Monday, May 26, 2008

Giving Hope!

No matter what situations life throws at you...
no matter how long and treacherous your journey may seem...

Remember, there is a light at the end of the tunnel

7 Habbits of Highly ineffective people.

Hey All,

I just came out of yet another thrilling Toastmaster Session and I was the Joke-Master of the day.
As a joke master I was supposed to make audience laugh and I chose to use " 7 Habbits of Highly ineffective people. "

It went pretty well, so thought to share the write up with you all too.... Here you go...

Joke Master : TM session 23

I am sure you’ve all read or at least heard about seven habits of highly effective people as explained by renowned writer Steven R Covey.

But I am not sure if you’ve also heard of 7 habits of highly ineffective people by even more renowned writer – TM Shashi. So today I’d enlighten you by those 7 habits of highly ineffective people.

Seven habits of highly ineffective people.

1.) The nosy habit.

Its simple, the people with nosy habit believe that there is a hidden treasure inside their nose and hence try to explore it whenever they get time to.

People do this when they nervous but I do this every time I get nervous and its only when I;ve found some treasure that I realize that what I was doing ?

If you follow cricket, one player who strongly believes in the treasure in the nose is Sourav Ganguly, you can often find him doing this [ Finger in the nose] and the cameraman has to take the focus off immediately. The worst thing about Ganguly is that he also does this after the nosy act. [ Put the same finger in mouth to bite nails ]

2.) The second habit of highly ineffective people is “The ultimate itch” ,

People with this habit exhibit excellent itching sense.

There are types of itching – I don’t know itching – Head.

I don’t know but I am pretending that I know itching. – Chin.

I did not take bath itching – Underarms and chest.

And the socially unacceptable – the sachin tendulkar itching.

3.) Better late than ever. Habbit.

They think that “Being late is glorious” and hence they would always come late. If there is a meeting at 3PM, they will enter at 3:20PM.

Now its not their mistake that they think being late is glorious. Because it is.

Suppose Harish is taking up an all hands and all the employees are listening to him, and this highly ineffective person enters just 30mins late, what will happen , - everybody will look at him and even harish will look at him.

Nobody would have even noticed this poor chap if only he was on time. Of course – being late is glorious.

4.) The fourth habbit is – pretend you know everything.

You can ask such people anything you like – and they will act like encyclopedia for you.

Do you know who is Michael Schumacher ? Of course, I know her.

Do you know what is a software ? – Dude – what do you think am I wearing?

Do you follow IPL ? Of course I follow IPL and Germany is my favorite team.

5.) The fifth habit is that they think 5=7.

you see these were the 7 habits of a highly ineffective person.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Just a thought!!

Now that I 've got a tail bone fracture, I can only wear loose clothes and it made me think of this..

"What if we had a tail now? .. What kind of clothes can be designed?.. A wrap around the tail ?..
In that case, how can we wear it?.. A cylindrical cloth can be pulled over on tail like how we put the pillow cover over a pillow??!!..or.. a rectangular cloth with hooks on one side and loop on other side? No no..It will take hell a lot of time to put all hooks into the loop !!
Well.. the best is having a welcro on one side and sticky thing on the other side of the cloth !!
And we can call the guy who stitches as " Tail Tailor" :)- "

wow.. what a great line of thought when I have thousands of things to study for Ph.D and exams !!

Well, if this post provokes your thought, give your suggestions :)

Friday, May 23, 2008

Already arranged interview....???

Well, I get email requests...for employment possibilities..but this request is one of its kinds.... :D

Dear Employer:

I am responding to your advertisement in website, regarding openings in Development Engineer. Please find enclosed my resume showing my education, experience, and background.

I have around 2 years experience in the software field. May I arrange an interview to further discuss my qualifications? I am available for an interview at a mutually convenient time.

Thank you for your time and consideration...
Ms. R

Badhri... what do you have to say ;-)

Monday, May 19, 2008

Toilet technology


"Around this time of year, it would be warm in Japan man! You lucky fellow, you will escape the Hyderabad summer", my friend envied me as I was about to leave for Japan!

Only god knows how much my friend cursed me for the supposed luck. But if he did, his curses sure worked! As I arrived at Tokyo airport, I was in for a cold and windy surprise. Literally! I had to take a bus to get to the city where my apartment is located. The ten minute wait with summer cotton clothes on a windy day was terrible. As if the cold is not enough, within minutes my bladder got full! I risked missing the usually punctual bus and ran for the washroom. It was a much needed relief, but a short-lived one. I managed to come back before the scheduled arrival time of the bus. The bus was late by about three minutes and I was back to square one. I felt like a pregnant lady ready give birth to a liquid infant! For the second time with in a span of ten minutes!

