Sunday, October 28, 2007

My Little Masterpiece


As always, Musical Instruments allure me a lot wherever I go and so does puzzles. This is a proof of that. I went to a nearby mall here yesterday with my friends. When all my friends were into some shopping spree to get winter clothes and Halloween things, I stood near a small shop which had a coverage of all wooden 3D puzzles. They ranged from a small ant to a huge dragon and a massive dino. I spent around half an hour trying to choose a puzzle and analyzing how would be the outcome of each one of those.

Aha...! There was this one which caught my attention - It was a beautiful Eiffel Tower and I was about to grab it. But, my heart said, Wait! you have something else to choose...Go left and see. I went to the left side and saw a combo of Piano and Guitar. Nevertheless to say, I din't even waste a minute to think about it. I grabbed it and went to the counter to pay.

The guy over the counter asked me 'Do you play instruments? You seem to be interested in these rather than the ones like Eiffel Tower which people generally buy'. I replied 'I don't play Musical Instruments although I love to and that's the reason that I got these'. He said 'I'll give you a discount of 7$ for this..Please take it'. I said 'That's nice of you. Thanks!'

After coming home, I started constructing it yesterday and I couldn't believe that I spent 2 hrs 30min to complete 25% of it and devoid of patience, I gave up :( I restarted the construction today but couldn't complete. I approached my little friend (a 3rd Grade school boy) asking him whether he would be able to help me. He was so excited to see that and we both started from the scratch again. After spending almost an hour, we couldn't get clues on how to finish the Guitar part and kept it aside. Few people came and tried but everyone lost patience and finally gave up.

But me and the small kid started with the Piano part and when we were about to complete 50% of it, one of the parts which we built, broke apart and we both were looking at each other with a sad face. I cheered him up saying...Come on! It's not our fault. Let's fix it and complete the rest!

We spent another 1hr 20min to complete the whole Piano part with stitches on one of the broken piece. To be honest, my role was only 25% but that kid finished it to make it evolve into a masterpiece... Yeah, I am talking about this cute little masterpiece in the photo!

I liked it and kept it in a safer place. Hats off to the Junior Geek who helped me in making this!!! You might not be able to visualize why am saying it's tough and took so much time unless you actually plunge into doing it.

Hmmm...What next???? None other than trying out the enigmatic Guitar tomorrow. Will post a blog about it depending on how it comes...Wait and watch! And I'm going to get an appointment from that same boy for making this tomorrow :):)

Saturday, October 27, 2007

The 'TIME' Factor

Time is precious. All of us know that. But how many of us have given time to think about it? I have heard from most of the people those whom I know, telling these words - 'I don't/din't have time to do that'. Sometimes I held that position of saying those words. I happened to read an article about time and it was delivering simple concepts about time. Although I have read many Time Management articles and I was following a few strategies sometime back, I figured out that I am out of focus on that factor now. Writing a blog might induce me to focus on it - This is what I think now.

We come across a word called 'Deadline' everyday (most of the times @ work) When you come to know about the 'Deadline', you can see people around you telling 'It says deadline is xxxx but we can deliver it after 2 days...' I don't know then why they have mentioned it as deadline then? :) Then why there's a time factor in everything we come across? When you want to buy something in a shop, it says shops are open from this time to this time. Will you go after the specified time? That's foolish, isn't it? Then slipping a deadline is also foolish at times.

The best example of time factor would be a Wedding ceremony. When the invitation says 'Muhurtham at 7:00 A.M' and most of them who want to attend it will be office goers and as a well wisher they would attend it and go office from there directly. But the Muhurtham might not start at 7 exactly as the invitation cites...Because the Bride/Groom will be in the Beauty parlour. When 1000s of people have invested their time to attend this, people behind the arrangement and the ceremony should think about managing time. I'm not saying that they shouldn't go to the Beauty Parlour but they can plan well in advance and save time for everyone's good. Although it depends on the parlour stylist, when you insist to do well in advance, it won't get tardy.

Reiterating those words from the first liner of this blog, when a friend can call you to get some job details for applying in your company or details about taking GRE, the same friend might not have had time to call when you fell sick or when you tied a nuptial knot. It shows selfishness. But people give variegated reasons for that and the one hearing at the other end is not a fool to believe it all. Think about it!!!

