Decision-making

Decision-making is something I have always suffered with. But despite that I plan to put up some of my thoughts on decision-making that have been popping up in my head for months.

I personally believe one of the important things for anybody to remain happy in life is to make decisions the way he/she thinks. There is a lot that can go into making of a decision.

A few factors that would result in a good or bad decision could be:

1. Strong will of decision maker.
2. Good understanding of the current situation.
3. Proper view of the future and visualization of the outcome/consequences.
4. Being ready to face opposition.
5. Knowing the art of saying no (saying yes is the easiest thing).
6. Uncompromising.
7. Complete information in hand.
8. Willingness to sacrifice one thing for the other (to have everything is being lucky).
9. Being ruthless at times.
10. Being prepared for failure.

Some of the above mentioned factors might have been very specific based on a few past incidents that have been going on around me. But, I still think a lot of these factors are generic.

Decisions can make or break the course of action that might follow ahead. So it is better to take tough and hard decisions even if it results into misery/grief for some time instead of making a soft decision for the meanwhile and then suffering in the longer run.

Orkut turns more Indian

I am not saying, "Orkut turns Indian" because there are lot of Indians using orkut. But, it is interesting to see that till yesterday on the home page of orkut there was not even a single picture of an Indian among the 8 pictures of some smiling people.



Today I check the same page and see that 4 of those 10 smiling people are Indians.



This number is quite high as compared to the actual number of Indian on Orkut, which is around 14% of the total Orkut users as on 28 Feb 2007(Orkut on wikipedia).

This is interesting to see that orkut is turning so much of attention to India leaving China. Reason I would attribute to this the fact that it is not just that Google (orkut belongs to google) believes lot more Indians are interested in orkut social networking than Chinese are but it is more because orkut is facing much less competition with other networking sites in India. In India new friends/social networking portals popped up only after a huge success of Orkut where as such things started simultaneously in China, which has made the penetration of google (orkut, youtube, blogspot) a much difficult task than it has in India. Services like these started by Chinese service providers have existed in India for quite sometime before they caught fire in India.

I think there are two important aspects to this:
1. Indians are more visible in global activities these days.
2. But, we need to have more indigenous products (I am not being chauvinistic).

More on that some other time.

I am getting Married

Yes, finally i am getting married. Though i have always been one of the not so interested in marriage guys but then there are times when such things happen in life we are changed forever.

I am on such a juncture of my life now. 4 months back i arrived in China in the midst all kinds of pressure at work. But then i met somebody who took away all the pressure. Who made me feel as if i was at home. I met someone who changed me..

After 4 months of a happy relationship i have decided that it is time we must strengthen this relationship. Thus we have decided to get married. Though i would be doing it here in china unlike an Indian marriage but i intend to get re-married once i go back to India with all the rituals of a hindu marriage.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ok now enough is enough.

Today is 1st April (April fool's Day). So i just thought of putting up a false surprise here.

Ha Ha Ha!!!:-)

Surprisingly Wikipedia says April fool's is more than 400 years old!!

Good for Indian sports

It’s been a old matter that India exit from the cricket WC in round-I and people seem to have forgotten this as well. Though i am not happy to see my own country and its players loosing so badly. Not because it lost but because it lost without even giving any fight to the teams it lost to.

But, i think it is a good opportunity for the other Indian sports. I personally believe a sport in today’s world is driven by business. With Indian cricket team's all time low rankings and worst performances, Indian sports is lacking national idols and now is the time for any of the new individuals to show some great performance. Business will grab them for their brand endorsements and that would give a good push to the respective sport.

I think its important for business to look outside cricket. Only cricket and bollywood being the options available with ad makers the options are too less and thus the brand value of even not so popular and new celebrities is quite high.

Now is the time when these new sportspersons could click and get their share of fame and glory, which has been overshadowed for long by cricket.

So may be Indian cricket might recover from the slump soon for some reason but here is a chance for Indian sports to redefine itself from sports=cricket to sports=sports.

Generations

Families grow like a tree and spread their span. People move and reach places like branches. But, roots matter. Here is one picture that triggered me to think so.



That’s nani (maternal grandmother), didi (her grand daughter) and her daughter Riti.
So we can see 4 generations. Nani is living in Jammu; didi in US and Riti is POI (People of Indian Origin).

What I am thinking is, do the roots feel sad for branches being too far from it and it misses them or it feels proud that the branches have reached so far.

Thanks to didi for letting me put up this photo here.

Shame or Blame

So India lost to Bangladesh. Shame! Shame! Well they outplayed us, so some cheers!! for the bangladesh team too. Credit has to be given to them for bowling out Indian line-up for 191. Yes, the same Indian batting line-up where 3 players individually have more score than whole Bangladesh team.

