Friday, February 27, 2009

Economic Recession sumarized

The current economic recession is best summarized by the story below (i got it as a forward from one of my friends):

What is recession?
------------------------------
----

This Story is about a man who once upon a time was selling Hotdogs by
the roadside.

He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers. He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio.

His eyes were weak, so he never watched television. But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs.

He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales. His sales and profit went up. He ordered more a more raw material and buns and use to sale more.

He recruited few more supporting staff to serve more customers. He started offering home deliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove.

As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from College, joined his father.
Then something strange happened. The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?"

The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times."

The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly. So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colourful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic.

He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hotdog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly, same is the profit.

The father said to his son, "Son, you were right".

"We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned
me ahead of time."

Moral of The Story:
It's all in your MIND!
And we actually FUEL this recession much more than we think.
BE POSITIVE !

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Most populous countries in the world

Here is a little exercise (DO NOT GOOLGE or REFER ANYWHERE!!!): Name the top 5 most populous countries in the world.

I have the answer below and DO NOT LOOK AT IT BEFORE YOU HAVE THE 5 COUNTRIES IN MIND

But just to fill up the space, heres something for timepass,

Refering to the debate Reza Aslan vs Sam Harris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5og-hyD3A7A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAN6IFNPkbI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXm8-Fq1H40&feature=related

Reza quotes: “Statements like there are millions of Muslims who, you know, have this sort of ‘death cult’ are profoundly inaccurate… (Osama’s) justifications for the terrorist acts are not religious justifications …its because of Palestine, its because of troops in Saudi Arabia, its because of now whats going on in Iraq…they are social grievances, they are political grievances, they are economic grievances unlike everybody on earth they are framed in the language of religion…”

Harris quotes: “…for instance in the End of Faith I cite these polls done in 9 Muslim countries, actually not the most radicalized, radicalized countries would not let the polling be done, but even in Turkey, the Muslim success story on many fronts, the level of support for suicide bombing against non-combatants in defense of the faith was shocking! …77% people in Lebanon say that it is justified…”

For fun, a comedy from Sam Harris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Fq_FxrVng

OK heres the answer (as per Wikipedia :) and all subsequent reference to data are all from wiki) in descending order (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population):

China

India

USA

Indonesia

Brazil

I don’t know how many of you have guessed Indonesia (please do comment if possible); I personally did not and even had asked 9 of my friends in person and none of them ever thought of Indonesia (only one came close saying ‘maybe some country in south east asia’)…

Now heres why I had quotes from the debate Reza vs Harris – As Reza brings out, I also personally believe that the “extremist” ideologies that have emanated are profoundly a consequence of geo-political and economic factors labeled in the name of theology or religion. Indonesia is a Muslim majority country with the most populous Muslim population of 210 million which is about 88% of the total population in Indonesia and which is almost 30 and 40% more than the second and third placed muslim population countries of Pakistan and India respectively.

Lebanon, a country in Harris’s survey, is 58th most populous Muslim population with 2 million. So I do not know if the survey was done in the democratic country of Indonesia, I apologize for not looking into Harris’ book, but I am trying to get a hand to it and might post my comments on it in my next post…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country

But I definitely feel, right from Constantine to Osama, the religion is used as a mask to deal with the geo-political or socio-political issues.

“Anything, food, water, sex, religion or even thoughts when consumed more than what is needed is harmful…not just for you”

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Building the pool table






Pool table in the living room! guys love it and maybe some girls do...but how many would allow their guy to put up a pool table in their living rooms? Now, why do we like it? Tired and home, moment you enter, whola!!! the green topping with eight holes welcomes you, ya humans got one more than that, but hey...the sound of breaking the balls, beer in hand, Akon for company or maybe espn...whatever its something that we can enjoy and yet pretend listening to the stories of the day, here is metaphor, it would seem like we are fishing but we are...

Now for the serious part - We got this pool table real cheap and decided to bring it home ourselves disassembling it and bringing it in a U-haul. Even got $150 tool set. Off we go and the pool table is in basement. To this day we did not figure it out how the hell was it brought inside. We were four of us and starting unscrewing the screws, u guessed it, we are all engineers - all graduated! We took the top part off, just lifted it and placed it over the side. We started disassembling the base and the legs. The slate was three piece, but a engineers we decided we want to get it out in one piece!

We needed the cushion on top undamaged and did not want to take it off, so wanted to take it out in a single piece. Logical, rt? Damnit, it was tooo heavy, and in the process of taking it out, the cushion came off, the three pieces parted ways and a guy got hurt as a slate fell right over him breaking his wrist, damn i was worried that we were one man down and I dont want to be the next. We had the pool table in the uhaul probably in 49 pieces and 88 screws and bolts. Thank god we were all engineers, otherwise...phew!

Thank god we were all engineers, we did learn! We got a pro for $250 and had the pool table assemble in less than 90 mins - neat and levelled! Yep, and its true. It took us close to 5 hours to disassemble and bring it home, the ride was less than 2 miles. Thank god we were all...