Anshul - Rays Of The Sun

Business Process Management

2007-04-03T19:09:00.000-04:00

Service-based organizations particularly those centering around knowledge workers, are discovering that business process improvement (BPI) is an imperative in the effort to reduce costs.

During my recent visit to Philippines (Manila, Laguna) - it is heartening to notice popular philosophies such as Lean Six Sigma and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). They are catching up in countries like Philippines and Vietnam, but BPI projects are only as good as data available.

Business Process Management (BPM) software makes it possible to collect real-time data that can shed significant light on the issue and aid the task of decision-makers. It's all about transperancy - how do we calculate efficiency, how do we measure progress and how do we provide maximum customer satisfaction?

A number of terms have cropped up to refer to various elements of BPM that can be confusing...

BPI: simply means improving or optimizing processes in some measurable way, oftentimes in one-off capacity.
BPA: Business process automation means using integrated software applications for greater efficiency by eliminating waste and reducing labor costs.
BPO: Business Process optimization tools are enterprise software suites that facilitate process measurement and evaluation.

Let's not get tangled up in the terminology but practically speaking all of these terms refer to one and only one imperative:

that efficient business processes require careful, ongoing evaluation and continous efforts at improvement.

Happy New Year!

2006-12-28T16:47:00.000-05:00

I came across this poem and thought of sharing this with all of you...

Let us all gather round and cheer,
With a drink of wine or an ice cold beer

Perhaps you're like me and don't drink the swill,
Or your like my grandparents who live on pills.
Maybe this world seems harsh at times,
Or its just that most of us just like to whine.

I'd say that this is a great place to be,
It all depends on how we can see.

True we've had bad things in the past,
But we know in our hearts that these will not last.

If we try our best to be simple and pure,
There's nothing our hopes and dreams cannot cure.

So, I don't know the value this is worth,
But lets all try to be happy and heal Mother Earth!

Happy New Year!

The New 'Jargon' in Outsourcing

2006-10-26T14:57:00.000-04:00

Well, despite the global economic slowdown and WTC attack, one area which is generating lot of heat is outsourcing. Outsourcing in general is similar to IT outsourcing, although on taking a closer look, there are a few differences. Subtle distinctions between vendor offerings, the integration of some IT outsourcing with in-house efforts, and the terminology in outsourcing agreements exists. Businesses need to understand the differences to embark on a successful outsourcing expedition.

India Inc., surely means business in the area of business process outsourcing and will consolidate its reputation as the most favored destination for outsourcing projects and services from all over the globe.

We started with Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and graduated to BPO, KPO, BTO and now what...ESO. Check out here.

BPO, Cricket & MunnaBhai

2006-09-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

Industry pundits have been urging companies to address the manpower crisis threatening the growth of the ITeS-BPO sector, which, according to Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service companies), is set to achieve its projected revenue target of $8.5 billion in 2006-07, up from $6.3 billion in 2005-06. Talking about what is going wrong in this segment, Lucas says that in her experience, there is a lack of team spirit in the Indian work environment. People are not willing to share their skills and knowledge with fellow workers. This could be because of the deep sense of insecurity and the highly competitive environment of schools and colleges.

DLF Cup - it's all over for 'Team India' - entire tournament's performance indicated an extremely not-so-interested attitude from our cricketing stalwarts. So, the horror story for India continues with the Cricket giants...Australia. Well, have we run out of options! Let's come up with CPO - Cricket Process Outsourcing.

The latest buzz word - do you know? No, its not War on Terror or Osama or the Spinach syndrome but our own MunnaBhai and Circuit. See how MSN and Munnabhai have joined hands together. Check out here.

Omkara - Another Feather in 'V' Cap!

2006-08-15T10:37:00.000-04:00

Othello...Omkara....Vishal Bharadwaj......Langda Tyagi.......the cream cast from Bollywood! What else could we expect from this excellent film-maker - Vishal from Meerut, India. This movie is a treat to watch.

Omkara is Vishal Bhardwaj's interpretation of William Shakespeare’s classic, Othello – a play that has been made four times in Hollywood but is being brought to life for the first time in a mainstream Hindi film in a commercial format. Credit is due to maker Vishal Bhardwaj for suddenly reviving Shakespearean literature. While he sprang a surprise at us with his adaptation of Macbeth as Maqbool, the successor Omkara Othello remained in the public eye thanks to it's star-studded casting. But this time, Vishal Bhardwaj tries too hard and the effort shows. He is straining to be realistic and it is evident in the sepia texture, profane language and disconnected montages.

Saif is a treat to watch as 'Langda Tyagi' - a sure-shot contender for Oscar!!!

Mumbai Explodes...Once Again!!!

2006-07-27T15:06:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written after "another" series of attacks on Mumbai and our hearts go out for all the folks who have succumed to the injuries and also to those who have gone thru the trauma of being in Mumbai during this period.

There have been various thought provoking articles and blogs by Sidin and Sourin and this has been a part of discussions with the media, CNN, NBC and so on. In the midst of this, I received one email which was forwarded to me by a friend of mine which went on like this -

"I am an Indian citizen. One among 1 billion of us. When somebody bombs us we die. Just like Americans did when the Al Qaeeda drove their planes into the WTC. Just like Londoners did when terrorists attacked the city last July. But while Americans have the right to retaliate and bomb Afghanistan off the face of the map because the terrorists HQ was based there, we Indians have to negotiate, talk, send peace buses, and "build confidence" with the government across our border - the Pakistanis who are supporting the terrorists with money and explosives.

The world applauds how resilient we are in the face of our tragedy, how quickly we go back to "normalcy". Ironically we ourselves applaud our resilience. The fact is that the world expects us to be less than human - hey you fella, so what if you lost your colleague, friend, partner, husband, wife or brother, get on with it old chap, that's it my boy! No time to mourn. No time to fume and rail at the injustice being meted out, no time to even call the terrorists the filthiest of names, no time to give incompetent politicians and policemen, intelligence agencies and the powers-be a piece of our mind. (Shivraj Patil, our honourable defence minister said something
to the the effect that we knew that an attack was planned but we didn't know
the time and place.

Really! What did he expect - a phone call from the terrorists giving him the details of the local trains, timings and compartments in which the
explosives would be kept! We also have to prove to the world that we are RESILIENT. Be happy with Musharraf's "quick condemnation" and go back to the business of dealing with old betrayers. After all we cannot "change the region's positive course", as LA Times' editorial put it. So what if a few hundred Indians die - Indians who are not into big time negotiations. Indians who just want to earn their living and return home to their families after a hard day's work. But well no, Musharraf and his terrorist friends will deny them the luxury of going back to his family because en route the train blows up! And our incompetent politicians and policemen will let
terrorists do their horrific jobs and launch a hunt post-facto...

So Bombayites died for a cause: for the peace of the region! As did Delhi-ites last year before Diwali. As did people in Bangalore when Pakistan-supported terrorists hit the city. As did Indian tourists who had gone to Srinagar for a holiday....And as many many more will die...Wow, that's some consolation! If you feel as angry about what's happening to us, please feel free to pass this on. If your reaction is: "hey nothing is going to change - this is India," feel free leave a comment"

A Run For Marathoners!

2006-05-03T10:34:00.000-04:00

WOW! That's a great feat.
Rahul, Nita, Sourin, JT and Shantanu...this is for you to read and appreciate. A 4 year old boy runs 65 KM at a stretch in 7 hours and creates a record. Read here.

Farewell to Malhotras & Podars!

2006-04-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

April 22, 2006; 7:00 P.M. EST......Farewell to Karan, Nandini, Vinod and Nita @ Waterford MI.

What a bash and excellent speeches from all our friends and families. Sourin dominated the stage and Nita made the crowd use there tissues inspite of several warnings...and, this one is for Karan, Vinod and family -

My friends to you I bid goodbye

To the friendship that brought me sky

The year has been swell

As if coming from a wishing well

But as all things do

I have to bid adieu

How it pains me to

But there's nothing I can do

Thank you for the memories

The laughter and the tears

They'll linger in my heart

As if we never part

If by chance we meet again

May it be full of blessings in the rain

Yet for now all that I can say

Is to God for you I'll pray

From Anshul's Desk...

2006-04-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

Michigan's extreme weather conditions, Michigan Construction, the downfall of the Auto Industry and the drooping real-estate prices keeps us in the news! Rick Wagoner's claim for taking direct control of struggling North American's division, KMART's decision to move to Chicago, the Superbowl extravaganza in the Mo-town, opening of new restaurant chains like P.F.Chang (Chinese) and Qdoba (Mexican Grill) and the cricket season getting hot on Dish keeps us again in the news.

