New kid on the Blog

Yesterday, a good friend of mine could bear it no more (the change that the surrounding environment was making to him) and decided to fight it all off by starting a blog of his own.
He is creative, very creative infact. But when it comes to simple things, he kind of leaves it for the lesser creatures.
Thus when it came to name his new blog, he decided to go minus on creativity and named it after his own name "Pragnesh".
He writes well and he thinks literally out of this world. Read him on his blog at http://pragneshsp.blogspot.com/

For my ears only!

Everywhere I go, nowadays, I see many people with wires coming out of their ears. Not that they are aliens, but I am amused by the revolution that the personal media players have brought to us.

I know of a time, not long ago, when such a thing in public would be winced at. But now, I find myself wincing at someone who "disturbs" me while I'm listening to U2 on my iPod.

Analysing the situation helped me discoved some interesting things:

First, you find more wired guys than the un-wired ones. Some three years back, this ration was reverse. So clearly music-on-the-go concept is finding more and more followers.

Secondly, and more disturbing one, we care less and less about the world around us. I look at the wired species closely and realise that they don't care who is sitting next to them in the train. It seems as if their world has shrunk and got inside their ears and all they can do is "listen" to it to keep connected to it.

Although companies hype such products as a lifestyle product, I really feel that all these jazzy things are doing is detach us from each other. Is that on the agenda of "lifestyle enhancement"? Make us feel forgotten, left out?

Imagine a society where everyone is engrossed in their own devices. People do not have time to talk to each other. And then as time goes by, people forget how to talk to each other. Communication becomes a forte of the devices only. The mouth looses its utility (well, partial utility actually, because you can't eat through your music player :) and you can't kiss someone using your music player. Others may have found more uses of the mouth but I am not interested in talking about them here.).

A scary future. I hope it doesn't happen. All revolutions are not good. And a revolution that has gone rogue, is definitely not worth it.

Maybe I am dreaming a lot. But I love my iPod too. I think I need to turn that iPod off for a while.

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How to be happy and successful

I've read on many blogs the advice given by "specialists" and "self-improvement gurus" to be good to people. They share a common belief that to be successful, you need to talk to people. To greet them in the morning or while walking through the office premises.

After reading quite a few of them, I decided of giving it a try and be nice to people for a day to see the impact on my career success. This how it unfolded:

'I started out of my house wearing a "smile" (it sure pains to keep your face like that for a long time). I greeted the security personnel at my office door (who looked at me with "extra" suspicion). I greeted my project manager next, but he frowned at me. I don't know why, but I have a feeling he thought I was trying to make up for that "tussle" I had with him 2 weeks ago. Then I went to the cafeteria and greeted the sales manager there. He gave me a look that said clearly "We ain't giving no free coffee today".

This left me wondering where did I go wrong? Does the guru-advice really work? Or is that I am having a bad day?'

Now coming to think of it, I have a 50:50 proportion of good and bad days in my life. And going by my experience, I assume, most of us have a similar share and each of us have it at different times. So, mathematically, if I am having a good day doesn't mean others are having it too. In such a scenario, the "guru's" advice clearly goes for a toss.

Surprisingly, on another usual day, I ended up completing my work 2 days ahead of the deadline and my project manager showed me how his face looks when he is happy. He communicated this to our client and he wrote back something that showed he was happy to know this too. And of course, I was happy to get such an appreciation.

So just by being productive at work, I managed to alter the mood of two people. Ain't that an achievement for a day?

So let me ask this: "Is keeping a count on how many people you greeted today, going to make you a happy successful person? Or, Is doing you work diligently going to thrust you to the top?"