 |
 |
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Importance of carrying oneself
When I was about to set off for my first consultancy assignment I was trembling within me. While I was doing my final preparation I got a call and was asked to come down to meet my CEO, Dinesh. He wished me and said, "I have full confidence on your skill level and knowledge, the trick for you to successful is to carry your self well".
This is one of the most important lessons I learnt. I grew up to live happily by taking a back seat and being below the radar. At school this was not an option on certain days, I had to do my part in spot light but university didn't do much good, through out the stint I was happy to be below the radar. So this was the mind set I entered the cooperate world . I am sure he had noticed that I preferred to sit at the back at meetings, bit afraid to speak in front of him, let my shoulders drop when in company of Seniors, etc.
I wanted to be successful in what I do and whenever I was about to cringe, I always remembered the advice and told myself "I need to carry myself if I am to be successful". For the youth bought up in western culture self confidence comes naturally to them, but for us Asians, we are brought up with the notion of giving exaggerated respect to others and eventually being very much backward and with lack of self confidence. Now I see people who come out of the local universities to have the same weakness, So for them the first step in coming out of a weakness is to realize and accept that one has the weakness, then you can work on it. btw I hope that he doesn't regret giving that advice to me ;)
This is one of the most important lessons I learnt. I grew up to live happily by taking a back seat and being below the radar. At school this was not an option on certain days, I had to do my part in spot light but university didn't do much good, through out the stint I was happy to be below the radar. So this was the mind set I entered the cooperate world . I am sure he had noticed that I preferred to sit at the back at meetings, bit afraid to speak in front of him, let my shoulders drop when in company of Seniors, etc.
I wanted to be successful in what I do and whenever I was about to cringe, I always remembered the advice and told myself "I need to carry myself if I am to be successful". For the youth bought up in western culture self confidence comes naturally to them, but for us Asians, we are brought up with the notion of giving exaggerated respect to others and eventually being very much backward and with lack of self confidence. Now I see people who come out of the local universities to have the same weakness, So for them the first step in coming out of a weakness is to realize and accept that one has the weakness, then you can work on it. btw I hope that he doesn't regret giving that advice to me ;)
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Every dog has its side of the story
At large when we try to analyse problems we look at it from our own perspective, we feel its right but at times we do not have the holistic picture. In decision making having a holistic idea of is very important. Also its important to acknowledge and empathize the fact that different people can and will hold different opinions due to the partial views that they had seen.
I came a across this video advert of guardian, which is an excellent rendition of what I was trying to explain using text multiple times and failed.
So next time remember that every dog will have its own story, including you and me, but doesn't necessarily mean that either one is right. Its just 'right' on the individuals plain of reference.
I came a across this video advert of guardian, which is an excellent rendition of what I was trying to explain using text multiple times and failed.
So next time remember that every dog will have its own story, including you and me, but doesn't necessarily mean that either one is right. Its just 'right' on the individuals plain of reference.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Google+ Page for Sayy's 365
My 'friends' Sach and Nee had created Google+ page for their blogs so out of curiosity I decided to create one for me too :-) Just to compare I created a page on Facebook too for the blog.
Interestingly they had linked Google Hangout to pages. Seems like we can do web casting through that to the community. Interesting development. Specially considering the fact that Google Hangout to be one of the most intersting tools to come out in recent times I am pretty optimistic about what the future holds.
If you are really bored and nothing else to do you can click and get the daily feed at your own risk ;)
Interestingly they had linked Google Hangout to pages. Seems like we can do web casting through that to the community. Interesting development. Specially considering the fact that Google Hangout to be one of the most intersting tools to come out in recent times I am pretty optimistic about what the future holds.
If you are really bored and nothing else to do you can click and get the daily feed at your own risk ;)
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Airport Questions
The cops at air ports have the peculiar ability to ask funny questions, ok the term funny might not be appropriate but since I have a limited vocabulary I will leave as it is. Today I stumbled on this Ted talk Hasan Elahi: FBI, here I am! | Video on TED.com about how the FBI picked up someone with a mistaken identity. Now I feel a bit better, if it is the situation in US, how can I be complaining in other places ?!