The first quarter of 2006 - has been a year with plenty of activity with Karan (Lason) and Vinod (Trilogy) relocating back to India, Sourin (Accenture) to Lansing. Nita gaining experience handling the kids (with Vinod away in Bangalore) and bonding with them :) and Seemz clearing her exam with flying colors. I moved to my new home and Pratibha has been busy furnishing it with her full enthusiasm. Shantanu has a hectic year ahead with his SAT's and ACT's in the pipeline, AP exams in April-May, track season in progress and looking forward towards the cross-country tournaments as a captain. Our nephew Kalind is in USA for the last 6 months working his butt-off exploring the medical opportunities over here. Kalind, we are all with you and pray for your success!!!

Blogging - i started last year and a special thanks to Sourin for bringing me into this. Thanks to him for recommending one of my blogs to the 'Blog Contest'. Since then, I have read some extremely brilliant blogs from Sakshi, Curious Gawker, Sujatha, and Vikrum. One of the recent additions to the world of blogging has been Karthik with some excellent jokes. Keep it coming, Karthik!

Looking forward to this summer, especially since my Dad is coming over here for the first time. I definitely want to spend some quality time with him, socialize with him and have a good time with Vaidyas, Gargs and Raos.

Stay Tuned...

Red Eye

2006-04-03T14:18:00.000-04:00

Saw the thriller Red Eye during the week-end! A nice movie with effective screen-play, direction and chills! Rachel McAdams is wonderful as Lisa- she's a very believable character. Check it out and here is the synopsis...

'After attending the funeral of her grandmother in Dallas, Lisa Reisert must take the dreaded red eye flight back to Miami to make it to work the next day. Lisa soon meets Jackson Ripner and their attraction grows. But moments after take-off, Jackson reveals to Lisa her father's wallet that he swiped off his desk and his real reason for being on board. Jackson needs Lisa's help to kill the deputy secretary of Homeland Security who's scheduled to stay at the Lux Atlantic Hotel, the hotel Lisa is the manager of. If she refuses to help, Jackson will call his partner on the ground and have her father killed. At 30,000 feet, Lisa has no where to run and no time for rash judgement.'

"Operation Romeo"

2005-12-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

While having having my cereal this morning, Kalind (my nephew) started talking about an incident in Meerut, India about a group of girls being thrashed and bashed by the local police. Well, another feather in our cap!
Check out here.

What surprizes me most that the operation is named as 'Operation Romeos' and the cops are catching and hitting the 'Eves'. Hey Indian cops...keep your objectives straight atleast.

Battle Against AIDS

2005-12-02T13:51:00.000-05:00

December 1 2005.
World Aids Day brings in a plethora of responses, write-ups and blogs from various folks all around the world. It's heartening to know the awareness all around but Alas! we still find such cases and is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Sourin's blog on AIDS and his thoughts on homo-sexuality are welcome but somehow I see a conflict of statement. Either you like it or do not - there is no way in between...well, I do believe in his statement "Let's LIVE AND LET LIVE."

Countries like Africa and India have come a long way in spreading the Aids awareness and the 'think-tank' of India are coming up with various innovative ways to educate and preach our people. One of the recent example is 'Buladi'. Check out here.

Moreover, check out some statistical details on poverty, debt and AIDS in this article. While going thru various links, I found out that there are umpteen of children and families who are a part of the growing population of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). Check out here and other details by UNAIDS.

Finally, its sad to know about all the statistics, good to know that there are many organizations working towards this cause and pleased to see a revival of these write-ups during World Aids Day...but, are we doing anything for this? Question to be asked to oneself and if we decide to do something, let's try to strenghten the community via Project HOPE.

The Chappel Effect!

2005-11-22T10:16:00.000-05:00

Now, that's what they call the Chappel Effect.

The Ultimate Sex Diet!

2005-11-18T16:53:00.000-05:00

Guys, shed off all your extra pounds and save on your gym expenses. Can You believe? But, spouses do not!!! Check it out here. The very fact that they appeared on Oprah show validates the news. Read more and believe.

Sourin, another one for you to add to your Utopian dream :))

Akshardham Temple - Monument To World Peace!

2005-11-16T10:06:00.000-05:00

After 5 years of non-stop, round-the-clock construction, the massive and awesome, Akshardham Temple Monument to World Peace has been inaugrated. The Akshardham Temple in New Delhi, India, constructed by the BAPS foundation – the builders of the various Swaminaryan Temples across the world, is truely a modern day Wonder of the World.

It is one of the biggest and most intricate religious places of worship everconstructed. Combining several completely different and contrasting architectural styles of Hindu temple architecture of northern India -- Rajasthani, Orrisan, Gujarati, Mughal and Jain -- the Akshardham Monument is entirely constructed of marble and the red-sandstone that Delhi is famous for, and that so many of her monuments are constructed of. It was completed in only 5 years a world record of sorts.
The Akshardham monument, built without steel, is entirely composed of sandstone and marble. It consists of 234 ornately carved pillars, 9 ornate domes, 20 quadrangled shikhars, spectacular Gajendra Pith (plinth of stone elephants) and 20,000 murtis and statues of India's great sadhus, devotees, acharyas and divine personalities. The monument is a fusion of several architectural styles of pink stone and \r\n pure white marble. Pink stone symbolizes bhakti (devotion) in eternal bloom and white marble of absolute purity and eternal peace. The monument was built after over 300 million man hours of services rendered by 11,000 volunteers, sadhus and artisans.

It is the one of the wonders of the modern world and the wonders of modern India.

Oh, GM!!!

2005-11-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to feel sorry for General Motors (NYSE: GM). Unlike competitors such as Honda (NYSE: HMC) and Toyota (NYSE: TM), it can't seem to interest buyers in its cars without major price breaks. So after retiring the summer's incentive programs, and then suffering a disastrous few weeks of slumping sales, GM -- like its rival Ford (NYSE: F) -- has come up with an exciting new way to woo consumers back.

Markdowns.

No wait, hear GM out. Instead of the gimmicky "employee pricing," which helped the company get some revenues, if not profits, earlier this year, GM is now announcing a "Red Tag" sale. Here's the premise, straight from the GM website: "The price on our tag is the price you pay. Not a penny more.*

That little asterisk sends you to a disclaimer that should be read by one of those fast-talking radio small-print guys: "Tax, title, license, dealer fees, and [other] optional equipment extra.

Overheads @ General Motors (or should we call it as 'Generous Motors'), issues of retirement liabilities, revenue slump and finally the quality of the cars is leading them towards the bankruptcy route. To add to GM's trauma, SEC is also looking into the accounting practices within the organization. Read here.

With all these constants and variables, GM's probability of filing for Chapter 11 has increased in recent past.

Now, the question is...Will GM come out of this rut? Will GM come out of this rut soon enough? Will GM come out of this rut soon enough to re-gain the market share and there credibility. Points to ponder and act accordingly!

Toons...In The News!

2005-11-02T15:42:00.000-05:00

The Rise Of "Chinindia"

2005-11-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

At an elite Tech school near Calcutta, someone is trying to invent the next Blackberry, but one that will sell at a fraction of the U.S. price. Outside Mumbai, they're putting the finishing touches on a $2,200 people's car. In a world-class Shanghai lab, a Chinese team is mapping breakthrough cancer-research.

Now go to the infamous Dharavi slum in Mumbai, and see the teachers combating a staggering national illetracy rate of 37%. At a workers' right center in Guangzhou, hear the strident voices of an embryonic movement that alarms Beijing's authoritarian leaders.

The next superpowers? Societies on the brink of chaos? The countries that will take all other countries jobs? Since India and China have 1/3rd of the world's people, almost anything you say about them will be partly right. China nd India will be both allies and counterweights to America - at the expense of Japan and Europe.

China's competitive edge is shifting from low-cost workers to state-of-the-art manufacturing. India is creating world-class hubs, and it's companies are far better performers than China.

And a market-driven "Chinindia" is fast emerging.

New SeatBelt Law In U.S.A. :)

2005-10-10T18:13:00.000-04:00

This is "New INDIA"

2005-10-07T10:17:00.000-04:00

Here is an email sent by Dean IIT Madras- This is "New INDIA"!!!

