Happy Republic Day

Amar Jawan, Army Memorial, Kargil & Drass Road

Freedom in mind, faith in the words, pride in our hearts; memories in our souls. Let's salute the nation on Republic Day! Vande Mataram!!

Amar Jawan, Army Memorial, Kargil & Drass Road

Discipline, Patriotism; Patience to practice.

Happy Lorhi to All

One day Sunday went to Monday to see Tuesday and ask Wednesday whether Thursday has told Friday and Saturday that “SUNDAY” IS LOHRI. 

“HAPPY LOHRI”

Happy Lorhi to All

Smart Phones & Not-So-Smart Users

As a writer, I have developed an obnoxious habit of observing people, and it does irritate me sometimes to see how some people can waste hours of productive hours on mobiles. Why can’t an accounts manager remember that the payment is pending since 3 months? Why, over a course of 40 minutes, does a senior executive trade 15 emails to organise a simple coffee meeting, only to be postponed to the next day? Why does a manager from real estate company waste the entire meeting in talking about his inspirations that are not even remotely related to the project?

If you are an owner of a smartphone that has made it possible for you to read this on mobile, the surprising answer to these apparently unrelated questions might literally be stretching out in the palm of your hand.

With a massive and rapidly increasing user base, smartphones have now become a core part of our lives. Sprouting far beyond the basic productivity tools in the early 2000s, Blackberrys, iPhones and Android handsets have acquired a dominant position in the mobile industry. The value proposition? Work and play faster, smarter, longer, and better. I also found that over 50% of young professionals rank mobile phones as the most vital technology that helps them to work. Cloud computing ranked second at 14%.

More interesting than rating people’s dependency on their phones, is observing their behaviour behind the exploding usage. While speaking to some smartphone users, I found their ehaviour shifts very surprising. One user commented, “I’m always scheduling things on my phone and it tells me when to do what”. "By the time I check all my phone notifications, new ones just swamp me”, said another.

I am not a psychologist, but am not even so naïve to find out that the overall results are stunning: frequent use of smartphone imposes crucial psychological costs, and it impacts our professional and personal lives in four ways:

• ·         We don’t remember anything anymore because now smartphones do that for us.
• ·         We’ve forgotten to use our mind to work out simple calculations because our phone gives us inbuilt calculator
• ·         We are wasting time by indulging into irrelevant data downloads
• ·         It keeps us hooked to social networking and within FaceBook, Twitter, Linkedin – the actual me has got lost.

Craziest Things Employees Tried to Expense in 2012

Crazy employee

Dear naïve epitomes of corporate virtues,

Did you think that the days when employees could subsidize crazy expenses are gone? Not so easily dear. The report by Businessweek shows that almost one-fifth of the expenses submitted violate the company norms in one way or another in these days of cost cutting and austerity. Here are 7 examples of the most brazen expenses that were filed last year. The names of the companies are not disclosed due to confidentiality agreements.

• ·         Innerwear: Someone in the telecommunication industry thought their body looks best at the workplace with a particular set of innerwear.
• ·         Deer urine: The deer urine was a key requirement for an agricultural products manufacturing company employee’s successful hunting trip with a client.
• ·         Young giraffe and zebra: The baby giraffe and zebra were brought to an office party for a hospitality company. I suspect there was plenty of booze there, too.
• ·         Dunk tank: An auto parts supply company hired the dunk tank to uplift the moral of its employees. Every time they achieved a target, they got to dunk their boss in it.
• ·         Pink flamingo ornaments. The employee of a pharmaceutical company needed ten. For the home, it’s cheap, but for the office? That would have been fun!
• ·         Tattoo removal: Put forward by an engineer who wished to improve his image and sought to look more professional to clients.
• ·         $3833 for Screaming Eagle (1994): After supper, the finance Gods like to have drinks. One highly-sophisticated employee decided to taste one of the world’s most expensive wines on the company dime. 

Good luck, dear friends. You—and your brash expenses—will surely be a source of inspiration for the new hires of the coming year who, in my humble opinion would surely be inquisitive to know the best way to make use of company money.