As much as I hate to start off the New Year by posting something negative, but it seems that my new year has started off with a bang to say the least. I lost my credit cards , my purse , my pan card , my debit card , my drivers license , some money and my ID card .I had always wished that my new year starts to get a bit more exciting and happening and not as dull and boring as it often turns out to be . Well, did somebody say to be careful on what you wish for as your wish might just come true! Traveling via bus from Cochin to Trivandrum is expensive and requires a lot of courage.
I am trying my best to take out any positives from this episode and my best just aint good enough. I initially tried the “whatever happens happens for the good “philosophy and it failed. I just couldn’t find anything good in loosing my driver’s license! For that matter, even my debit card. Well, maybe time will tell (that’s a better one).A very close friend of mine in a desperate attempt to console me pointed out 5 positives out of this episode:-
1. Loosing the drivers license:-Maybe an Accident is avoided since I will not drive the car for a few days .He also went on to say that it has spared cochin of a few traffic jams !!
2. Loosing the credit card: - My savings are increased and a much needed break for the swiping machines in and around Cochin and Trivandrum.
3. Pan card:-It would give the person who stole (my purse) an insight in to Pan Cards and he would change his mode of living and transform himself in to an ideal citizen.
4. Purse:-It has given somebody else an option to put their money (I don’t know what good is that to me ...but what the heck!! My friend told this with so much of conviction that I dint want to break his heart by asking the logic behind it)
5. Money: - Ok; now this one takes the prize! According to Newton’s law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so if I lost some money, I would also get it back!!
Coming to think of it , finding positives wasn’t that difficult but I guess you need to be at your creative best while searching for it .Lets back to ground reality and the truth is , its gonna be a pretty hectic schedule in trying to apply for a duplicate license . Well as far as the credit cards and the debit card are concerned it’s comparatively easier. The Hardest thing to come to terms with is to realize that this is my second drivers license that I have lost in a matter of 3 months !Ok , again the positive out of this is , by now , I am well versed with the procedure of applying for a duplicate license ;if that is any consolation(So much so that if you wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me the procedure to apply for a duplicate licence ,you can bet your bottom dollar that I would get it right !) .
Hey I almost forgot to write about my experience with the Police (Thampanoor station) when I tried lodging an FIR /complaint (as you need a copy of the FIR to apply for a duplicate license) .Well , somebody had to tell me thrice that the physical structure opposite to where I was standing was the Thampanoor police station ! Lets not get in to the nitty grittys of it; in a nut shell, it dint look like a police station. As soon as I entered it (had to wait for about 5 minutes before entering it, as the passage way leading inside allows only 1 person to walk at a time due to space constraints!) I was greeted by a female officer and in perfect Trivandrum slang asked me “entheranu parati?”.Now as soon as I gathered my strength to tell her what happened, she just dint bother .instead just directed her hand to the SI’s cabin asking me to meet the SI . Ok...now after a bit a wait , I entered the SI’s cabin to realize that he was busy watching the Australia –Southafrica test match .I must admit that for a brief while, even I was watching the match as I almost forgot what had happened. Anyways, he asked me the same thing;”etheranu parati”? After I narrated the entire incident, The SI just coolly asked me to lodge an FIR else where as they do not have the time to come to my house for inquiries .hmmm..Some people are alive only because it is illegal to shoot them.
I guess there are lessons to learnt and adds on to the experience .Its often said that Good judgment comes from bad experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. Well I don’t quite know how the above mentioned one liner fits the context , but since I heard it yesterday from some one, I liked it so much that I was just waiting for an opportunity to use it somewhere ..So that’s about it.
Having mentioned all this crap...let me also wish anyone who happens to read this post a very happy and a prosperous new year! And be careful with your wallet and belongings when you travel.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Monday, December 8, 2008
EMAIL INSANITY
After a lot of thought , Ive realized that updating and maintaining a blog isn’t exactly what you term as “easy “ by any stretches of imagination .Honestly speaking , Ive been a bit busy over the last few weeks and just did not get the time to update my blog . In other words I was just lazy.