But, is this not how everything runs in this world - cyclical change. India is a developing economy. But when we see business from these developing countries growing and becoming bigger than some of the developed countries we say its our time now. So if somebody wins someone has to loose.

I think this is good for the world cricket that there are new teams showing good performance. Atleast the world cup will be a little more unpredictable instead just 8 teams being expected to be in the 2nd round(every world cup for the last 4 times).

Ofcourse i dont mean to say, for the development of world cricket I am happy to see India loosing. It is unfortunate to see India loose to a new team. But then if Infosys tipping IBM and Accenture in a mutimillion contract is fair enough then I think Bangladesh tipping India is fair enough too.

But then Accenture and IBM would not sit down and relax. So it is important to notice what do Indian players do after this match.

I think atleast after this world cup, those players who claim cricket is their first love and rest all second(like Sachin etc.) should atleast show it for the sake of it by saying no to all new advertisements for the next 6 months, focus only the game and see what has changed in world cricket since last time they focussed on the game(i guess it might have been a long time for most of them since they have been working very hard for ad shoots).

This result would also have raised Bermuda's hopes. They might be thinking can we do it too. God bless them!

By the way after being chucked out of the workd cup is Pakistan going back home. I think they must loose to Zimbabwe too. Not because i love to watch Pakistan loosing. But, because pak cricket team would anyways receive maltreatement on their return. If they loose to Zimbabwe then they can go to Zimbabwe and there they might receive a welcome treatment. So atleast they will have some place to hide.

Me on TV

So that is me on a local chinese TV after the recovery of that Laptop.

Thanks to Vikram for being intelligent and quick enough to record it on his camera.
It would have never struck me!!

and i found it...

Sometimes luck is smiling at us. But, we realise it only after we see the results. As long as we dont get to see the results we only curse it!!

The bag i had lost at 8:30PM yesterday is with me again now at 11:00AM. It is intact and i think was not even opened(the laptop was right there in its place).

The bag was found due to an honest Taxi driver and 2 good policemen and with the help of co-ordinating hotel staff(ofcourse the reception girls are always very co-ordinating), they kept helping me in translating chinese to english and english to chinese during my conversation with police.

I can't say it was me who was lucky(i lost the bag) or if David was lucky(it was David's bag and laptop).

But, I think i cannot test my luck anymore because i might be running out of my quota of luck .I lost my passport on a transit airport and found it at the enquiry desk in less than 30 minutes(8 months back). Now i lost my laptop(yeah after loosing it, it was mine) and found it again in less than 24 hours. So much of luck within 8 months. If luck had some annual allocation then i have alredy gone above the threshhold.

Happy Ending:

To claim about their success, the policemen had invited the local TV guys to cover the incident. A chinese babe (atleast I think she was quite good) was all set alongwith the cameraman to ask questions to the Police, driver and ofcourse me the victim, which means i would be on local TV in the evening for 5 minutes(i had not even known that this channel exists forget having viewed it before).

I doubt Indian police would be able to manage that. I had a strong belief and it had been strengthened about the fact that "people outside India are more friendly to foreigners than Indians are to foreigners in India"(people = common man on the road who just see a foreginer and might not have to deal with him/her under a normal circumstance).

Now i can sleep easy!!

I just lost it

This evening i took a cab from office back to my hotel. Upon naming the hotel in chinese the taxi driver understood it soon. And as usual after that i only kept saying dui dui dui(dui means yes in chinese) to everything the driver said to me in chinese. But, he was a nice man aged around 50. He laughed with us(me and vikram).

I reached back hotel and after reaching the lobby I recollected I had 2 bags when i took seat in the taxi(1 mine and 1 David's) but now had only 1. I forgot to collect David's bag from Taxi.
The man on the gate realized immediately from my reaction that i have forgotten something big and he is one of the fewest who can speak to me in english easily. Fortunately he checked the surveillance cameras at the hotel entrance and got the taxi number. He reported the issue to Police immediately. And surprisingly police arrived in another 20 minutes. After asking me details about the bag, taxi, driver etc. They informed me that they have aired the information on radio all the taxi drivers have. They have also informed me that they will get the driver's name and contact information from the database based on the taxi number. They have left assuring me to relax and wait for tomorrow morning.

It was good to see police arriving quickly, being nice in behaviour and understanding. But, i still havent found the bag. The bag contains David's Laptop!!!!!

For some reason i still think i might get the bag back (i dont know why i think so). But i can only pray and try to chase around for that tomorrow as well. Lets hope and continue to pray that i will find it and be able to sleep properly tomorrow.

:-(

My Dream

These days my dream is to somehow manage getting up early in the morning. I wish i could get up at 6AM but 7 AM will also be fine. But, i do not want to continue getting up like this every morning - 9 AM on weekdays and 11 on weekends.
This is pathetic, annoying and outrageous!!!!

Any solutions for forcing oneself to get up at a good and respectable time would be appreciated!!