) Helps in establishing proper expectations.

How and when to say a NO?

1) Be polite and explain the reasons properly, but only if it is necessary. You need not explain yourself to every one.

2) If the other person is persistent, so you be. Be persistent and polite.

3) Analyze and understand before you respond. Understand the implications, and the amount of work involved before accepting a schedule.

4) If need be, ask for some time to do your homework. Its no bad to spend some time before hand to come up with a proper schedule.

But, saying a "NO" is not always possible. Yes, you heard it right. You may not have the liberty all the time. So, what would you do then? Just accept it, say "YES". But make your stance very clear. Make sure, the other person understands that they owe you one.

Our actions contribute only a 10% of whatever happens in our life, rest whopping 90% happens due to our reaction. So, think before you react.

Expiry Date

2009-11-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

"Okay, honey. I gotta go. I've a very big day tomorrow. I love you, bye!", I ended the call with my girl Natasha and sheepishly looked at the watch. Oops, I did it again, the time is well past 3'O clock in the morning and I'm gonna be royally screwed tomorrow. It's okay, after all work-life balance is more important, isn't it?

Suddenly, I felt an urge to go for a walk. Of course, not the best of an idea when you have an important consult meeting with your client. But, its 3 AM in the morning and I've this early-morning-idiosyncrasy, I just won't get sleep now. Oh, its not that I wake up everyday by this time. I just won't get to sleep that easily if I get to bed in the late hours of the night. And with all the consult meeting and stuffs, I'll really get hyperactive and wouldn't sleep in the end. So, I decided to take an early morning walk to the park in my neighborhood and I swore myself to be back in half hour.

The park is very near to my house, just about 5 minutes of walk. I locked my room, very much unnecessary. Even, if some burglar manages to get into my house, he would pity me and leave something for me. I do not stay in the same place for a long time or rather, I do not get to stay. Either I'd have to move to some other place because of my work or there will be one or the other reasons to move on. Not sure whether I fabricate those reasons, never tried to analyze them anyway. love something new every now and then.

I slowly strolled along the side of the road towards the park and got a glimpse of two or three stray dogs looking at me devilishly. I often laugh at people when they say that they're afraid of stray dogs. Now I see it very clearly. The dogs really seemed to have greater impact in the deserted road with deathly silence.

I should have brought my jacket, I could feel the chillness in my spinal cord. I envied everyone who is sleeping in their cozy bedrooms. I had a weird feeling of someone following me for quite some time now. When I turned back, I'm totally appalled by seeing my company, one of the stray dogs. It's eyes were glowing like red hot iron and I don't know whether it has any plans of tasting my blood. I had to beg myself not to run.

I started to walk briskly when already I reached the park. At least, the park is well lit, one less thing to worry about. I decided to go around the park once and leave to my room. The park is full of tall trees and the moon light formed a wonderful silhouette, just picture perfect. Just like my Natasha.

Natasha, we have been dating for the past one year. Thanks to my friend Ramya. Natasha and Ramya were colleagues. Natasha, is just perfect, a girl of my liking in each and every bit. I have felt many a times that we're indeed made for each other. Thinking about Natasha made me very happy as it had always been from day one.

But, something is not quite right for the past one week or so. We have been fighting a long time, of course its a part and parcel of being in a relationship. But, we never fought this much in our more than one year stint of togetherness.

I'm thinking about our last conversation over phone. It started off very well with a default discussion about our respective work day and slowly the talking drifted towards our marriage. Of course, I'm the one to start it. I wanted to get married , I do not wish to waste time any more. I knew that she is the one for me, and I'm pretty much sure that she also feels the same way about me. But still she is not yet ready for the big decision. So, I picked up the topic, she said no as usual and we fought for god only knows how many hours. Its 4'0 clock now and I felt very sleepy. I walked back to my room and just crashed in my bed.

I woke up on time in the morning, did not care for my breakfast and rushed to the office. It's a real big day. Suddenly, its seven in the evening and I'm not yet done with my work. My phone rand and went silent for the third time in line. I was cursing whoever invented the mobile phone and suddenly it doomed on me that I had dinner plans with Natasha. I told her that I'll pick her up from her office. It was her, she had called me thrice and I bet you that she is already waiting for me. I have no other choice, packed my laptop and started running to the parking lot. I called her on the way, she didn't pick my call as expected.

After a considerate amount of effort,I convinced her and we went to our favorite place for dinner. All went well until I asked to marry her.

"Ratheesh, I do not understand why would you want to get married so soon. I just can't imagine getting married now, we're together for just over an year and I've not got settled in my job either."