When people like Jack Welch, Indra Nooyi, APJ can juggle many roles and be successful and manage time, why can't we? Although I agree to the fact that success and time go hand in hand, not only the great people whom I have specified manages time. I have seen few in my daily life about whom I would like to tell. Within 24 hours, if the following two people can manage time and life, why don't/can't we? A necessity to be indulged on this thought, I guess.

These are the two:
A lady Manager who juggles her roles as a Business Woman, Wife, Mother, Fashion Designer, Blogger, Vocalist
A House wife who manages a day care, a grocery shop, private tutoring and also being a wife and mother taking care of all needs

These two might not be Nooyis, Mazumdars or Bedis...but they have the same capacity and ability as them. I believe that!

Invest time in
What you like to do and what your heart says
Friends, Family and hobbies

Drive time as you want it and achieve what you want but don't waste it! Because, time once lost is lost!

That's about it...Any comments/criticisms are welcome :):) Have a great weekend ya...

Monday, October 22, 2007

Dust Ur Gray Cells - Results


I thought of posting the results later this week. But few of my friends couldn't wait to see the answers. Hence am posting it now itself.

Take a look at the pic. It's the animated version of Ryuta Kawashima and the whole pic is that of my Nintendo.

You know wat?? When I came to know about the answers after trying hard and giving up myself, I was like Sh..! I missed this easy one!!! And I am sure most of you are going to say those same words after checking out the answers. I admit that it's a bit tough!

Here are the answers:

EAR - Everyone's Audio Receiver
CHESS - Chessmate Hates Every Stupid Square
DEW - Dawn's Early Weather
DOG - Devoted Owner's Guardian

Howzaattt? I don't want to end my post like this but would like to give a tongue twister which I tried with my 8 year old friend Srikanth yesterday. We had fun and I swear you'll also enjoy!

Here it is:
She sells sea shells at the sea shore.

Try telling it fast and you would end up like 'See shells she sells at the she sore'. Funny, isn't it??? Ha...ha..ha...I tried once again now and POOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH! Cudn't get it right! :):)

Sunday, October 21, 2007

EOY

EOY - 'Entrepreneur of the Year' has been announced and it went to Mr.Clint Severson. Why did he get this award? A sneak peek here...

How many of you have gone to Hospitals/Clinical labs to take your blood test? I'm sure almost all of us did. But we had to get a pre/post blood test before/after having some food, rite? And we had to wait for a day/two to get the results. But Clint made an elegant machine to work to get the blood tests quickly. The machine is held by a company called Abaxis. Abaxis is a medical device maker in California. This toaster sized machine runs a battery of blood tests in minutes and patients can get the right diagnosis before they walk out of the doctor's office.

Installations have raised from 200 to 1000 in the doctor's office in America earning $5 billion a year worldwide for blood chemistry. This is what sources say. Let's wait and watch the growth of piccolo machine.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dust your Gray cells!

It's been a long time that I trained my Brain...I am not saying this! Dr.Ryuta Kawashima said that when I made my first try on Brain Age in my nintendo. In a way, he was right...:) Then, I made it a point to train my brain atleast once in a day and now am addicted to 'The Brain Age' and keeping my Brain alive!!! :)

This is how it started...It's a game of numbers, word scramble and sign finder! I have never lost more than 2 keys in a sign finder...It's basically a song that's being played in a guitar and you need to identify the keys when it plays...My passion towards Musical Instruements prove this...ha...ha...But ironically, although I like vocabs, I always maintain a bad status quo in Word scramble getting the lowest score. After doing all this, RK (Ryuta Kawashima) will give your Brain age and the ideal age for solving it!

On my first try, my Brain age was 68..which means my brain is like the one of a 68 year old...That's bad...and the ideal age for it is 20! Man, I was surprised to know my brain was too weak. But now it's improved by practice and training to meet the ideal age and hit at 21! It's 5yrs lesser than my age...All these comments are from RK and not me.

It's indeed interesing and a way useful! Do you want to dust your gray cells like me? Then go and grab a nintendo and Brain age game card?

If you are interested in knowing who Ryuta Kawashima is? Do read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuta_Kawashima

And my nintendo is charging now! Am going to charge my brain with it once its done!
And here is a sample game for you to explore and answer! It's called Acrostics.
Acrostics is forming a word from each letter of the given word giving a relation to the actual word. For ex.,

GO - Get Out. You are abbreviating each letter and giving the meaning of GO by your abbreviation.