Dear Friends,

Here is a personal experience, as well as a moment of national pride, which I want to share with you. Hope you find it worth the time you put in reading it :

"In the middle of 1965 India-Pakistan war, US govt - then a close friend of Pakistan - threatened India with stopping food-aid (remember "PL-480"?). For a food deficient India this threat was serious and humiliating. So much so that in the middle of war, Prime Minister (Late) Lal Bahadur Shastri went to Ram Leela Grounds in Delhi and appealed to each Indian to observe one-meal-fast every week to answer the American threat. As a school boy, I joined those millions who responded to Shastri ji's call. I continued the fast even when the war was over and India became self sufficient in food. Hurt deep by the national humiliation suffered at the hands of the US govt, I had vowed to stop my weekly fast only when India starts giving aid to USA.

It took just 40 years. Last week THE day arrived. When Indian ambassador in Washington DC handed over a cheque of US$ 50 million to the US govt, two plane loads of food, medical aid and other relief materials were waiting to fly to the USA. Time to break the fast? With no bad feeling about the USA, and good wishes for the Katrina and Rita victims, this humble Indian feels proud of the distance India has covered in 40 years. Let's celebrate a New India!"

- Vijay Kranti
Dean - IIT Madras

And The Winner Is...'PAHELI'

2005-10-06T10:27:00.000-04:00

The selection of Amol Palekar's "Paheli" as India's official entry to the coveted Oscar award has evoked mixed reactions.

The Shah Rukh Khan starrer was chosen over 14 films including "Swades", "Veer-Zara", "Black", "Parineeta" and "Mangal Pandey" - each, their fans say, worthy of the honour. The debate, then, is whether "Paheli" deserved the selection.

It's an irony that we have many and many movies this year which deserved to get nominated for Academy awards - from Regional to off-beat cinema. The question is...is it the Khan charisma and influence which is working in Bollywood with the selection commitee or is it ???Here are the industry reactions.

Now You Never Need To Stop Drinking...

2005-10-06T10:18:00.000-04:00

BERLIN Fans of non-stop drinking may soon be able to cut down on time wasted ordering refills, thanks to a beer coaster that can tell when a glass is empty.

The coaster, fitted with sensors, measures the weight of the beer and sends a signal behind the bar when it's time for a refill. Anxious drinkers can also attract the attention of staff by waving the plastic mat, thanks to a motion sensor. It was invented by students Matthias Hahnen and Robert Doerr for a project at the University of Saarbruecken in southwest Germany.

The device has attracted the attention of beer vendors in North America, including a leading Canadian brewer, according to Michael Schmitz, one of the supervisors of the project.
"They wanted to know if they could use it or make it themselves," he said. "

The prototype cost about 84 euros to make one but if mass produced, it could be done for around 10 euros."

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

2005-09-27T16:44:00.000-04:00

I'm extremely thrilled to share with everyone that my DAD turned 75 on September 25th, this year. I called him in India and he was all excited and enthu about his birthday bash with his friends and families and had a blast.

Since I was not able to make it to India, I penned down a few lines for him as I wanted to share my experiences and the nostalgic moments I shared with him during these years. He read these lines before everyone with his misty eyes.

Before I was myself you made me, me
With love and patience, discipline and tears,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,
Allowing me to sail upon my sea,
Though well within the headlands of your fears.

Before I was myself you made me, me
With dreams enough of what I was to be
And hopes that would be sculpted by the years,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,
For love inspires learning naturally:The mind assents to what the heart reveres.
And so it was through love you made me, meBy slowly stepping back to set me free.
*********************
The things you taught me I will always know.
How could I not? The roots have sunk so deep:
All lessons of the heart that I will keep

No matter who I am or where I go.
Kids learn from what their parents are, and so
You are my book of life, the thoughts I reap;
Only in your arms I quiet sleep;

Under my words your voice sings soft and slow.
From you I learned the rules of right and wrong
Against which I at times had to rebel,
Though with regret I carry with me still.

and finally,

You've been everything to me: a father,
Teacher, playmate, model, conscience, friend.
Sometimes I'm not certain why you bother,
If your feelings on my words depend.

I know I haven't been the child I should:
Far from it, and I really can't say why.
I know exactly what I'd label good,
But in the real world something goes awry.

Underneath my actions there is love,
Gratitude, respect, and admiration.
Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking of,
But I thank God you're in for the duration.
I'm sorry, sorry for the things I do,
But please believe I cherish Mom and you.

Drucker & Outsourcing

2005-09-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

Peter Drucker is not just a management guru as it is commonly supposed. He is the very inventor of management as a subject. Plus some more: he is an economist, sociologist, historian and visionary. At 94, he still teaches, consults, writes -- and, envisions.

Recently he gave an interview to Fortune magazine. In it he blows away a lot of myths. It also has a glimpse of how Drucker's very original mind views the current hysteria over US jobs outsourced to India and other countries. Worth reading article!

The World Of Shahrukh Khan

2005-09-22T16:51:00.000-04:00

Shahrukh Khan...the TV actor (once upon a time), film star and producer is making waves enacting in a LUX advertisement (for the first time a male has signed a contract with a beauty soap company in India) and now, a documentary on him.

How does Shah Rukh Khan juggle his professional and personal life so adeptly? Does he bring up his children according to Hindu customs or do they follow Muslim mores? What makes him a superstar? The answers to all this and more will be available on a documentary made on SRK's life. It is called The Inner World and the Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan and is directed by the British-based author and director Nasreen Munni Kabir, who is considered an authority on Hindi cinema. Read here and here.

Life Is A Theater

2005-09-16T11:37:00.000-04:00

Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives.There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a DISTANCE.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of, or at leastminimize your time with, draining, negative, incompatible,not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships. Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention.Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know or appreciate you? The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of Your Life."

If you cannot change the people around you, CHANGE the people you are around."Remember that the people we hang with will have an impact on both our lives and our income. And so we must be careful to choose the people we hang out with, as well as the information with which we feed our minds.

We should not share our dreams with negative people, Nor feed our dreams with negative thoughts. It's your choice and your life..... It's up to you who and what you let in it......

Crazy Pics

2005-09-13T09:23:00.000-04:00

Touching Life Story

2005-09-09T14:50:00.000-04:00

I came across this story on the Net and thought of sharing it in my blog. I did like it and appreciate your thoughts.

A young man was getting ready to graduate college. For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer's showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told him that was all he wanted. As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that his father had purchased the car.

Finally, on the morning of his graduation his father called him into his private study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son a beautiful wrapped gift box. Curious, but somewhat disappointed the young man opened the box and found a lovely, leather-bound Bible. Angrily, he raised his voice at his father and said, "With all your money you give me a Bible?" and stormed out of the house, leaving the holy book.

Many years passed and the young man was very successful in business. He had a beautiful home and wonderful family, but realized his father was very old, and thought perhaps he should go to him. He had not seen him since that graduation day. Before he could make arrangements, he received a telegram telling him his father had passed away, and willed all of his possessions to his son. He needed to come home immediately and take care things.

When he arrived at his father's house, sudden sadness and regret filled his heart. He began to search his father's important papers and saw the still new Bible, just as he had left it years ago. With tears, he opened the Bible and began to turn the pages. As he read those words, a car key dropped from an envelope taped behind the Bible. It had a tag with the dealer's name, the same dealer who had the sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of his graduation, and the words...PAID IN FULL.

How many times do we miss HIS blessings because they are not packaged as we expected?

Be Patient

2005-09-08T11:13:00.000-04:00

This is a true story which happened in the United States.

A man came out of his home to admire his new truck. To his puzzlement, his three-year-old son was happily hammering dents into the shiny paint of the truck. The man ran to his son, knocked him away, hammered the little boy's hands into pulp as punishment.

When the father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital. Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally had to amputate the fingers from both the boy's hands.

When the boy woke up from the surgery & saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently said, " Daddy, I'm sorry about your truck." Then he asked, "but when are my fingers going to grow back?"

The father went home & committed suicide.

Think about this story the next time someone steps on your feet or u wish to take revenge. Think first before u lose your patience with someone u love. Trucks can be repaired. Broken bones & hurt feelings often can't.

Too often we fail to recognise the difference between the person and the performance. We forget that forgiveness is greater than revenge. People make mistakes. We are allowed to make mistakes. But the actions we take while in a rage will haunt us forever.

Pause and ponder. Think before you act and Be patient!

Mr. Teen, The Biggest Spender!

2005-09-08T09:16:00.000-04:00

While we talk and discuss the Google phenomenon, the consistency of Patriots, the Sharapovas and the sensational Sania - I feel it is worth discussing and sharing this news over here. Interesting reading!

Sania Mania

2005-09-06T10:20:00.000-04:00

Sania Mirza is cool. She was cool when she paired with Leander Paes in the mixed doubles category at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea. She was cool when she visited the troubled state of Pakistan when she was barely 14, to play her first ITF juniors' tourney in Islamabad, and then again as part of an Indian contingent for an under-14 ITF juniors event when the Indian Airlines plane was hijacked in Kandahar in 1999.