Well, coming to the topic, if you are a corporate creature,you would quite easily relate with emails going back and forth and you would have wished that your boss would pay you for reading those emails .There would have been times when you must have felt you’re your cozy little work station is some kind of battle ground and you have to keep ducking , defending and punching from and to emails .This,in no way am I suggesting that Emails are a bad medium of communication . Since its arrival , emails have successfully eliminated time and geography as barriers and has changed the way we do business and more importantly its easy to use and is very simple .Like for all good things in life , the strength of an email is also its weakness. Since it is so easy to use , it becomes very easy to misuse as well .
It is very easy to misinterpret the term” communication” and send emails based on what you think is communication . Sometimes you should know when “not” to send an email as opposed to how to and when to send an email .Since emails are ubiquitous and immediate, its easy to get caught in the heat of the moment and draft in something which you would not necessarily feel proud of when you think of it later .I can think of a few scenarios where I have lost my cool and sent in replies to emails which I can never be proud about and I am sure there would be many who can relate to this . There have been instances where the content of emails falls way below standards and you wonder if this is communication .
I am a big fan of “sarcastic humor” but when sarcasm takes over emails ,it creates a lot of stress, both to the sender and the recipient. The sender expects a reply to his email and keeps checking his emails every 5 minutes while the recipient goes through the pain of reading the email an is under pressure to reply aptly.In both the cases there is stress and a lot of unproductive time being spent.
The risk involved in sarcastic emails stems from the fact that you leave the level of sarcasm to be implied by the recipient.So based on the situation and emotions involved the recipient may well read way too much in to the sender’s email and misunderstand its content. Most times misunderstandings could have been easily avoided if one side or the other did not:
1. Assume what the other meant.
2. Read into an e-mail what wasn’t there.
3. Take the time to be clear about their intent and tone.
There have been more than a few times when I wish that I had thought twice before hitting that dreaded “reply” button.Well somebody said “experience makes you a better person” but the trouble with experience is you don’t get it when you want it .So let me give whoever’s stumbled upon this post an honest suggestion. Before you hit the reply button , sit back and reread the entire email for its intent and tone .If you are very upset , don’t even dare to reply to that email at that moment ;give it some time .
Some use emails to show how busy they are at work . Believe it or not having 300, 500 or 1000 messages in your inbox can be a source of pride that defines how busy and important you are. Well its almost like saying “I pretend to work for my Boss and my Boss pretends to pay me “.
Well , The trick is to manage our time on emails rather than the emails managing us .What I have learned from experience(and some pretty painful ones at that ) is to know which emails needs to be preserved as a document . I just delete the rest and it gives me immense pleasure while doing the same .
Rohit Oonnikrishnan
Well, coming to the topic, if you are a corporate creature,you would quite easily relate with emails going back and forth and you would have wished that your boss would pay you for reading those emails .There would have been times when you must have felt you’re your cozy little work station is some kind of battle ground and you have to keep ducking , defending and punching from and to emails .This,in no way am I suggesting that Emails are a bad medium of communication . Since its arrival , emails have successfully eliminated time and geography as barriers and has changed the way we do business and more importantly its easy to use and is very simple .Like for all good things in life , the strength of an email is also its weakness. Since it is so easy to use , it becomes very easy to misuse as well .
It is very easy to misinterpret the term” communication” and send emails based on what you think is communication . Sometimes you should know when “not” to send an email as opposed to how to and when to send an email .Since emails are ubiquitous and immediate, its easy to get caught in the heat of the moment and draft in something which you would not necessarily feel proud of when you think of it later .I can think of a few scenarios where I have lost my cool and sent in replies to emails which I can never be proud about and I am sure there would be many who can relate to this . There have been instances where the content of emails falls way below standards and you wonder if this is communication .
I am a big fan of “sarcastic humor” but when sarcasm takes over emails ,it creates a lot of stress, both to the sender and the recipient. The sender expects a reply to his email and keeps checking his emails every 5 minutes while the recipient goes through the pain of reading the email an is under pressure to reply aptly.In both the cases there is stress and a lot of unproductive time being spent.