Narita airport is about half-an-hours drive from Tokyo. By the time, I unlocked my apartment door, I was so full that I could have put out a Californian forest fire twice! I got into the washroom for the much needed release. Engrossed in the happiness I first didn't notice it. But as I grew leaner and relieved, I noticed that there was a tap atop the flush tank, only there was no way to turn it on!

Now that I had served my sentence for committing the crime of not packing winter clothes, I started exploring. I slid my hands right under the tap to see if it has a motion sensor, but the tap didn't respond. I groped behind the tap feeling for a push button. Still nothing. "I guess the tap is just for a show. Japanese probably spend their lifetime making cars and ASIMOs that they just didn't have enough time for taps!", I thought. I reached for the flush, pulled it up (not push down) and voila! along with the flash the tap vomited copious water!



"Wow! What washes your hands can still wash of your liquid baby! Japs are cool", I thought. Little did I know then that I was barely scratching the surface of truth. The next morning, I covered the two minute walk to my office and I was full again.

"I never understood the biology. Why should my bladder hyper react to cold?", I thought as I started looking around the office building for the familiar match-stick man. "Its not that I will drown in my own urine if I don't pass a litre of it every two minutes! In fact how did so much water get into my body in the first place! Ah there he is" I spotted the match-stick man hanging from the ceiling and into the entrance under him.

After an eternal minute, I was relieved again. As I reached the wash basin, I started wondering if all the Japanese toilets had a tap over their flush tanks. So, went to the toilet door, and slowwwwly pushed it open and peeked in with curiosity. I saw no tap on the flush tank. In fact, there was no flush tank.

"Hah, it's not a Japanese thing after all, just the apartment guys, trying to impress".

I pulled the door to close it. Just as the door closed, I noticed that the toilet seat had an arm jutting out from its sides.

"What the...", I opened the door and found tiny buttons on the arms. I moved closed to observe them. They are electronic controls for the flush. Four small buttons to control the force of the water jet and four more to control the warmth. "Holy shit!", I thought. I felt as if I just got one on my jaw from Evander Holyfield and stammered out of the bathroom.

It is about a week now and I thought I got used to the best of toilet technologies. I realized that I was wrong yet again. The best just got better. Here is an article from The Economist.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Waaaazaaaaa!

Nivikar or as I am used to calling him "Nirvignam kurme deva" (NKD) was in a thoughtful mood as NKD, Aish and I started walking towards the noisy road that would take us eventually to work. "Why are you in a thoughtful mood now?", I asked. But then he didn't respond. However, my mind got preoccupied with what I just said so fast that even if he had responded, I would have cut him off! :) Or may be he did respond and may be I did cut him off! Anyway, who cares! :)

"Hey have you heard that S**d**ji joke?", I asked them and continued without waiting for an answer. "So, a S**d**ji was taking an English exam and after a hard-fought 3 hours, he came out satisfied that he did well. A friend of his asked
"How was the exam?".
"Did well this time!", he replied, "However, there was one question that I am not sure about."
"What is that?", asked his friend
"The question was, 'what is the past tense of the word Think?"
"Well..a tough one I suppose, what was your answer?"
The S**d**ji replied "I thought..thought..thought and wrote 'Thunk'

NKD, I think, still didn't react
Aish replied, with a characteristic expression of his "Haa haa Waaaaaazaaaaa!" and did a Hi-fi!

Disclaimer: No offense to any body belonging to any particular group. Its a joke and emphasis is placed only on the "Thunk" word and no other word.

Monday, May 12, 2008

First thing in the morning!

Kids repeat what they see elders do. My nephew is no different. Only, sometimes he pushes it! I got up about 10 minutes ago and walked out of my room to find him like this!


Thursday, May 8, 2008

Simian traits on public display!

Nature of job 3 of 3

Alright here is the final one nature of job.
This happened to one my friend working in Motorola in software dept.

He was supposed to take a flight from Begumpet airport to Bangalore, he directly went to the airport from work and in the process forgot to take of the company batch off from his belt lock.

He entered the security checking area and the personnel who was stamping the bag - tags happened to see the batch - "MOTOROLA", and asked - "so your work for Motorola ?

Yes replied the friend,

I've a Motorola cell that is consuming lot of battery and is not catching the signals properly and you should take a look at it !!!!!!

The security personnel kept complaining about all the feature about some old Motorola Model and grew quite aggressive thinking that this is the person who must be responsible for all the trouble he faced !!!!!

He almost had him for dinner before my friend somehow managed to escape.
But he almost had to apologize before leaving, for the dirty condition -Motorola cell.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Where are you ?

I have friend whom I used to work with during my Satyam days - Actor 1

He had a friend who used to work in Indian Railways as a software engineer - Actor 2. Now, this obviously meant all last minute ticketing requests that we used to have, ended up with him :-).