The burning desire in Mirza is certainly hot at the moment. In fact, she had made it clear in her last interview with rediff.com that her priority is getting into the professional circuit. The wild card she's received at the WTA Indian Open is just a mark of respect to her increasing potential. She feels staying for another year on the junior circuit may alter all her plans and, hence, is pulling all stops to march ahead. Isin't it true that who dares, wins?

Also, she is on the top-list of all the major endorsements and running way ahead of the top list of sportsperson. Read here.

Child-Like

2005-08-31T14:25:00.000-04:00

Raising his arms, he leaped on me time and again,
He had his charm and charisma and took all my pain.
I embraced him with all the love, warmth and fondness I had,
Wow! What an emotion and sentiment, it made both of us glad.

This is what you and I feel when you embrace a kid,
Revives your day, whether he is Yash, Kunaal or Sid.
We relish there smile coming out of there molars,
Believe it or not! It is worth a million dollars.

The Insurgence Of Natural Disasters

2005-08-31T12:14:00.000-04:00

Gone are the times when we used to talk about the Osamas, Iraq Wars, Indo-Pak relationships, Viagras, NFL's and Britneys...We have a severe and a serious insurgence of various natural disasters in the form of tsunami's, Ivans, Katrina and not to forget about our own Mumbai rains which not only found its place in the Guinness records but created a havoc amongst the Mumbayites.

While pondering on all these disasters, one thought which comes to my mind is that what has changed all of a sudden which brings-in all these, all together. Well, I don't know, or maybe, there have been so many environmental, technological and radical changes in the past decade that the nature revolts back and tells us...Hey Guys! What are you upto? Hold your reins and be natural...be friendly....be ecological.....See, this is what I have done in the past (my credentials are mentioned below) and so, BEWARE!!!

On average, an earthquake strikes the British Isles every four days.
10% of the world's population live under threat from the 1,511 active volcanoes.
There are more tornadoes per square mile each year in Britain than the USA.
In Britain, five million people in two million homes live in flood prone areas.
Colossal tsunami waves travel across oceans at speeds of up to 500mph (800kmh). Waves hitting coastlines have shifted 20-tonne rocks hundreds of metres inland.
Droughts starve the land of nourishment, replacing them with mineral salts.

Trip to Oscoda

2005-08-28T21:09:00.000-04:00

Subsequent to our (Pratibha and myself) visit to Grayling and canoeing and my blog on it, we have been spreading the flavor of it within our ‘activity oriented’ friends. The ‘gang’ decided to go for Oscoda, about 3 ½ hour drive from Troy, MI.

Well! The first and foremost one to respond was Sourin and he was very enthusiastic about it. Unfortunately, it did not work out for him and he had to succumb to his family pressures. However, we managed to work-around our presuures and took a plunge into this trip…Thanks to the ‘Gargs’ and the statement from Vinod that Life Is Too Short!!!

Planning started at Rahul-Seema’s backyard with the usual discussions/arguments between Nita and Pratibha and we were all on-board on the morning of August 20, 2005. We had all our arms and ammunitions in the form of marinated chicken, kachoris, aaloo ke paranthe, bagels, eggs, wines, scotch and so on. Somehow, I felt as if we were leaving for a week but alas! Rahul woke me up and assured me that ALL THIS STUFF was only for 24 hours of vacation.

So, the Poddars, Gargs, Malhotras and Kumars drove and chatted and switched seats and ate and finally reached Oscoda. Somehow, the weather was not very pleased on our trip and started pouring cats and dogs. While checking-in into our cottage, all of us kept dilly-dallying our decision to canoe or not to canoe…but, our Mr. ‘Weather Channel’ Karan very correctly and wisely predicted a sunny weather from the time we reached there. And Hurrah! There comes out the sun in its full glory.

All of us immediately rushed to the canoeing place and started our journey for a couple of hours. It was a beautiful trip specially with all of our friends having fun (obviously with our eatables and beer). I feel the most serious and focussed and sincere were Karan and Nandini – Great Job! Karan, you sailed her across the shore all by yourself.

Returned at our cottage and we had Lake Huron right opposite our abode – the kids started enjoying while swimming and building castles – we started our drinks and barbequed chicken – plenty of pictures were taken – Vinod gave volleyball lessons to Pratibha and Karan along with the two lovely teenagers.

I personally felt that the evening session was the best when all of us were sitting on the beach of Lake Huron, sipping our wines and bathing in the moon-lit night. Vinod being a wonderful host and bar-tender (as usual) was an added attraction for the entire crowd! Kudos to him and his persona. This trip was really ecstatic and will definitely leave indelible marks on my mind and many others too!!!

Offering the finest in peace and serenity in Northern Michigan, Oscoda has more than 20-miles of pristine, sandy beaches along the beautiful Lake Huron. Wonderful beaches can also be found on the famous AuSable River, Cedar Lake or Van Ettan Lake. Check out other details about this place over here.

BPO Insight!!!

2005-08-12T10:21:00.000-04:00

India’s rise to stardom in the business process outsourcing (BPO) arena has been unarguably meteoric. Today, more than ever the country is offering compelling advantages to the multinationals, who consider India as the destination with a well-established BPO industry, says the latest survey on ‘Offshore Outs-ourcing’ by the global consultancy major Ernst & Young (E&Y) in association with Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

Every NRI to American is very well aware of the upward trend (in the BPO arena) in Bangalore, Gurgaon, Hydrabad, Chennai and now Kokata. However, the focus of discussions amongst the various partners has shifted from processes, six sigma's, cost savings to the term of contract, security levels, Disaster Recovery Plans, HIPAA and SOX compliance issues and so on. In order to offset major issues such as employee satisfaction, high rate of attrition (40 percent for voice and 25 percent for non-voice on an annual basis) and absenteeism (2 to 8 percent on daily basis, mostly in voice-based), these third party vendors are endeavouring to manage the career paths for employees upfront helping them achieve an optimum work-life balance.

No matter whether it is a political or corporate platform or Healthcare, PLM or Engineering verticals, the talk of the town...oops!!! Talk of the Universe is Business Process Outsourcing.

An interesting read on this topic is here...does not matter if BPO is an Issue or a Boon - key aspect is let us be Onwards and Upwards!

VastuShastra

2005-08-08T15:14:00.000-04:00

I do remember listening aboout this term about 10-15 years back while I was in India. Infact, it created such a hype during that time, that all the builders, contractors, business tycoons, politicians and film stars were engulfed with this concept, science or whatever you might want to call it.

Vastushastra has created a new era of business proposition with the new constructions and the existing homes too. Moreover, Fengshui also came up gradually and joined hands with Vastushastra. Now, the question is...Do I believe in it? No, not earlier but I started once it starts working during your life span. Same can be said for Astrology, Numerology and various other sciences.

I have read some of this stuff and would like to share with my avid readers over here.

Smile Please!

2005-08-05T15:35:00.000-04:00

These are for you, Sourin!
It does not matter if the "wisdom tooth" are gone...we will still appreciate your smile (grin) without the wisdom :))))

The Tenth Planet

2005-08-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

It has been ages since we all have been reading about the 9 planets in the universe. The 'palmists' have been indicating nine planets on our hands and the 'pundits' have been performing 'navgrah' puja and the temples have been depicting various statues and idols of the nine planets. So, now we have the tenth planet...Amazing!!!

The Google Phenomenon

2005-07-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

It began with an argument. When he first met Larry Page in the summer of 1995, Sergey Brin was a second-year grad student in the computer science department at Stanford University. Gregarious by nature, Brin had volunteered as a guide of sorts for potential first-years - students who had been admitted, but were still deciding whether to attend. His duties included showing recruits the campus and leading a tour of nearby San Francisco. Page, an engineering major from the University of Michigan, ended up in Brin's group.

It was hardly love at first sight. Walking up and down the city's hills that day, the two clashed incessantly, debating, among other things, the value of various approaches to urban planning. "Sergey is pretty social; he likes meeting people," Page recalls, contrasting that quality with his own reticence. "I thought he was pretty obnoxious. He had really strong opinions about things, and I guess I did, too."

"We both found each other obnoxious," Brin counters when I tell him of Page's response. "But we say it a little bit jokingly. Obviously we spent a lot of time talking to each other, so there was something there. We had a kind of bantering thing going." Page and Brin may have clashed, but they were clearly drawn together - two swords sharpening one another.