The risk involved in sarcastic emails stems from the fact that you leave the level of sarcasm to be implied by the recipient.So based on the situation and emotions involved the recipient may well read way too much in to the sender’s email and misunderstand its content. Most times misunderstandings could have been easily avoided if one side or the other did not:
1. Assume what the other meant.
2. Read into an e-mail what wasn’t there.
3. Take the time to be clear about their intent and tone.
There have been more than a few times when I wish that I had thought twice before hitting that dreaded “reply” button.Well somebody said “experience makes you a better person” but the trouble with experience is you don’t get it when you want it .So let me give whoever’s stumbled upon this post an honest suggestion. Before you hit the reply button , sit back and reread the entire email for its intent and tone .If you are very upset , don’t even dare to reply to that email at that moment ;give it some time .
Some use emails to show how busy they are at work . Believe it or not having 300, 500 or 1000 messages in your inbox can be a source of pride that defines how busy and important you are. Well its almost like saying “I pretend to work for my Boss and my Boss pretends to pay me “.
Well , The trick is to manage our time on emails rather than the emails managing us .What I have learned from experience(and some pretty painful ones at that ) is to know which emails needs to be preserved as a document . I just delete the rest and it gives me immense pleasure while doing the same .
Rohit Oonnikrishnan
Saturday, September 27, 2008
ANYONE FOR BEING YOURSELF??
Lets face it , being ourselves is a difficult ask .Sometimes I feel , that most of our opinions are someone else’s thoughts .Most of us live a life of constant duplicity. We waste a part of our life in trying to display qualities that we do not pocess and appreciation that we cannot keep
How many times have we given this advise to someone we know .Just be yourself , everything will be just fine .Don’t do anything else , just be yourself(Yeah right , thanks a lot for the advise , I dint know that!). If being myself was easy, I wouldn’t have asked you. I simply do not remember the number of times I have received that advise and the number of times I have passed on that advise (I can almost associate that with some kind of email chain that floats around in the internet)
To be honest, being yourself is the most difficult thing to do. The world around us has become so demanding, that we find it more convenient to be somebody else. Just to meet the need of the hour , our opinions become someone else’s thoughts , even though the creator has given us only one face , we create another When I talked about this to a friend of mine he was off the opinion that this is complete lack of character in people , this is spineless living , hypocrisy , a** licking to get things done , cowardice , insecurity so on and so forth .
Ok ,now lets not get on to circumstances and situations and lets ask ourselves an honest question .well , make that two ; 1. Do we know ourselves? 2. Do we allow people to be themselves?
Being yourself should,ideally,come naturally but there’s more to it .In our society, being genuine is not given the same importance as being right or being able to justify one’s actions (statements such as “I don’t need to justify anything “ is bunch of crap as the inner need of every human is to justify his /her actions either to someone else or to your own self).Originality is prevalent in all of us but the confusion in the mind arises when we are caught in the drive for acceptance and approval to the extent,where we no longer feel genuine unless there is a consensus among those who are important to us that what we are doing is OK. So we actually deny ourselves the right to be ourselves unless someone else agrees to us .The root cause of this ,I feel , is the inner need in all of us to be loved , to be appreciated.
Do we as a society accept people as they are? We expect people to behave in a way we want them to behave. Any behavior, any view point, any likes/dislikes which are outside our “scope” would lead to speculation. Right there, the pressure for a person to live up to some else’s expectations is on and unless that person is strong enough he will succumb and then will only be capable to giving the advise “just be yourself”. We seem to be always in a hurry to judge and brand people; consider the case of a guy who, when we first met, did not talk or mingle with the others too much and we immediately judge him and brand him as a reserved character or a “quiet guy”. Now even if the poor guy wants to talk and mingle , he just cannot, because he is already branded as a reserved character and so has to live up to his image which was set by someone else. Frustration and utter confusion creeps in when we start thinking of what we think we want , what we really want , what others would think , what are my expectations , what are the expectations of others around us , what we are capable of ,what others think we are capable of and realize all are different. It is exactly during those times when someone whispers in your ear “just be yourself”.
Being ourselves requires a lot of courage and conviction. Children express themselves quite spontaneously however as far as an adult is concerned, the mask has to move for him to be himself.
Rohit Oonnikrishnan.