"Natasha, listen. For gods sake, I'm 29 years old now. Don't you think that your argument is quite baseless? I never told you to quit your job. All I'm asking you is to marry me."

She just gave me an disapproving look. And neither of us spoke for the rest of the dinner. Well, at least it was peaceful. I dropped her, reached my home, finished off my pending work and dozed off. The next morning I got a call from Natasha. She has got an opportunity to go to UK for an year and she has decided to take up the offer. Bang!!!

Just then I realized it. We're already in the expiry date of our relationship. That's what all the fuss is about. Great, didn't I tell you, I just do not get to continue with anything for a long time. Within a weeks time I bade her good bye and we parted away as good friends. Of course, I like her a lot, but I like this change too.

Why enterprises have difficulties towards adopting cloud computing?

2009-11-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

Though cloud computing promises a lot of meaningful cost savings, most businesses are not adopting cloud computing even though they recognize it as a viable option to reduce up-front and ongoing costs. The basic idea behind the cloud is not having to care who, where or how the service is provided. This totally contradicts to what large enterprises are used to for a long time now, total control over everything. The CIOs of the enterprises are used to ensuring that everything is done properly. The fear over security and loss of control over data and systems is the main reason which hinders the adoption of clouds at enterprise level.

Data Security

Data security seems to be the first and foremost concern for the cloud users. But then, data security in the cloud is no different than data security at a remote data center. We need to think about one important thing, Do you really think Amazon is more vulnerable and in-secured?

The main reason why clouds seems to be more practical than ever before is because of the giant players we have in the market now. For instance, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud - EC2 offering allows customers to provision hardware infrastructure on need basis and it allows them to configure the security restrictions on their own terms.

The big cloud players - Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems, Salesforce.com - practically know a lot more about maintaining the online security and, considered their effectiveness, worries about outsiders knocking off the security firewalls and having their way with users data indeed seems to be a over kill.

Another major worry across enterprises when it comes to adopting public cloud is "control over the data uploaded to the cloud". This is indeed a legitimate worry. What if the company's strategic plan is accessible in a public cloud? Catastrophic. All that we need is clear policies, and then we have to educate employees about the proper usage.

Directly attack the concerns and that's the way to vanish them.

Secured Log-on

Currently, with many of the cloud providers - log-ons are way-too-primitive. It will be very difficult for large enterprises to embrace cloud with out significant improvement in this end. This is something every cloud provider should take into serious consideration. And from the enterprises end point, they should only permit data to migrate to the cloud where two-factor, strong authentication is in use. When enough of the cloud users cry for safeguards the cloud companies will have to respond.

Durability of the cloud provider

Another main concerns for the cloud users is the trust over the cloud providers and also, durability of the cloud provider. What if my cloud provider vanishes from the market without any prior intimation? How easy it is for me get back all of my data? Most importantly, is is possible for me to port all of my cloud resource to some other provider? These are some of the lingering questions. Of course, this needs to be answered right away. If you are giving up your IT infrastructure, you need a reliable service provider.

It is better not to deal with such questions in such a early stage. Go with cloud providers who have the financial means to be in the game for a long time.

As a final note, it is not all or nothing. It doesn't have to be. Just consider whatever you can move to the cloud without compromising your security needs. That's the first step towards adopting and preparing for a big change. We are still in an era of experimentation. But understand one important thing, cloud computing is not a buzz word anymore, its happening and learn to harness its benefits.

The answer for the following question explains everything:

How will you eat an elephant? Just one bite at a time. Start your little steps.

Learn a new word every day

2009-11-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

The best innovation of the past century

2009-11-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

Of late, I was thinking about the various inventions and innovations of the last century. Human race have achieved a lot in the past century when compared to the further past. I can even say, the past century as the magnificent period in the history of human race. We have learned a lots about nature to science to psychology to particle science to medicine to what not, a great deal about everything. The last century had given a great leap forward, at the same time, in the other side of the coin, we have seen the worst inventions of the human race as well. From nuclear bombs to biological weapons to AIDS to anthrox to the worst of all, GLOBAL WARMING.

So much has happened in the last hundred years, and it seems to be really difficult to comprehend what has conspired out of those inventions. Though there are numerous inventions, some of them have really made a huge impact in the human life and have paved the way for a new civilization in its entirety, like the first discovery of fire, the design of a wheel etc,.