When Page showed up at Stanford a few months later, he selected human-computer interaction pioneer Terry Winograd as his adviser. Soon thereafter he began searching for a topic for his doctoral thesis. It was an important decision. As Page had learned from his father, a computer science professor at Michigan State, a dissertation can frame one's entire academic career. He kicked around 10 or so intriguing ideas, but found himself attracted to the burgeoning World Wide Web.

Page didn't start out looking for a better way to search the Web. Despite the fact that Stanford alumni were getting rich founding Internet companies, Page found the Web interesting primarily for its mathematical characteristics. Each computer was a node, and each link on a Web page was a connection between nodes - a classic graph structure. "Computer scientists love graphs," Page tells me. The World Wide Web, Page theorized, may have been the largest graph ever created, and it was growing at a breakneck pace. Many useful insights lurked in its vertices, awaiting discovery by inquiring graduate students. Winograd agreed, and Page set about
pondering the link structure of the Web.

Citations and Back RubsIt proved a productive course of study. Page noticed that while it was trivial to follow links from one page to another, it was nontrivial to discover links back. In other words, when you looked at a Web page, you had no idea what pages were linking back to it. This bothered Page. He thought it would be very useful to know who was linking to whom.
Why? To fully understand the answer to that question, a minor detour into the world of academic publishing is in order. For professors - particularly those in the hard sciences like mathematics and chemistry - nothing is as important as getting published. Except, perhaps, being cited.

Academics build their papers on a carefully constructed foundation of citation: Each paper reaches a conclusion by citing previously published papers as proof points that advance the author's argument. Papers are judged not only on their original thinking, but also on the number of papers they cite, the number of papers that subsequently cite them back, and the perceived importance of each citation. Citations are so important that there's even a branch of science devoted to their study: bibliometrics.

Fair enough. So what's the point? Well, it was Tim Berners-Lee's desire to improve this system that led him to create the World Wide Web. And it was Larry Page and Sergey Brin's attempts to reverse engineer Berners-Lee's World Wide Web that led to Google. The needle that threads these efforts together is citation - the practice of pointing to other people's work in order to build up your own.

Which brings us back to the original research Page did on such backlinks, a project he came to call BackRub.

He reasoned that the entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation - after all, what is a link but a citation? If he could divine a method to count and qualify each backlink on the Web, as Page puts it "the Web would become a more valuable place."
At the time Page conceived of BackRub, the Web comprised an estimated 10 million documents, with an untold number of links between them. The computing resources required to crawl such a beast were well beyond the usual bounds of a student project. Unaware of exactly what he was getting into, Page began building out his crawler.

The idea's complexity and scale lured Brin to the job. A polymath who had jumped from project to project without settling on a thesis topic, he found the premise behind BackRub fascinating. "I talked to lots of research groups" around the school, Brin recalls, "and this was the most exciting project, both because it tackled the Web, which represents human knowledge, and because I liked Larry."

The Audacity of RankIn March 1996, Page pointed his crawler at just one page - his homepage at Stanford - and let it loose. The crawler worked outward from there.
Crawling the entire Web to discover the sum of its links is a major undertaking, but simple crawling was not where BackRub's true innovation lay. Page was naturally aware of the concept of ranking in academic publishing, and he theorized that the structure of the Web's graph would reveal not just who was linking to whom, but more critically, the importance of who linked to whom, based on various attributes of the site that was doing the linking. Inspired by citation analysis, Page realized that a raw count of links to a page would be a useful guide to that page's rank. He also saw that each link needed its own ranking, based on the link count of its originating page. But such an approach creates a difficult and recursive mathematical challenge - you not only have to count a particular page's links, you also have to count the links attached to the links. The math gets complicated rather quickly.

Fortunately, Page was now working with Brin, whose prodigious gifts in mathematics could be applied to the problem. Brin, the Russian-born son of a NASA scientist and a University of Maryland math professor, emigrated to the US with his family at the age of 6. By the time he was a middle schooler, Brin was a recognized math prodigy. He left high school a year early to go to UM. When he graduated, he immediately enrolled at Stanford, where his talents allowed him to goof off. The weather was so good, he told me, that he loaded up on nonacademic classes - sailing, swimming, scuba diving. He focused his intellectual energies on interesting projects rather than actual course work.

Together, Page and Brin created a ranking system that rewarded links that came from sources that were important and penalized those that did not. For example, many sites link to IBM.com. Those links might range from a business partner in the technology industry to a teenage programmer in suburban Illinois who just got a ThinkPad for Christmas. To a human observer, the business partner is a more important link in terms of IBM's place in the world. But how might an algorithm understand that fact?

Page and Brin's breakthrough was to create an algorithm - dubbed PageRank after Page - that manages to take into account both the number of links into a particular site and the number of links into each of the linking sites. This mirrored the rough approach of academic citation-counting. It worked. In the example above, let's assume that only a few sites linked to the teenager's site. Let's further assume the sites that link to the teenager's are similarly bereft of links. By contrast, thousands of sites link to Intel, and those sites, on average, also have thousands of sites linking to them. PageRank would rank the teen's site as less important than Intel's - at least in relation to IBM.

This is a simplified view, to be sure, and Page and Brin had to correct for any number of mathematical culs-de-sac, but the long and the short of it was this: More popular sites rose to the top of their annotation list, and less popular sites fell toward the bottom.

As they fiddled with the results, Brin and Page realized their data might have implications for Internet search. In fact, the idea of applying BackRub's ranked page results to search was so natural that it didn't even occur to them that they had made the leap. As it was, BackRub already worked like a search engine - you gave it a URL, and it gave you a list of backlinks ranked by importance. "We realized that we had a querying tool," Page recalls. "It gave you a good overall ranking of pages and ordering of follow-up pages."

Page and Brin noticed that BackRub's results were superior to those from existing search engines like AltaVista and Excite, which often returned irrelevant listings. "They were looking only at text and not considering this other signal," Page recalls. That signal is now better known as PageRank. To test whether it worked well in a search application, Brin and Page hacked together a BackRub search tool. It searched only the words in page titles and applied PageRank to sort the results by relevance, but its results were so far superior to the usual search engines - which ranked mostly on keywords - that Page and Brin knew they were onto something big.
Not only was the engine good, but Page and Brin realized it would scale as the Web scaled. Because PageRank worked by analyzing links, the bigger the Web, the better the engine. That fact inspired the founders to name their new engine Google, after googol, the term for the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeroes. They released the first version of Google on the Stanford Web site in August 1996 - one year after they met.

Among a small set of Stanford insiders, Google was a hit. Energized, Brin and Page began improving the service, adding full-text search and more and more pages to the index. They quickly discovered that search engines require an extraordinary amount of computing resources. They didn't have the money to buy new computers, so they begged and borrowed Google into existence - a hard drive from the network lab, an idle CPU from the computer science loading docks. Using Page's dorm room as a machine lab, they fashioned a computational Frankenstein from spare parts, then jacked the whole thing into Stanford's broadband campus network. After filling Page's room with equipment, they converted Brin's dorm room into an office and programming center.

The project grew into something of a legend within the computer science department and campus network administration offices. At one point, the BackRub crawler consumed nearly half of Stanford's entire network bandwidth, an extraordinary fact considering that Stanford was one of the best-networked institutions on the planet. And in the fall of 1996 the project would regularly bring down Stanford's Internet connection.
"We're lucky there were a lot of forward-looking people at Stanford," Page recalls. "They didn't hassle us too much about the resources we were using."

A Company EmergesAs Brin and Page continued experimenting, BackRub and its Google implementation were generating buzz, both on the Stanford campus and within the cloistered world of academic Web research.

One person who had heard of Page and Brin's work was Cornell professor Jon Kleinberg, then researching bibliometrics and search technologies at IBM's Almaden center in San Jose. Kleinberg's hubs-and-authorities approach to ranking the Web is perhaps the second-most-famous approach to search after PageRank. In the summer of 1997, Kleinberg visited Page at Stanford to compare notes. Kleinberg had completed an early draft of his seminal paper, "Authoritative Sources," and Page showed him an early working version of Google. Kleinberg encouraged Page to publish an academic paper on PageRank.

Page told Kleinberg that he was wary of publishing. The reason? "He was concerned that someone might steal his ideas, and with PageRank, Page felt like he had the secret formula," Kleinberg told me. (Page and Brin eventually did publish.)

On the other hand, Page and Brin weren't sure they wanted to go through the travails of starting and running a company. During Page's first year at Stanford, his father died, and friends recall that Page viewed finishing his PhD as something of a tribute to him. Given his own academic upbringing, Brin, too, was reluctant to leave the program.