How many times have we given this advise to someone we know .Just be yourself , everything will be just fine .Don’t do anything else , just be yourself(Yeah right , thanks a lot for the advise , I dint know that!). If being myself was easy, I wouldn’t have asked you. I simply do not remember the number of times I have received that advise and the number of times I have passed on that advise (I can almost associate that with some kind of email chain that floats around in the internet)
To be honest, being yourself is the most difficult thing to do. The world around us has become so demanding, that we find it more convenient to be somebody else. Just to meet the need of the hour , our opinions become someone else’s thoughts , even though the creator has given us only one face , we create another When I talked about this to a friend of mine he was off the opinion that this is complete lack of character in people , this is spineless living , hypocrisy , a** licking to get things done , cowardice , insecurity so on and so forth .
Ok ,now lets not get on to circumstances and situations and lets ask ourselves an honest question .well , make that two ; 1. Do we know ourselves? 2. Do we allow people to be themselves?
Being yourself should,ideally,come naturally but there’s more to it .In our society, being genuine is not given the same importance as being right or being able to justify one’s actions (statements such as “I don’t need to justify anything “ is bunch of crap as the inner need of every human is to justify his /her actions either to someone else or to your own self).Originality is prevalent in all of us but the confusion in the mind arises when we are caught in the drive for acceptance and approval to the extent,where we no longer feel genuine unless there is a consensus among those who are important to us that what we are doing is OK. So we actually deny ourselves the right to be ourselves unless someone else agrees to us .The root cause of this ,I feel , is the inner need in all of us to be loved , to be appreciated.
Do we as a society accept people as they are? We expect people to behave in a way we want them to behave. Any behavior, any view point, any likes/dislikes which are outside our “scope” would lead to speculation. Right there, the pressure for a person to live up to some else’s expectations is on and unless that person is strong enough he will succumb and then will only be capable to giving the advise “just be yourself”. We seem to be always in a hurry to judge and brand people; consider the case of a guy who, when we first met, did not talk or mingle with the others too much and we immediately judge him and brand him as a reserved character or a “quiet guy”. Now even if the poor guy wants to talk and mingle , he just cannot, because he is already branded as a reserved character and so has to live up to his image which was set by someone else. Frustration and utter confusion creeps in when we start thinking of what we think we want , what we really want , what others would think , what are my expectations , what are the expectations of others around us , what we are capable of ,what others think we are capable of and realize all are different. It is exactly during those times when someone whispers in your ear “just be yourself”.
Being ourselves requires a lot of courage and conviction. Children express themselves quite spontaneously however as far as an adult is concerned, the mask has to move for him to be himself.
Rohit Oonnikrishnan.
Monday, September 15, 2008
NEWS AT SEVEN : BLASTS IN DELHI
This seems to be the order of the day atleast for the last 3-4 weeks in India .
After Ahmedabad and Bangalore , the latest blasts were at Delhi.One of the victims of the Ahmadabad Blast , in an open house debate programme conducted by one of the news channels, summed up the situation aptly . With teary eyes , he said “only the people who have lost their dear ones will know the pain , for everybody else its just news at 7”.The man had lost his entire family consisting of his wife and two children.
There are questions being asked of the government , questions being asked of the police , questions being asked about the security measures which were in place rather the sheer lack of it.It is ridiculous to know that the CCTV’s which were placed in the affected areas weren’t functional.Take this for stats :- only 5 of the 28 CCTV’s which were placed in the greater kailash area in Delhi where the blasts took place were working , out of which one was pointing to the sky. And this , we are talking about the national capital !
The blame game has started , with parties pointing fingers at each other , the police indicating their helplessness again pointing fingers at the system , media pointing fingers at the governing party and the party returning the favour by accusing the media of sensitizing the issue and creating panic among people.The question to be asked is “how safe is the common man who is listening to all this ?”Can our govt be proactive instead of just reacting to situations ? The CCTV’s are now functional , nodal centers have now opened in delhi , there are very heavy security checks in railway stations and airports now:Discussions about various other security checks to be implemented are in motion (to be followed strictly).Well,certainly welcome the move,but why wasn’t it there at the first place ? especially since Delhi was high in the hitlist of the terror outfits . Sheila Dikshit the honorable CM of the national Capital , when confronted with these questions stated that “ it is very tough to stop a determined act of terror”.Yes , absolutely agree to that point , but that dosen’t in any way explain the sheer lack of security measures taken by the govt. Reactive governance.