If I've to pick up one such invention, it would be nothing else but the COMPUTER and I believe you all will accept it. Of course, the computing machine is THE INVENTION of the past century. It is just like fire and wheel, it had changed everything and everything has changed so fast, in the blink of an eye. The invention of the computing machine have just laid the foundation for the rest of the wonderful things that happened over time, actually in no time. Like, the internet, then the World Wide Web to everything else and thus we entered the INFORMATION INDUSTRY.

Now, nothing gets done in the same way as it used to be. Electronic mails replaced post cards, people no more go to banks to transact, people buy stuffs over internet, they even get all their professional work done from home and still get paid for their work. Geographical differences are no more considered as differences at all, we are absolutely in a GLOBAL VILLAGE.

Though several new technologies developed over the internet platform, only certain technologies marks the milestone. According to my opinion, one such technological product offered over the internet, which really gave access to the tons of information available across the globe, which really bought the entire world at your door step, steals the show. And it is none other than, GOOGLE - a name that replaced the word SEARCH officially.

According to me, Google is one of the best innovation of the past century. Of course, there are so many other important innovations like VIRTUALIZATION, which changed the way we utilize our hardware resources. But still, Google stands very close to my heart - not only because I use almost every time I need to get some information, mainly because of their intellectual work towards making the world's knowledge accessible just with a click of your mouse.

A brief introduction about GOOGLE:

Mission

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Founded: 1998
Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Incorporation: September 4, 1998
Initial public offering (NASDAQ): August 19, 2004
Headquarters: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

Can you just imagine a whole new world without Google? A world without google, would be like huge book without an INDEX. Very difficult. Don't you agree that GOOGLE is easily one of the best innovation of the past century?

Learn a new word everyday

2009-11-02T09:32:00.001-08:00

Venial [vee-nee-uhl] - pardonable. From Latin venialis 'pardonable'. From venia 'forgiveness'. Related to Venus.

eg: A venial sin is less severe than a mortal sin.

Be... Do... Have... - The perfect way to achieve your GOALS

2009-11-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Most of the times, we believe that if we HAVE a certain thing, we can actually DO certain other things and BE a different or better person. Do you really think this mode works? Just think about it.

To be frank, most of the times this whole ideology backfires. We end up waiting to have that magical edge which will help us to be what we want to be. Of course, we do try our best but still we're not there yet most of the time.

May be we should just see how this model works to get clarity over the topic. For example, I've always thought that I'd invest some money every month, only if I'm earning a few thousands more. I do seem to get a salary increment year after year and still, I've not started my investments. Very typical of me. But, only until I realized my mistake.

Another classic example, people always say, "I'd go to gym regularly, only if I get to come home a little bit early". But, how early is actually early? It doesn't works out this way. Never! If you are waiting for something to happen on its own without your conscious effort, I'm telling you, it's not going to happen.

What we need is a shift in our perspective, not some magical moment. HAVE something, to DO certain things and BE what you want is not perfect. Mainly because it contradicts the natural flow of events. You need a strong correct cause for some expected effect to happen, without that nothing would change. If you want different results, then you will have to do things differently. We cannot expect a drastically different result with no change in the actions.

So, what we really have to do is to move from this HAVE...DO...BE model to BE...DO...HAVE model.

The crux is, believe that you already are what you want to be and do things that way. Finally, you will have that magical moment you always wanted to have. Take our first example, if you want to invest a certain amount of money every month, just start doing it. However less money it may be, just put it aside. Only when you do that, you will really know your financial situation and only then you will think about how to improve financially and more importantly, you will analyze your cash flow pattern. So, once when you start saving some amount of money monthly, without you knowing it, you would start doing things differently.

Suppose, if you want to be the best lecturer of the world, just believe that you are the best lecturer and start being one. Think like the best, and in no time you will start doing what the best will do. In no time, you will have all the qualities you need to be the BEST.

Your actions are the scientific children of your thought process. Your thought process provokes your actions. You are what you think, your mind takes any shape you insist. So, concentrate on your thought process and see tremendous difference in yourself.

Learn a new word everyday

2009-10-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

Learn to pay yourself first

2009-10-31T06:15:00.000-07:00

If you wish to attain financial freedom, the first and foremost technique to learn in the game of money is to pay yourself first. Doesn't matter how you earn your main source of income. Be an employee or self employed or business man, the source of income doesn't matter. All that matters is, how much do you pay yourself?

Ironically, I do not mean how much you spend by saying how much you pay yourself. To be specific, I'd say, "How much do you pay yourself for your personal investment towards building your assets?".

If you just take a moment to think about this, you will see what your eyes can't see in the game of money. It's all about how do you manage your cash flow. Typically, what most of us do? We pay everybody else first and then we think about us, am I wrong?