Try out these and let me know your answer and I'll post my results! Don't google, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to find the answer.

Here we go!
1. EAR
2. CHESS
3. DEW
4. DOG

Will post the results of this acrostics and a photo of my cute Nintendo next week. Ciao...

Friday, October 12, 2007

PDP - An (R)evolution???

Yipppeeee....Finally, PDP has shaped into a perfect one to roll into my blogboard and arrives here...

A month back, I told my friends that I have started writing an article called PDP and my friends were like - Wattttz tat??? But I dint even utter a word of wat itz all about.

Here is the prologue and the gist of first chapter to begin with :)

PDP - I call it as 'People Development Praxis' and I am not the sole owner of the word. I and one of my friend coined these words for a poster competition. The idea behind the poster and its creation - I was amazed at it! Without a theme, we came up with this idea. Because of copyrights, I am unable to put the poster here. The crux was 'People are the backbone of an organization's growth. How to develop them to achieve the success point?'

Depicting this is not an easy job and making people understand it by looking at the poster was a real challenge. But what the masterminds behind the creation did and grab the first prize? Here is how...

Transforming a simple idea to our own theme...We, the Indians celebrate a festival called Pongal and in villages, there used to be a game where bunch of guys stand like a pyramid and the guy at the top has to hit the pot which is packed with colors and flowers. It's not easy as you see, but people around will be pouring water on him and the pot will be moving and there is no balance by standing above. With all these difficulties, he has to hit the pot and he will. We took this idea and related it to an organization's success. The pot is our target/goal and the bunch of guys are the people in an organization.

And we had the tagline as 'For the People/Of the People/By the People' and a small flow chart saying
'Leading by doing! - Presence--> Action --> Transformation --> Consistency'

Still I love seeing it whenever I get a chance to log into my ipod. Kudos to my friend Kasturi for being with me to bring a great idea into action!

If I get a chance to drive ideas like this, that would be the most exciting thing for me.

And what are we going to discuss in our first chapter - Daring to decide???
When you want to decide on something, your heart says 'Yes' but your mind says 'No'...What will you do?

Wait for my next blog to read more...

Thursday, October 11, 2007

UC (Unleashing Creativity) - Answers

It's good that I got atleast one response. Kudos to Sriram! You are not only a great singer but also a sports freak like me :)

Here are the sports personalities that found their corners in my collage.
1. Roshan Mahanama
2. Daniel Vettori
3. Javagal Srinath
4. Michael Jordan
5. Ian Thorpe
6. Sania Mirza
7. Goran Ivanisevic
8. Shaun Pollock
9. Mark Philipousis
10. Ricky Ponting
11. Chris Cairns
12. Anjum Chopra
13. Brendon Julian
14. Shawn Michaels
15. Justin Henin
16. Saqlain Mushtaq
17. Kaka
18. Gabriella Sabatini
19. Graham Thorpe
20. Maurice Greene
and
21. Alonso

Rushing to play tennis. Catch you all in my next blog!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Health is Wealth! - Series 1

In this fast pace world, most of us don't care about our health. I am not an exception in this case. Only when we are affected, we put ears to what others advise us on how to improve our health. Spending huge amounts is one part whereas the pain is other part...Both are nerve crackin'!

I have seen some of my friends who are very conscious on their health but still are affected by small health problems. And I always wonder if for them it happens, then there's no surprise if people who doesn't care about their health will be affected. None of us realises the importance unless something wrong happens.

One of my friend Shobana (we call her as 'Health Guru') has been suggesting me to write something about health and hence here I am blogging one :) Since I am not a physician or a health guru like Shobz, I don't have a creation of my own. I have taken copyrights from her 'Health tip of the day' and posting a series every week consolidating hers. Thanks Shobz!

Here is the first one to go! -'Facts & Fallacies about Dieting'

FOR most people it is all too easy to put on weight and the most likely reason is that you are eating too much of the wrong sorts of food. Here are some of the common fallacies about fattening foods.

Fallacy: Grapefruit will burn body fat.
Fact: Grapefruit has been the main ingredient in several "miracle" reducing plans. It's a fine food, with relatively few calories and plenty of vitamin C, but it does not bum fat. Unfortunately, no such fat-burning food has yet been discovered.