Brin remembers speaking with his adviser, who told him, "Look, if this Google thing pans out, then great. If not, you can return to graduate school and finish your thesis." He chuckles, then adds: "I said, 'Yeah, OK, why not? I'll just give it a try.'"

Success From Failure

2005-07-15T10:03:00.000-04:00

Another from Shantanu...

Success is achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.However, just because an endeavor was unsuccessful does not mean it iswithout value. The failed Columbia mission and the Vietnam War are twosuch examples.

The goal of the Columbia space shuttle mission was to launch safely into space, perform scientific experiments, and to land safely onearth. This is what the crew and the people at the Houston space center attempted. This mission was successful until re-entry, when the shuttle disintegrated without warning. The goal was not achieved; seven astronauts tragically lost their lives. This failure does not mean this tragedy was without value, importance and significance. It forced NASA to reexamine its contingencies. NASA was compelled to look carefully at its organization structure, independent contractors, and engineering practices. Congress demanded accountability, and was forced to re-examine its budget practices concerning space exploration. Surely,this is a valuable thing to come from a horrible failure.

The goal of the Vietnam War was to prevent Communism from taking holdin that country. Many at the time believed that if Vietnam became Communistic, so too would the rest of the region. When we left, the country fell to the Communist party. However, advancements in military training came out of the conflict. We learned the value of "specialforces" and developed new tactics to fight in environments where tanks were less efficient than air strikes. These lessons better prepared us for modern warfare. These important changes show the value that can come from failure.

It would be preferable if we did not have to pay such a high price to learn such lessons.
The Columbia space tragedy and the Vietnam War...both demonstrate how events perceived as failures can still have value.

The Essence Of Attitude

2005-07-12T09:18:00.000-04:00

I would like to share a write-up from my son, Shantanu who is preparing for his SAT exams coming up in January 2006. Appreciate your inputs!
***************************
As Winston Churchill once stated, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

In deciding to become a better person, people of the world today look towards attitude as a deciding factor. A change in attitudes of mind can definitely change a person’s life. Although these changes can be good or bad, change taken willingly is always good. History and sports have shown that attitude is the determining role of a person’s life in a positive way.

To start off, Mahatma Gandhi’s attitude towards non-violence played a laudable role towards India’s independence from the Britain. During the 1940’s, many Indians were fighting for independence from the British because they felt they were being put through many oppressive conditions. Many battles had been fought to find a solution to this enigmatic problem. Many men were killed and still no solution had been brought forth. Rather than resolving this problem with bloodshed, Gandhi brought forth a new “attitude”, boycotting. Gandhi and his crew established a strong system where they wouldn’t buy anything sold by the British men. Instead, he persuaded the Indian people to make their own clothing and other necessary needs. This totally paralyzed the British people and therefore forcing them to leave due to an economic fiasco. Gandhi gave his country freedom without firing a single bullet. His new innovative attitude made millions of Indian civilians happy. He is known and looked upon by many people around the world for his non-violent attitude. Gandhi’s attitude definitely set him apart from the rest of the society and it’s what’s made him famous till today.

Finally, the Detroit Pistons attitude gave them the victory over the Lakes in the 2004 NBA Finals. When the Pistons had finally made it to the NBA Finals after 13 years, criticism and disapproval flew their way. Many sports analysts reported this as a fluke, and therefore the Pistons lost respect from many basketball fans nationwide. Although, all this criticism brought down their morale, the Pistons kept an optimistic attitude and played together as a team. Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace stated, “Championships are won by teams, not superstars.” Each player’s attitude was entirely focused on the game. Each one put behind them the rest of the world, and changed their attitude to a confident one. They proved the whole nation wrong by blowing out their adversary. Pistons also taught the nation that a superstar is not needed on a team to win, but instead, the chemistry and attitude of playing as a team. This once a world champion basketball team will always be remembered for their confident and positive attitude that they brought on the court that day.

All in all we can clearly see that attitude is a trait that isolates everyone in this integrated world. As shown above, Gandhi’s non-violent acts and the Pistons positive attitude will be remembered forever. Attitude was definitely the determining factor in their lives.
The question is, how will you be remembered?

Grayling, Michigan

2005-07-08T13:58:00.000-04:00

4th. Of July, 2005!
1:45 P.M. EST...we started our one-day vacation driving towards Grayling. It was a great experience especially for us, since Pratibha and I were planning to 'canoe' for the first time.

The headwaters of the Au Sable River (20 miles north of Grayling) is considered "holy water" to fly fishermen. But when it comes to canoeing, the river begins at the dock of Penrod's Au Sable River Resort.

Here the river widens along its meandering course, is not as choked by brush, fallen tress, and seemingly impassable as upstream. Waist deep water and an easy current for the first 25 miles make for a relaxing float for beginners (like us), families, and nature lovers.

For the quiet, careful canoer, a surprise awaits around every bend. It might be a deer standing chest deep in the tall grass, a blue heron standing statue-like in the shade of the willow boughs, or a pair of frantic ducks scared up, wings pumping and orange feet on waterspouts.

So, in a nutshell it is adventure, fun, and a memory waiting around every bend and is a feat for every nature connoisseur . Check out Penrods, folks!

The Art Of Scientology

2005-06-30T10:29:00.000-04:00

Scientology: Scio (Latin) know, logos (Greek) the word or outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and made known. Thus, Scientology means knowing about knowing.

The Scientology religion is about the individual man or woman. Its goal is to bring an individual to a sufficient understanding of himself and his life and free him to make improvements where he finds them necessary and in the ways he sees fit.

Scientology is a workable system. Evidence may be seen in the lives of millions of Scientologists and the positive effect they create. People improve their lives through Scientology principles. As Scientologists in all walks of life will attest, they have enjoyed greatest success in their relationships, family life, jobs and professions.

What skill has the most to do with success in life?

It’s your ability to communicate. Not just talk, but really communicate. There are definite aspects to truly skilled communication and to a great extent these determine how successful your marriage will be.

You can learn them on the Success Through Communication Course. This is a practical, hands on course where you learn the basics of communication with your spouse, or anyone. Gain the ability to:

Resolve upsets.
Make yourself understood.
Initiate conversations.
Steer a conversation in the direction you want.
Keep a discussion on point. End a dialogue smoothly.
Keep a discussion from going “dead”.

Kapur’s MDA Walk-a-Thon

2005-06-27T11:39:00.000-04:00

It was a fine-looking, murky and drizzly Sunday morning at Stoney Creek Park where all family and friends assembled for the MDA Walk-A-Thon. We had our registrations, fruits and a taste of all sorts of discussions ranging from Troy schools - future of U.S. automotive industry – the insurgence of Toyotas - marathons and so on.

Amidst this, drives-in the energetic, vigorous and vivacious boy with a placid smile of innocence, virtuousness and purity. I have been in contact with this boy (Rohit) and his parents (Ravi and Minti) since the last seven years and seen them nurture the eternal path of this MD syndrome. Besides the trauma Kapur family has been going thru due to this MD of there son, one distinctive attribute which stands-out in this family is the commitment, pledge, passion and the optimism they have shown in the last few years.

Kapurs have been very diligently supporting the Muscular Dystrophy Administration (MDA), a voluntary health agency — a dedicated partnership between scientists and concerned citizens aimed at conquering neuromuscular diseases that affect more than a million Americans.

MDA combats neuromuscular diseases through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive medical and community services, and far-reaching professional and public health education.

For the benefit of everyone who are new to this, please read on Muscular Dystrophy and support this cause.

Last but not the least, GO Kapurs!!! HE is there with you.

I Shall Stand Straight!

2005-06-20T09:57:00.000-04:00

When I grow old, my hair shall be white and flowing
Enchanted with my past, anticipate my future is glowing…

I shall stand straight and walk with elegance,
Graced with Age I have liked this life’s fragrance

I shall stand straight with an honest & upright face,
Never cloaked & concealed my age and aged with grace

I shall stand straight and walk with modishness and ease,
For I have learned much, understood much, and yet I know that I know nothing.

In GOD We Trust...

2005-06-03T16:41:00.000-04:00

Prayers and Worship; Churches and Temples; Reverence and Devotion; Respect and Admiration; Awe and Appreciation; Fidelity and Affection;

These are nice words to talk about and absolutely pleasant to mention in a blog! Well, I have been pondering over these terms for quite sometime and planning to pen down a few lines – I’m sure some of the readers might or might not agree with my thoughts...appreciate your comments!!!