Another common friend of ours came up with a similar last minute request - Actor 3. 3 requested 1 to liaison. 1 asked 3 to reach the station and give 2 a call. 3 reached station and gave 2 a call. Following conversation reconstructed from sources close to the incident.

3: Hey 2, I have reached the station, can you come down so that I can give you the money?
2: Sure, I am coming down
3: Okay
(2 comes down)
2: So where are you, I have come down near the reservation counter.
3: Okay, let me come.....Okay, I am there
2: Still cannot see you, which side are you on...
3: I am on the Platform # 1 side.
2. Even I am on that side.
3. Come near where the TT is standing. Let us meet there
2: Yes I am here
3: What color shirt are you wearing?
2: White
3: I do not see any person wearing a white shirt.
2: Okay, do one thing. Come to the first floor railways office.
3: FIRST FLOOR ???? There is no first floor.
Silence.............................
2: Which station are you at?
3: Begumpet, why? You?
2: My office is at Secunderabad station.
3: What the ........

Nature of job 2 of 3

Following happened to other colleauge (Vijay) yesterday :-

Somebody happened to have visited him, I'll call him Mr. Dingu.

Mr. Dingu got interested in the kind of job that we do at Synopsys.
To make it simple, Vijay replied " We work on chip design and related softwares ".

Mr. Dingu inquired with genuine curiosity - " so what's hot in chip design these days ? "

Vijay actively replied - " Power !!! Now a days low power designs are critical . Power seem to be the key challenge for the chips to come !! "

The discussion went on for around 10 mins and Vijay was very happy to have found some one who actually understands "nature of his job" !!!!
but he was taken aback by this statement of Mr. Dingu after a long discussion on low power design challenges in VLSI

" Oh Now I understand, why Reliance Power is investing so much money in Taiwan "

Nature of Job - 1 of 3

With IT revolution in India, one thing that has become difficult is " how do I explain my job to others ? "

Especially with the job that I do at synopsys that entitles us as " Support Center Engineer !!!"

Few days back one my collegue's wife recommended him to quite Synopsys and rather join a Call center like Wipro or ICICI !!!!

for most of mortals, all support centers are call centers....

Stay Hungry ......

Badhri's current (at some point of time) GTalk status is "Stewart Brand and Steve Jobs: Stay hungry, Stay foolish". It really is a good speech. You can find it here.

While talking to him @ home the subject veered towards his GTalk status; and I was like "Hey man that Stay Foolish, Stay Poor, speech is Steve Jobs' right." Then I realized that in a moment of tongue-slip I had said something quite insightful :)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

3 girls and a guy !!

My name causes a lot of confusion to a lot of people. Quite understandable and there are tons of incidents where my name made people believe that the person behind the name is a damsel. Here goes the first one.

Satyam had organized an Antakshari competition for its employees. I participated in it along with two guys and a girl - teams of 4 were required. Now the stroke of luck - My name is Aishwarya, another guy's name was Ramya, there was another guy, Swastik and another girl - Sarbani. We won the competition and when we went to the organizers to get our names registered for the next level, she was surprised. She had expected a team of 3 girls and a guy, again, understandably.

Mubarak to you too !!

This happened a long long time back. We were on a trip to our native. Now, we are going from our village to the nearest town where we need to meet this auto driver whose name is "Mubarak". This guy is found in front of shop that my grandma is aware of.

So we are in an Mahindra Armada jeep and in a small town where big "passenger" are still looked at with awe. We stopped in front of that shop and called out to the person manning the shop.

Multiple voices from the car: "Mubarak?"
The man was happily bewildered and said "Oh, Aap ko bhi Mubarak. Lekin kis baat ke liye" (Oh, best wishes to you too but what for?)

We did not even try containing our laughter :-). Once we were done, we told him we are looking for Mubarak, the auto driver

Community Service

Ok, Excellent posts so far !!!
Hats off to all contributors. i'll contribute one of my all time favorite - Poke ( Practical Joke ;) )

Just like any one of us, Mr. Dingu is also inclined to serve the community and help others.
I met Mr. Dingu to see how committed he is for his community service.

If you've 2 televisions, would you donate one to a poor family ? , I asked.
Yes, of course replied Mr. Dingu.

that's great, if you've 2 cars, would you donate one to any NGO in need of one ?
Sure, answered Mr. Dingu.

Ok, if you've two cows, I am sure you'll also donate one Cow to a farmer in need ?
No !!! came the answer in a splash, to my surprise.

But Why ? you seem to be so generous, I inquired in awe.
Mr. Dingu calmly replied,

"It's because, I neither have two cars nor have 2 televisions, but I do have 2 Cows !!! "

"Isn't that your friend's name?"