Fallacy: Bananas are fattening.
Fact: Compared with an apple or an orange, a banana has more carbohydrates; yet the average banana has only 60 calories. A medium apple or orange has about 50 calories.

Fallacy: "Sugar-free" foods have fewer calories than those with sugar.
Fact: A product can claim to be made without sugar (sucrose) yet be loaded with other kinds of sweeteners that have about as many calories as sugar. Corn syrup, molasses and fructose are all high-caloric substitutes. When you buy something that says it has been made without sugar, check the list of ingredients and compare the calorie count with a similar product made with sugar.

Fallacy: Your stomach shrinks as you diet.
Fact: When you diet successfully, you get used to eating less food. Your stomach stays the same.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Unleashing creativity!!!


Sports being one of my favourite area and with an experiene of participating in collage competitions, here is my post with a blend of both - Collage of my favourite sports personalities. As I have been watching cricket and tennis from my ninth standard, one thing is obvious - This collage of mine should contain more sporting legends from these two genre. Yeah, it does...:)

Take a look at this collage and throw your hoopla to find the names of these people. Let me see who's going to win this ;) I'll post the results next week.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Chinnanjiru Vayadhil...

With a title in Tamil and the details in English, here is my next blog of 'The Soprano' (I could have given this as the title but dint find it the most appropriate though :()

Amidst a deluge of soap operas shown in the 'Idiot Box', variegated bunch of Music and Dance shows are also being targetted nowadays. And, none of us can deny the fact that the media is bringing out great talents in each field. I couln't even imagine the number of good singers growing day by day. Not only I check them out @ TV Shows, but also in the blog world. This is increasing my apetite for Music. Like the sitemeter, if I create a meter for checking out the singing talents, I think the mammoth total would even make the sitemeter to blow up :)

Few days back, some of my friends who were inclined to all hiphop, pop types were talking about the American Idol and 'Jodin Sparks', whilst some of my desi friends were discussing about the Indian Idol and 'Amit Paul', I was the one who was thinking about the local idol, Vijay TV's Super Singer contestant (kiddo) 'Vignesh'. Jodin Sparks was this year's AI winner whereas Amit and Vignesh are runners in their respective programmes. And now I have got a chance to deliver what I was thinking...

This kiddo was very reserved during the initial rounds of the programme. Anyways, the contest was not to check his extrovert nature but the music he has imbibed in his nerves. Man, I was dumbstuck when I heard him singing one of my favourite song 'Urugudhey' with the high notes being taken so casually. He dint imitate the original song, rather he sang in his actual voice. That's what I liked in him and I couldn't resist listening to these words of him and I am going back and forth of the progress button to hear those words again and again. It's 'Kadavul kitta karuvarai kaeten unna sumakava?' :) Not everyone in the crowd was enjoying Vignesh singing but the Singer Judge Sriram Parthasarathy did (so did I).

Latest update is Vignesh is getting ready to hit the Music chartbusters with his tracks for some of the leading Music directors.

If you get a chance, check this out here

Way to go Vignesh! Hats off!!!And I hope most of you'll enjoy the flavours of music rendition by Vignesh. Tell me 'you did enjoy listening him' by posting a comment ;):)

I'm going to bed murmuring the song and visualising Vignesh in my mind :):) Are you???

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

My Cleveland Diary

It's been 5 months in Cleveland, OH and now I have moved out to Colorado Springs, CO for work. Although I had spent only less than 6 months, I have some great days/moments to cherish with. Here are those few in my list:

1. First day, the fools day (April 1st) when I came to know about a great friend
2. Bought my new laptop in Circuit City
3. My trip to Chicago during the memorial weekend
4. Independence Day Celebrations with desi friends
5. Got my Casio S75 keyboard
6. Amazed with the hospitality and care shown by another great friend of mine
7. My visit to NewJersey to meet my cousin & her family
8. Days of fun and enjoyment @ one of my friend's house
9. Visit to Kentucky to see my sister
10. Trip to phily to meet my friends
11. Frequent eat outs @ Chipotle and dashing out at Cold stone for delicious ice creams
12. My simplest B'day that I ever had with my friends coming from Phily

And last but not the least...Farewell party with friends :)

Hope I dint miss out anything here and fun continues...