I don’t think this is the case only in delhi . A few weeks back , there was another terror email stating that a bomb would explode in kerala at 07:00pm . Govt announced extra security measures , the CM came on TV and addressed the people asking them to maintain calm.Thankfully nothing happened at seven , and the govt stated that heavy security would continue atleast for the next two weeks . The next day , we have a railiway station manned by 5 police men in peak hours . How can 5 cops cover an entire railway station ?I guess , even they understood that fact , and felt having a few cups of tea would be more useful.
Finger pointing and politicians resigning is not the answer Infact as I write this there is heavy pressure on Sivraj Patil to resign ( the lesser said about him , the better). Proactive governance , is the key . I have always felt that it is genuine misconception that the common man in the street will not help , will not come forward . Infact they are the only ones who would always do their bit , but they need to be encouraged.
After Ahmedabad and Bangalore , the latest blasts were at Delhi.One of the victims of the Ahmadabad Blast , in an open house debate programme conducted by one of the news channels, summed up the situation aptly . With teary eyes , he said “only the people who have lost their dear ones will know the pain , for everybody else its just news at 7”.The man had lost his entire family consisting of his wife and two children.
There are questions being asked of the government , questions being asked of the police , questions being asked about the security measures which were in place rather the sheer lack of it.It is ridiculous to know that the CCTV’s which were placed in the affected areas weren’t functional.Take this for stats :- only 5 of the 28 CCTV’s which were placed in the greater kailash area in Delhi where the blasts took place were working , out of which one was pointing to the sky. And this , we are talking about the national capital !
The blame game has started , with parties pointing fingers at each other , the police indicating their helplessness again pointing fingers at the system , media pointing fingers at the governing party and the party returning the favour by accusing the media of sensitizing the issue and creating panic among people.The question to be asked is “how safe is the common man who is listening to all this ?”Can our govt be proactive instead of just reacting to situations ? The CCTV’s are now functional , nodal centers have now opened in delhi , there are very heavy security checks in railway stations and airports now:Discussions about various other security checks to be implemented are in motion (to be followed strictly).Well,certainly welcome the move,but why wasn’t it there at the first place ? especially since Delhi was high in the hitlist of the terror outfits . Sheila Dikshit the honorable CM of the national Capital , when confronted with these questions stated that “ it is very tough to stop a determined act of terror”.Yes , absolutely agree to that point , but that dosen’t in any way explain the sheer lack of security measures taken by the govt. Reactive governance.
I don’t think this is the case only in delhi . A few weeks back , there was another terror email stating that a bomb would explode in kerala at 07:00pm . Govt announced extra security measures , the CM came on TV and addressed the people asking them to maintain calm.Thankfully nothing happened at seven , and the govt stated that heavy security would continue atleast for the next two weeks . The next day , we have a railiway station manned by 5 police men in peak hours . How can 5 cops cover an entire railway station ?I guess , even they understood that fact , and felt having a few cups of tea would be more useful.
Finger pointing and politicians resigning is not the answer Infact as I write this there is heavy pressure on Sivraj Patil to resign ( the lesser said about him , the better). Proactive governance , is the key . I have always felt that it is genuine misconception that the common man in the street will not help , will not come forward . Infact they are the only ones who would always do their bit , but they need to be encouraged.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
NEW TATA INDICA VISTA - CHANGES EVERYTHING
The country’s largest auotomobile Company have launched their new Tata Indica Vista on August 23rd 2008.Going by the first looks , it is evident that Tata means business..
Well , they have a good catch line that goes with it which says “Changes Everything”.
To start off it has one petrol version and two diesel versions .Your’s truly had a test dive yesterday and I loved it to be honest.The first impression that you get when you see the car is “its big”.
Some of the features that Vista boasts of have been very thoughtfully incorporated by Tata and it does makes sense.For eg:-If the wipers are on ,the rear wiper is turned on as long as the reverse gear is engaged.The plastics aren’t restricted to the dashboards,they are present on both the front and rear door pads, seats have adjustable height and lumbar support.