Lets take a typical example - A salaried employee, "Mr.Xyz" who earns a handsome amount every month. Now-a-days every salaried employee holds a credit card, very typically, our Mr.Xyz also owns one. Also, Mr.Xyz easily managed to buy a house in a somewhat-to-be-prime locality of the city with a very little down payment, thanks to the very altruistic banks. Mr.Xyz says, "At the least, I'm going to save on my income tax". Truly false notion, Lets talk about this later. Suddenly, riding his bike seems to be a tedious task for Mr.Xyz. Here he goes, "What's life without a car? Lets get one, next years salary increment will take care of the monthly EMIs". Well done!

Mr.Xyz seems to have a content and secured life for somebody who does not know anything about him. That's not the reality. In reality he is no where near to being wealthy. Let's take a look at his cashflow.

Mr.Xyz gets his salary every month, after tax deducted at source. And then, he transfers a major amount for his flat's EMI and then comes the EMI for his car. At last, he has to pay his credit card bill. So now, he has to plan how he is gonna manage the next thirty days with the remaining amount.

Do you see what's going on in here with our Mr.Xyz? He has no investments towards assets, all that he holds near to him costs him very dearly. As I said in my earlier posts, an asset is something which brings money in. But, Mr.Xyz has built a lot of liabilities, with very less or no asset. Remember, as soon as you take up a debt you become an employee for your debt. There are always at least two financial statements for every transaction, more so here. Mr.Xyz's house is a liability in his statement, but an asset which brings in a lot of interest in the bank's statement. You are working hard to make someone else wealthy.

So, think about it guys. If you have any small interest in attaining financial freedom, then you have to take care of your cash flow. If there is a flaw in your cash flow, irrespective of how much ever money you may earn each month, the hole in your money management will drain all of it. You're left with no other choice than to work for many more years to come.

Follow the rule: Pay yourself first.

Pay yourself every month for your investments towards building assets. Live frugally, well below your means. Avoid unnecessary debts, improve your financial knowledge and improve your chances of being financially independent.

Do not work for your debts, rather let your assets take care of your financial needs and you follow your heart to achieve your passion.

Charity

2009-10-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

It was a very sunny day. I saw a little girl in the traffic signal selling ear buds. She never asked me to get one and I did not intend to so. Rather, I was lost in my own world of worries about poverty in my country. Suddenly, I was forced to come back to reality, the traffic started flowing like water taking lead in every direction. I searched for that gal one last time out of empathy, and I was amazed to see what she was doing. I saw her sharing her afternoon lunch, a slice of bread, with a stray hungry dog and in that moment, I realized what charity means

The Gold Standard - A past where currencies had real value

2009-10-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

Gold had always held its superior place through out the history of civilizations mostly because of its rarity blended with its purely superior properties. It is hard, yet malleable enough to hammer it into a really thin leaf. Ancient Egyptians were very good at hammering gold into really thin leaves, it took 3,67,000 leaves to make a one inch pile. Even in the very early civilizations, people had made jewelry and other ornaments. From the Mesopotamian civilization to this 21st century, people around the world are still mesmerized and go behind gold. Very convenient, not sure whether we've got anymore place left to dig for gold.

Gold also served two other important purposes:
1) Gold as the currency of a nation - gold coins
2) Representative currency of a nation - currency backed by gold

Those countries who started using gold as a currency had hit the wall in no time because of the limited availability of gold. Most of the countries also used silver as a medium of currency. Nevertheless, all of them realized the fact that all these limited natural resources cannot be used for something very fluctuating in demand like currency. So, the majority of the world countries started to adopt the Gold Standard.

Enough with the introduction. Now, What actually was the GOLD STANDARD?

An economy which backed its paper currency with gold was said to follow the gold standard. In such an economy, at any given time, people can redeem their paper currency for gold.

To be more precise, the paper currency derived its value from the gold reserve. A country under the gold standard would set the price for gold, for example Rs.1000 for 1 ounce of gold. This effectively sets the value of the currency; as per this example, 1 rupee would be worth 1/1000th of an ounce of gold.

Advantages:

1) Since the actual currency is backed by equivalent gold, the government cannot go on a printing spree or rather the cash flow in the economy is controlled by the availability of the gold reserve. This normalized the inflation in the economy over a long run.

2) Introduced the first use of formalized exchange rate in history. The exchange rate under the gold standard monetory system is determined by the economic difference for an ounce of gold between the two currencies.

Disadvantages:

There were actually more disadvantages than the notable advantages brought by the gold standard.