First and foremost, we all do believe that there is GOD or some superpower which is motivating our lives; giving us strength and making us strive for better things in life! We also know that these ‘super powers’ were human beings at some point of time and it is WE who have given them the stature of GOD…why? ‘Coz we believe in there thoughts, viewpoint, values and the same helps all of us in moving forward specially in times of stress and distress. Every culture has had its gods. The ancient agrarian cultures had their fertility gods; the Greeks and Romans had their pantheon; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have their one god of all. At all times and in all places people have thought that there is more to life than the material world around us.

As a preface to the arguments, it is worth noting an argument that the claim that God exists is made more plausible by the fact of wide-spread religious belief. This argument is called the “argument from desire”. It begins with the observation that our natural instincts generally serve us well; every creature is born with an instinct for food because food sustains us, and each of us longs for meaningful relationships because community and friendship allow us to flourish. Generally speaking, if we have an innate desire for a thing then that thing both exists and is good for us. The natural instinct to look to the transcendent, therefore, which is made evident by the fact remarked upon above that every culture of every time has had some form of religion, suggests that there might well be something transcendent out there to be found. This instinct, according to the argument from desire, hints at the existence of God.

Now the question is how and where and in what way should we worship? All of us have our own ways to worship to thank GOD or ask for something from HIM. We have also learned over the years that ‘GOD helps those who help others’. Then,

· Could we feed the populace who require food, rather than feeding the ones who consume food everyday?

· Could we have a quiet time (pondering over our past, planning the future & thanking our achievements) with HIM, rather than religiously saying prayers every day?

· Could we take care of our precious moments sometimes (which I believe are defined and derived by HIM) instead of saying prayers at the cost of such moments?

· Could we be polite, courteous, respectful and reverent after our prayers, since this is what we are looking for from the fraction of the time spent with HIM?

Forget BPO, It’s Time for KPO!!!

2005-06-02T16:44:00.000-04:00

While sipping my second glass of wine with my buddy (Sourin), we got affianced into our discussions of opportunities in India, the Infosys’s, Wipro’s, IBM’s and got into the gamut of Business Process Outsourcing. While going thru these thoughts, Sourin mentioned about K.P.O and since then I have been reading and pondering over this new and upcoming business opportunity.

I have compiled some data and articles on it and would like to share with my blog-readers. Here you go…

The acronym BPO is passé. It's time to move up the value chain for the Indian BPO industry to KPO, a niche, high-value knowledge process outsourcing business. Globally, the KPO pie is estimated to touch $25 billion by 2010. By that time, India would command a 60% market share, with an employee requirement of over 3,00,000 said recent study conducted by Evalueserve.

The KPO landscape is getting increasingly visible in the country with players like WNS, Evalueserve, Thomson Financials, GE Analyticals, Bear Sterns, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Reuters expected to play a dominant role. In addition to this, over a dozen existing BPO firms are gradually migrating into value niches.

Typical users of KPO services are market research agencies, consulting firms, investment banks, financial institutions, legal firms, telecom, engineering/design, automotive companies and corporate planning departments of large enterprises. Foreign small and medium enterprises are also looking at KPO services to cater to their high-value project-specific activities.

"Global companies are looking at ways and means to create intellectual properties for their clients across verticals like healthcare, pharma and life sciences, chemicals, engineering, business and commercial information, research and database services," said Narayanan Ramaswamy director of KPMG.

How is KPO different from BPO?

BPO is entirely rules-based while KPO is purely judgment-based where human discretion plays a dominant role. KPO includes an entire gamut of services like intellectual property, legal and medical researches, R&D, pharma, biotechnology-related researches and process outsourcing, data mining, analytical services like equity research, market research, content and journalistic outsourcing, data cleansing, data validation, data analysis, formation of libraries, indexing, cataloging, creation and updating of databases and directories, to list a few. Services under KPO are still emerging.

"Indians are good at brain works, analytical, logical and arithmetical skills. The growing Indian diaspora has been creating an impression among international community that Indians are good at intellect-driven skills," said Chandu Nair, president, Scope e-Knowledge Centre, a Chennai-based KPO firm.

However, winning KPO deals is not an easy proposition. "It demands intrinsic domain knowledge, a good amount of trust, impeccable track record, long-standing client relationships, deep research skills, strong management capabilities and sound technical know-how," said S. Ramakrishnan, CEO of Marketics, a Bangalore-based KPO firm.

F.R.I.E.N.D.

2005-06-01T14:12:00.000-04:00

Fun, earnestness, assurance is all about friends,
Reap the benefits, payback and feel the fragrance.

Immense pleasure, bliss & contentment they render,
Except the relationship which is fairly fond & tender.

Nurture this with utmost heed, concern & care,
Do remember that this breed is extremely rare.

"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief."
-Joseph Addison

Time Really Flies!

2005-05-31T17:13:00.000-04:00

Time really flies! It was just sixteen years back when Shantanu (our son) was born, we could hear his first cry, started crawling and his first step towards his grand-parents.

Time really flies! I do remember the first day of his play-school when he was so reluctant and hesitant. He gradually adjusted himself and started pestering my Dad for all the candies & chocolates. He used to get away with all his demands of getting a specific breed of mango in the scorching heat of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Time really flies! Shantanu’s act of posing like a ‘Hanuman ji’ still gives ripples and his dance moves were real funny (maybe only to his parents!)

And now, he is a grown up boy, responsible, normally quiet except with his friends!!! He has taken a toll on himself while adjusting to his Dad’s movement from India – adjusted well to his new friends, excelled in his sports and academic fields and made all of us proud.

Time really flies! He has passed his driving test and all set to have his own driving license. It’s a pleasure to see him growing by leaps and bounds and I’m sure all of us will pass through this phase and enjoy the same.

Well, we all strappingly believe that “CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN”

2005-05-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

Anshul

Bill Gates

2005-05-25T11:54:00.000-04:00

We all have been using and experiencing Microsoft products and here is what I came across…some extremely interesting facts on Bill Gates. Please read at leisure.
Bill Gates

The Art Of Being Positive!

2005-05-16T09:24:00.000-04:00

Birds were twittering in the skies and the resonance of the leaves was comforting! While I peeped outside my windowpane, the emission of the sun gave me an intuition of the day being optimistic, encouraging and affirmative. I could enjoy the flora and fauna, the foliage and the blessedness of the atmosphere. I could listen to the wings flutter and saw a group of birds land on my bird feeder, skirmishing and struggling to peep and initiate eating their chow. WOW! What a sight and what a blend of beauty, exquisiteness and magnificence.

While sipping my coffee and looking for my television remote, I could sense the squirrels on my deck attempting to leap towards the birds, which petrified them and they flew away tweeting all the way.
I switch on the television and toggling between FOX, CNN, NBC – I get to ABC and listen in to the Iraq atrocities, updates on Jackson trial, the gigantic blaze in Highland MI, Pistons losing to Pacers and finally…the advertisements on Coors Light and Auto Glass Manufacturers. I switch off the television – get up from my love seat - finish off my coffee – remove the coffee stain from the table – take a momentary look on the tree just outside my deck which has been standing tall, firm and unyielding since the last 6 years irrespective of the four seasons in Michigan.

This is not my archetypal day (a couple of hours…may be) but this happens with each and every individual who experiences not only the passive, negative and downbeat sides of his/her life but the optimistic, affirmative and upbeat phases also.

I have learnt the art of being positive in the last 10 years as, Positive thinking won't let you do anything but it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

She...

2005-04-28T19:51:00.000-04:00

A stray of light and a slender glare peeps into my mystic eyes,
She cuddles her pillow, stretches, and moves and gives a sigh.
I could feel the leaves shuddering and hear the birds twittering,
The radiance of the Sun is enchanting and she murmurs ‘Good Morning’.

She is charming, adorable, endearing, palatable and delectable,
She brings compassion of the sun, resilience of the moon & is enjoyable.
Her morning chores commence with tea, breakfast and the current affairs,
We get into an argument and Alas! She leaves for work with a stare.

I have seen the happiness, bliss and glee she has brought,
To our Son and now a man, my little boy.
I am so very thankful and gratified,
And my heart is filled with elation and joy.

As the love you have for one another,
Blossoms, blooms and grows.
I see a beautiful flower garden,
And you... the perfect rose.

Managing Our Time

2005-04-28T18:48:00.000-04:00

Since the last 4 weeks, I have been involved in a lot of reading, gaining knowledge thru various books/magazines/journals etc., and tried to compile some of the tips and tricks on Time Management…thought of sharing with everyone...