Exterior:-
Comparing to its contemporaries , this one’s a huge car!
Some of the prominent features which immediately stands out are :-
1.Full length tail lamp cluster which gives it a sleek look
2.All new bumpers
3.A very stylish antenna(only available with the top variant)
4.Swept back headlamp cluster
5.Adjustable seats(height)
6.double din music system with a USB port.
The overall styling is amazing ,With the headlamps giving it a nice look. The radiator grill has a chrome strip on its top border to give it a sophisticated look.The vista is best viewed from the rear where the longlights and the rounded shape adds to its sleek design.I was quite impressed with the doors.the doors have external rubber beadings which results in less noice when the doors are shut .( I did try more than a few times opening and closing the doors much to the annoyance of the sales manager).
The bonnet weighed lesser when you compare this to other indica models which suggest that this one’s light.If you look carefully , you will observe that Vista has a lot of changes when you compare it to the older models , yes “Changes Everything”.
Interiors:-
This is where , Vista really rocks !Interiors are the best yet on a Tata passenger vehicle.
Lot of space inside and the comfort is well looked after . The seats can be adjusted for height . It has a 2 din music system with a USB port.
The noice levels inside the car are kept to a minimum . You wouldn’t know when the car has started! .
In the previous versions of Indica , one of the negative feedbacks was, that the steering used to vibrate at higher speeds (We are talking of 100-120KMH) .This one’s pretty steady.
The A/C is excellent and cools the cabin in no time .The A/c vents have two knobs each to direct the horizontal and vertical airflow as desired.
The mileage ,what the company says is about 15.5 with A/c for the lower variant(Petrol) and 18 for the diesel version.
Overall I would give a rating of 8 /10 to Vista .
So the square cut point is Vista is here to stay !
Well , they have a good catch line that goes with it which says “Changes Everything”.
To start off it has one petrol version and two diesel versions .Your’s truly had a test dive yesterday and I loved it to be honest.The first impression that you get when you see the car is “its big”.
Some of the features that Vista boasts of have been very thoughtfully incorporated by Tata and it does makes sense.For eg:-If the wipers are on ,the rear wiper is turned on as long as the reverse gear is engaged.The plastics aren’t restricted to the dashboards,they are present on both the front and rear door pads, seats have adjustable height and lumbar support.
Exterior:-
Comparing to its contemporaries , this one’s a huge car!
Some of the prominent features which immediately stands out are :-
1.Full length tail lamp cluster which gives it a sleek look
2.All new bumpers
3.A very stylish antenna(only available with the top variant)
4.Swept back headlamp cluster
5.Adjustable seats(height)
6.double din music system with a USB port.
The overall styling is amazing ,With the headlamps giving it a nice look. The radiator grill has a chrome strip on its top border to give it a sophisticated look.The vista is best viewed from the rear where the longlights and the rounded shape adds to its sleek design.I was quite impressed with the doors.the doors have external rubber beadings which results in less noice when the doors are shut .( I did try more than a few times opening and closing the doors much to the annoyance of the sales manager).
The bonnet weighed lesser when you compare this to other indica models which suggest that this one’s light.If you look carefully , you will observe that Vista has a lot of changes when you compare it to the older models , yes “Changes Everything”.
Interiors:-
This is where , Vista really rocks !Interiors are the best yet on a Tata passenger vehicle.
Lot of space inside and the comfort is well looked after . The seats can be adjusted for height . It has a 2 din music system with a USB port.
The noice levels inside the car are kept to a minimum . You wouldn’t know when the car has started! .
In the previous versions of Indica , one of the negative feedbacks was, that the steering used to vibrate at higher speeds (We are talking of 100-120KMH) .This one’s pretty steady.
The A/C is excellent and cools the cabin in no time .The A/c vents have two knobs each to direct the horizontal and vertical airflow as desired.
The mileage ,what the company says is about 15.5 with A/c for the lower variant(Petrol) and 18 for the diesel version.
Overall I would give a rating of 8 /10 to Vista .
So the square cut point is Vista is here to stay !
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