There was a subdued roar at the dark corner of the room. The horrified little girl the boy next to him as she looked on. Slowly, the full grown lion showed itself as it emerged from the darkness. With a shrill cry of fear, the kids ran down the hall as the lion hotly pursued its prey, when suddenly Robin Williams appeared before the lion from nowhere and took the lion by surprise. Now the lion focussed on him and got ready to take on his challenge. After a brief pause, it pounced on him suddenly, when my mom appeared from nowhere between me and the TV (just like the lion!).

I said "Mom, why don't you stop moving here and there and start watching this movie?"

"Such movies don't interest me", said she.

"Come on don't judge it before you have watched at least a bit of it. This movie is Jumanji...surely you must have heard of it"

"Jumanji?", ask my mom and got lost in her thought for sometime, "Isn't that your friend's name?"

"What? My friends name? Its a movies name. You must have confused.....", and then it stuck me! "Oh! hah ha ha. That is not Jumanji! His name is Jibanjeet"!

Monday, May 5, 2008

Cheppandi !!!

So my friend, Vishwas is trying to book a bus ticket to Pune. The great guy that he is, he waited till the last day to book the ticket. No tickets available, anywhere. We searched at a few places. Then we tried calling the toll free number of Raj Travels. 1800-blah-blah.

Vishwas made the phone call. Phone rings.

Lady (picks phone on the other side): Cheppundi ! (Yes Please!)
Vishwas: "Arre Raj Travels! Mere ko Pune ke liye ticket chahiye"
Lady: Enti Saaar!! (I am not sure what is meant by this. Ask Telegu experts)
Vishwas: Raj Travels!
Lady: No Sir.. Idi 108 Emergency. What is the problem?

Innocent Prayers....!

  1. "Dear God, thank you for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy" - Joyce
  2. "Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it. " - Nan
  3. "Dear God, If you watch in church on sunday I will show you my new shoes" - Mickey
  4. "Dear God, if you give me genie lamp like Alladin I will give you anything you want except my money or my chess set. " - Raphael.
  5. "Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones why don't you just keep the ones you got now..?" - Jane.
  6. "Dear God, Are you really invisible or is that just a trick?" - Lucy

:-)

Innocent ……….Kids at their best ;-)

While heading towards our most important task of the day…i.e.…having “Tea” at ground floor stall, two kids were playing with a basketball. I snatched & asked playfully…”Kiska hai yeh basketball? The kid answered in true hyderabadi style.....”... hai to ye Big Bazaar ka…humne sirf khareeda hai” …!

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Happy laughing!

"Haa haa haaa!" came out the sound of laughter from a group of youngsters-at-heart at a park in bangalore near my brother's home in Bangalore. My father made his presence felt with his joke on his day at the laughter club, thanks to Reader's Digest. This is what he had to say.

A lousy hunter was walking home with drooping shoulders after yet another day's failure when he spotted another hunter struggling to drag a big grizzly bear that he just shot.

"How could you do it?" asked he.
"Its simple! Go in front of the cave, aim your rifle at its entrance and whistle. When the bear comes out, shoot!", said the successful hunter.

After a few days, the latter went to a hospital to treat a bruise he sustained after a minor accident. He found the lousy hunter on the beds heavily bandaged.

"What happened?", asked he.

"I.... tried to ...... execute your advice ..... to kill a bear!", he managed with great difficulty!

Puzzled, the successful hunter verified, "Did you stand in front of the cave?"
"Yes"
"Did you take aim?"
"Yea"
"Did you whistle?"
"Yes"
"What did you see?"
"Trans-siberian express train!"

Well folks, it is not without a reason that I chose this joke that was narrated at a laughter club. Today, being the first Sunday of May, is World Laughter Day.This was celebrated for the first time in a Laughter Yoga club in Mumbai.

More reason to laugh! So, is an extra booster from Dilbert (for an enlarged version) :)


Friday, May 2, 2008

YAI YUM YUM YES DONI

MagLev's problems

Sudeep: When you go to Japan make sure you go in Shinkansen (Japan's fastest train)

Badhri: Sure. Have you been on it?

Sudeep: No, but I had been on Maglev in China. You know? That train that works on magnetic levitation?

Badhri : Ya

Sudeep: Man its so fast! Its maximum speed is 435 kmph!

Badhri: Wow!

Sudeep: Can you believe it? Had it been built in India, I can be in Kerala and travel for work in Hyderabad!

Badhri: Amazing! But the only problem is, you can't board the train as it starts moving from the station anymore!

Sudeep: (to himself). I can't believe I have let him crack that PJ again! Damn me!


FYI: Maglev on Wiki