There was a time at which I was frequenting South East Asia and this very often than not I used to attract the attention of authorities and once I was arriving at a certain country well past mid night, badly wanting to find a bed and go to sleep. Inherently I had this issue of not having a place which I can call as home town, I had one city as my birth place, another city as my residential address and I was living in another city. This very often drew the curiosity of the officials and it was normal that they spent 'enough' time to 'understand' this. But on this day I was damn sleepy and the official was not in any mood to let me go, he was asking the same question set in different ways. At one point he asked me "why were you born in Jaffna?", this blew my fuse off, I replied, "How would I know, you need to ask that question from my mother". Now I am thankful that I was allowed to go after an hour of 'questions', looking at the TED talk I am sure I had been lucky! Specially this is even more blissful when you are treated like this at a place which you call as home!
There was a time at which I was frequenting South East Asia and this very often than not I used to attract the attention of authorities and once I was arriving at a certain country well past mid night, badly wanting to find a bed and go to sleep. Inherently I had this issue of not having a place which I can call as home town, I had one city as my birth place, another city as my residential address and I was living in another city. This very often drew the curiosity of the officials and it was normal that they spent 'enough' time to 'understand' this. But on this day I was damn sleepy and the official was not in any mood to let me go, he was asking the same question set in different ways. At one point he asked me "why were you born in Jaffna?", this blew my fuse off, I replied, "How would I know, you need to ask that question from my mother". Now I am thankful that I was allowed to go after an hour of 'questions', looking at the TED talk I am sure I had been lucky! Specially this is even more blissful when you are treated like this at a place which you call as home!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Android in a ........'s hand
There is a Tamil idiom which says ""குரங்கின் கை பூமாலை"" when directly translated it says "when a garland is in a monkeys hand". Today I almost felt like a step slower in evolution when I had a nexus google S phone in hand. Started playing it with and ended up playing with it for well over two hours. It was sleek, clean and it was clear that the touch technology had come to age when compared to the HTC Viva that I have.
Although it was not my phone I wanted to try the features so I added my gmail account to the market place and was happily downloading applications - mind you the free ones. It was nice and really handy, and wanted to show it to my sister who had decided to buy one of this. But at the end of the session I wanted to remove my gmail account from the phone to hand it back. I went around and around to remove it and ultimately found a place where the menu said remove account, but then it said - please go and reset factory settings to remove the email account. So I ended up re-setting the factory settings to remove the email account attached to the phone. I couldn't stop comparing how usual customers will ask for such flexibility in system to change accounts, user names and every other thing but even in the scale of Google, product do come with limitations and people shut up, buy and use it. All the power of being big or is it the power of positioning! But then on second thoughts I think its a move to be coherent Google's strategy to move to cloud based Chrome OS in near future.
Although it was not my phone I wanted to try the features so I added my gmail account to the market place and was happily downloading applications - mind you the free ones. It was nice and really handy, and wanted to show it to my sister who had decided to buy one of this. But at the end of the session I wanted to remove my gmail account from the phone to hand it back. I went around and around to remove it and ultimately found a place where the menu said remove account, but then it said - please go and reset factory settings to remove the email account. So I ended up re-setting the factory settings to remove the email account attached to the phone. I couldn't stop comparing how usual customers will ask for such flexibility in system to change accounts, user names and every other thing but even in the scale of Google, product do come with limitations and people shut up, buy and use it. All the power of being big or is it the power of positioning! But then on second thoughts I think its a move to be coherent Google's strategy to move to cloud based Chrome OS in near future.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Pretenders on web
The web is full of pretenders. Two of the best type of pretenders who never cease to provide humor to the reader are the Tamils who try to pretend to show them off as Sinhalese or Sinhalese who try to show themselves as Tamils. Both sides try their best to write with a pseudonym from the other community and they usually fail at some point.
Pitfalls of Tamils who try to pretend like a Sinhalese on the web
- A lot of them name them spell Sinhala as Singala or Singalese
- Spell chinthanya as sinthanaya, write Wellawatte as Wellavathai etc....
Pitfalls of Sinhalese who try to pretend like a Tamil
- In Tamil there are many dialects, so usually when they write they mix up the dialects
- Forgets the N at the end of Tamil names
- Use the term Yaapanaya instead of Yaalpaanam etc...
So next time you want to pretend please spend some more time and try to do a better job, Good luck!
Pitfalls of Tamils who try to pretend like a Sinhalese on the web
- A lot of them name them spell Sinhala as Singala or Singalese
- Spell chinthanya as sinthanaya, write Wellawatte as Wellavathai etc....
Pitfalls of Sinhalese who try to pretend like a Tamil
- In Tamil there are many dialects, so usually when they write they mix up the dialects
- Forgets the N at the end of Tamil names
- Use the term Yaapanaya instead of Yaalpaanam etc...
So next time you want to pretend please spend some more time and try to do a better job, Good luck!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)