1) Because of the limited availability of gold, a country on gold standard cannot take control on the fluctuation of demand for currency internally.

2) A gold standard severely limits the stabilization policies the Federal Reserve can use. For example, most economic recessions can be mitigated by increasing the money supply into the economy. When the currency is backed by gold, a limited natural resource, no stabilization activities could be done.

3) Inflation or deflation in the economy solely depends on the production rate of gold in a particular country.

Luckily, soon after the revival of the Great Depression the world countries realized the flaw in the system and moved out of the gold standard. Now, none of the major countries follow gold standard. Still, gold is one of the main commodity every country keeps in reserve and humans are still fascinated by this precious metal.

P.S.
I could not even imagine how USA would have handled the recent economic recession if it still followed the gold standard. How many tons of gold they should have had in reserve in order to print 1.7 trillion dollars? Can you imagine?

Fiat money - currency with no intrinsic value

2009-10-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

Majority of the countries in the world have the fiat money system in place. The currency of such countries are not backed by any commodity [like gold or silver]. Fiat money any country as such is worthless without the backing of the government of that country. Fiat money is the legal tender according to the government decree of collecting taxes and other charges. The value of the fiat money is only backed by the confidence of the people over the government as well as the other financial institutions those who accept the fiat money. The value of all the commodities in the country fluctuates purely based on its demand.

Since, the fiat money is not actually being backed by any commodity, the federal reserve of a country has enormous control over the monetory condition of its country. During economic recession a country following fiat money system can ingest more cash flow in to the economy in order to help in the recovery.

In the recent recession time, the US Federal Reserve have printed 1.7 trillion dollars and pushed into the economy literally backed by nothing. Ever highest in American history. What does this actually means? The purchasing power of the US dollar is actually reduced because of this very high liquidity.

The fiat money system has its own intrinsic difficulties. Since, the countries are allowed to print as much paper money as they want, there is a very high chance for HYPER INFLATION if proper regulations are not in place. Hyper inflation is the terminal stage of any fiat currency. Hyper inflation is often the result of increasing regular inflation to the point where all confidence in money is lost.

In a fiat monetory system, the value of money is determined by the confidence. Usually, fiat money loses its value when the government which acts as the issuer refuses to further guarantee its value.

As long as we've got strong monetory policies governed by the federal reserve, backed up by the government, the fiat money will continue to have its value.

Take control of your own future

2009-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

"A person without any goal travels to an unknown destination." I'm very sure that you would have heard that several times in your life in some way or the other. But the crux remains the same, a person with properly set goals has his niche.
Setting goals gives full control over one's life. I personally do not believe in becoming "something" by chance. Whether we accept it or not, we're always swirling in the cause and effect motion.

Think about it baby. Would you attribute chance to what you are now? You might say "Yes" and say, "I would have been something else if I've got that chance." Wait a minute, don't fool around me - you did not get that most wanted opportunity only because of something you did not do.
You cannot attribute chance to something more transparent like that.

Your present is the effect of what you did in your past and your future will be the effect of whatever you are doing now. You decide the fate of your future - most of the time. And most of the time we do not do the right thing only because we do not know what's the right thing is.

Ignorance is bliss, but its only as long as you are ignorant. The simple answer to such a big problem is to visualize your future and set goals to yourself.

1) Come up with a vision for your life. Your vision should really be broad enough to accommodate all the twists and turns your life might bring to you. For an example, your vision might be: "I want to be a BILLIONAIRE in another 25 years" or "I want to form an organization of at least 50000 employee in my country". Whatever you might consider to be your ultimate achievement.

2) Now come up with a long term goal that aligns with your life's vision. A long term goal is what you want to be in another five years down the line. Your long term goal needs to be pretty tangible and also, your long term goal should help you in achieving your ultimate vision. So, you might have to do a bit of homework before settling down for one. Gather information - the most important. Know the means to achieve your mission.

3) Come up with a list of short term goals to achieve your long term goal. Since your long term goal is tangible, it will be easy to come up with a list of short term milestones. Short term goal is something you can finish off in a three to six months time frame.

4) You can even break down your short term goal and come up with list of ultra-short term milestones. The whole idea of the process is to be informed about what you've to do.

Be informed about your future, so that you can be prepared.

Now, all that you have to do is to stick to your plan. Of course, there will be deviations, but at the least now you have your route map. Do not worry.

Achievers do not believe in luck and they do not achieve by chance. They always knew what they want to be, and they concentrate on what have to be done. If they happen to achieve something else on the way to their ultimate goal, it is just a by-product of their hard work. Take control of your present actions and thus, take control of your future.