SPEND TIME PLANNING AND ORGANIZING. Using time to think and plan is time well spent. In fact, if you fail to take time for planning, you are, in effect, planning to fail. Organize in a way that makes sense to you. If you need color and pictures, use a lot on your calendar or planning book. Some people need to have papers filed away; others get their creative energy from their piles. So forget the "shoulds" and organize your way.
SET GOALS. Goals give your life, and the way you spend your time, direction. When asked the secret to amassing such a fortune, one of the famous Hunt brothers from Texas replied: "First you've got to decide what you want." Set goals, which are specific, measurable, realistic and achievable. Your optimum goals are those, which cause you to "stretch" but not "break" as you strive for achievement. Goals can give creative people a much-needed sense of direction.
PRIORITIZE. Use the 80-20 Rule originally stated by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who noted that 80 percent of the reward comes from 20 percent of the effort. The trick to prioritizing is to isolate and identify that valuable 20 percent. Once identified, prioritize time to concentrate your work on those items with the greatest reward. Prioritize by color, number or letter — whichever method makes the most sense to you. Flagging items with a deadline is another idea for helping you stick to your priorities.
USE A TO DO LIST. Some people thrive using a daily To Do list which they construct either the last thing the previous day or first thing in the morning. Such people may combine a To Do list with a calendar or schedule. Others prefer a "running" To Do list, which is continuously being updated. Or, you may prefer a combination of the two previously described To Do lists. Whatever method works is best for you. Don't be afraid to try a new system — you just might find one that works even better than your present one!
BE FLEXIBLE. Allow time for interruptions and distractions. Time management experts often suggest planning for just 50 percent or less of one's time. With only 50 percent of your time planned, you will have the flexibility to handle interruptions and the unplanned "emergency." When you expect to be interrupted, schedule routine tasks. Save (or make) larger blocks of time for your priorities. When interrupted, ask Alan Lakein's crucial question, "What is the most important thing I can be doing with my time right now?" to help you get back on track fast.
CONSIDER YOUR BIOLOGICAL PRIME TIME. That's the time of day when you are at your best. Are you a "morning person," a "night owl," or a late afternoon "whiz?" Knowing when your best time is and planning to use that time of day for your priorities (if possible) is effective time management.
DO THE RIGHT THING RIGHT. Noted management expert, Peter Drucker, says "doing the right thing is more important than doing things right." Doing the right thing is effectiveness; doing things right is efficiency. Focus first on effectiveness (identifying what is the right thing to do), then concentrate on efficiency (doing it right).
ELIMINATE THE URGENT. Urgent tasks have short-term consequences while important tasks are those with long-term, goal-related implications. Work towards reducing the urgent things you must do so you'll have time for your important priorities. Flagging or highlighting items on your To Do list or attaching a deadline to each item may help keep important items from becoming urgent emergencies.
PRACTICE THE ART OF INTELLIGENT NEGLECT. Eliminate from your life trivial tasks or those tasks, which do not have long-term consequences for you. Can you delegate or eliminate any of your To Do list? Work on those tasks, which you alone can do.
AVOID BEING A PERFECTIONIST. In the Malaysian culture, only the gods are considered capable of producing anything perfect. Whenever something is made, a flaw is left on purpose so the gods will not be offended. Yes, some things need to be closer to perfect than others, but perfectionism, paying unnecessary attention to detail, can be a form of procrastination.
CONQUER PROCRASTINATION. One technique to try is the "Swiss cheese" method described by Alan Lakein. When you are avoiding something, break it into smaller tasks and do just one of the smaller tasks or set a timer and work on the big task for just 15 minutes. By doing a little at a time, eventually you'll reach a point where you'll want to finish.
LEARN TO SAY "NO." Such a small word — and so hard to say. Focusing on your goals may help. Blocking time for important, but often not scheduled, priorities such as family and friends can also help. But first you must be convinced that you and your priorities are important — that seems to be the hardest part in learning to say "no." Once convinced of their importance, saying "no" to the unimportant in life gets easier.
REWARD YOURSELF. Even for small successes, celebrate achievement of goals. Promise yourself a reward for completing each task, or finishing the total job. Then keep your promise to yourself and indulge in your reward. Doing so will help you maintain the necessary balance in life between work and play. As Ann McGee-Cooper says, "If we learn to balance excellence in work with excellence in play, fun, and relaxation, our lives become happier, healthier, and a great deal more creative."
Resources:
Drucker, Peter. The Effective Executive. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Lakein, Alan. How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. New York: Signet, 1974.
McGee-Cooper, Ann. Time Management for Unmanageable People. Dallas, TX: Ann McGee-Cooper & Associates, 1983.

We, As Human Beings

2005-04-22T13:27:00.000-04:00

We as human beings are very naïve and honest and life treats us to exemplify our traits and character to the best of our abilities and objectives. All of us have diligently looked into our past, learned from our mistakes and at least tried to glorify our future or work towards the betterment of the rest of our lives.

We as human beings make mistakes and ought to make it. Reason?
‘Coz we work with our brains & hearts
‘Coz we are sensitive, social & skillful
‘Coz we are credulous, natural, innocent, sharp, dexterous and…
‘Coz we are “Human Beings” and not GODS
"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves." (Mahatma Gandhi)

We as human beings have desire, passion & are pernicious,
We as human beings have attributes, reputation and moral excellence,
We as human beings have a Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde within ourselves,
But, we as human beings must appreciate that…
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”

We as human beings…We as people…We as mankind & We as the refined form of the nomadics must and I repeat MUST believe in what Robert Frost mentioned many many years back…
The woods are lovely dark and deep
But, I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

MOM, I Miss You...

2005-04-20T14:55:00.000-04:00

Mom, your love was a magic,
Brought harmony and peace.
It covered like a blanket,
And cured boo-boos with a kiss.

Mom, your love offered grand protection
From evil that lurks 'round,
It tamed the fears of little ones
And turned frowns upside down.

Mom, you held a wealth of wisdom
With gentleness and care,
You held my hand when needed
With a pinch of tears n glare.

And thought those precious childhood years
Are an instant pass,
The love and magic you rendered
Will last...and last...and last.

Supply Chain Excellence

2005-04-18T10:33:00.000-04:00

According to a recent report from Boston-based AMR Research Inc., companies that excel in supply-chain operations perform better in almost every financial measure of success. Where supply chain excellence improves demand-forecast accuracy, companies have a 5% higher profit margin, 15% less inventory, up to 17% stronger "perfect order" ratings, and 35% shorter cash-to-cash cycle times than their peers. Companies with higher perfect-order performance have higher earnings per share, a better return on assets, and higher profit margins --- roughly 1% higher for every three percentage-point improvement in perfect orders.

AMR further states that...supply-chain leadership means more than just low costs and efficiency - it requires superior ability to shape and respond to shifts in demand with innovative products and services.

Dell, Nokia, Proctor & Gamble are some of the companies who have embraced the demand-driven supply chain practices and technologies and are winning as a result.

Key success factors for supply-chain and for this matter any IT/BPO integrated solutions might be an effective marriage of - Cash in Hand, Fast Reflexes, Go with the flow, Just-In-Time workforce, Pinpoint Accuracy and above all THINK BIG, START SMALL.
source: Business Week, Forbes, Anshul's thoughts

I Have Learned...

2005-04-10T15:15:00.000-04:00

That you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them.

That it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.

That it's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.

That no matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides.

That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

That either you control your attitude or it controls you.

That heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.

That sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

That maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them, and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

That no matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

That it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

That it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

USA Syndrome

2005-04-05T14:57:00.000-04:00

A post-graduate arrives on the opportunity land of U.S. of A
With heaps of desire, ambitions, zeal & enthusiasm.
He had his alma mater with him!
He had the family support with him!!
He had work-passion with him!!!

First driving experience (from the airport) was overwhelming
the ecstacy of 4-way lanes, fast paced cars and the snowbelts
left an indelible mark on this person's mind.

There was an aroma of excitement and the fear of facing the challenges!
There was exposure to new culture, surroundings and extended education.
Nothing would deter this person from India and finally...
he entered into the world of Oracles, SAP's and Databases!

Like a true Saggitarian, he persisted and made friends, continued being a social animal and,
landed up with an assignment with one of the BPO enterprize.

Tons of water has flown across the river Thames since then...
he persisted with the pleasant/rough times professionally and personally,
he achieved what was achievable and within his boundaries,
he went ahead in his career path...and, ALAS!

Changes occur, the weather changes, snowbelts are gone and so is the job!
What prevails is...uncertainity, trickling eyes and a mist around the halo!!
But, the LIFE must go on and everyone needs to move forward.

He visualizes an opportunity and an aura of hope...
myriads of thanks to the Gargs, Podars, Raos & Malhotras and many more!
Shantanu & Pratibha stood besides him in moments of anxiety,
And, the lesson he learns -
"The only thing which is constant in this world is Change"