Personal Life

Mother I Owe my Success to You – Happy Mother’s Day!

May 13, 2012
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Mother I Owe my Success to You – Happy Mother’s Day!

This is a small tribute to my mother on occasion of mother’s day. The lady whom I recall spending entire day to look after us. She never worked to earn a living, she was a housewife, a home maker. Someone who loved to control everything home related and did so efficiently and passionately. She had the final say at every decision we took as family, be it choosing the next vacation destination or deciding if we needed new dresses. She maintained family budget and spending. She kept track of household inventory, she maintained supply needs. She prepared the grocery list. She was on top of everybody’s need, amazingly she knew our needs much before we realized them as our needs. My father is a lucky man to have him as wife. If he taught me the early lessons of investment and money. My mother taught me other human behaviors. My mother taught us how money can be saved by doing things yourself. She sew clothes because getting them ready made was costly. My father had to take care of his elderly parents, his brothers and sisters, along with us. He didn’t have enough money. She took it upon herself to finish things

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Weekly Chit-Chat, Roundup and Gratitude

May 12, 2012
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Weekly Chit-Chat, Roundup and Gratitude

I finally sold off my broken car on Craigslist.  I wasn’t expecting more than $500 for it, but, just to taste the water I put an ad in Miami Craigslist, offering the car for $1,200. I described every problem the car had, including blown head gasket, needs for new radiator and battery. I also mentioned about two of the power windows which don’t work, a service light which needs attention along with a list of scratches and dents. I thought people would get scared off seeing the listing, so, I mentioned that this car is only useful for the mechanics, who can fix and resell for profit. Those words spread like wild-fire. Within next few hours I received nearly 50 calls and text messages. Finally the first guy who came-by to check bought it. It helped in negotiation that while he was inspecting the car, I received two consecutive calls from other interested buyers. The car was sold for $1,200 cash then and there. Why I think this is a good deal? The KBB market value for fair conditioned Hyundai 2002 Hyundai Elantra was $2,600. The head gasket replacement , along with radiator and battery was lowest quoted at $1,700. So, financially I didn’t

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Automate Your Life, As Much As You Can

April 6, 2012
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Automate Your Life, As Much As You Can

Successful people do not do different things, they do things differently; is probably often heard cliche for you. But the sentence has all the wealth of richness in it. Why some people get to taste success, why not all of us? The answer lies in the first sentence. There are a lot of opportunities for the average and normal people to start doing things differently. Time management is an integral part of accumulating wealth (manage time to be rich). Honest confession, even after determining blogging affects work and deciding on to have a fixed time for blogging work, I still get attracted towards my site-stats no lesser than earlier intensity. I still get fixated to yakezie forum and check multiple times a day to find interesting discussions to participate in. If you do that, like me, you also should be as worried as I am. You know, why? Because time is limited, the only scariest thing in this world in Time. If you can manage time effectively by doing things differently, you will have time to create. You will have time to unleash creativity, in you and your family. We are not super human we can’t do everything quickly. There are certain things which we

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Be A Better Person in 15 Days, 15 Ways

February 24, 2012
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In January I did a little experiment with my life. I started doing one good thing a day to become a better person than I am now. Not that I hate who I am still, no harm in getting better. I did mention earlier that I am not a goal person. I don’t set goals. Earlier whenever I set goals i failed, multiple times and eventually I stopped setting goals. I find it perfectly well to not set a goal. Goals never made me do extra work (not that I am suggesting you not to set a goal). My boss requires one at work, so I reluctantly put some goals in. Since our year-end appraisal depends on fulfilling those goals, we do put in a lot of effort in to setting it. Although down the line, I tend to forget those goals and work only on making my current assignments successful. You might not agree with my goal-less approach, but believe me this works great for me when I am off pressure. I excel when pressure is not there and task is to make things better. My boss knows that very well, he’s a good manager and use me the way I

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Does Blogging Affect Your Work? I Think So

February 20, 2012
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Does Blogging Affect Your Work? I Think So

Does blogging affect work? Last year, when I started blogging, I didn’t know the answer, or at least, I didn’t want to find out. I got caught up in the intricate world of blogging, to an extent I was never fascinated with anything else. Not even my day job. The reality was, there were no blog income, where as the salary was more than satisfactory. First week of February was a wake up call for me. The appraisals for 2011 came in. It was a rude shock to me How blogging affected my work For past two years I was assessed as “Exceeding the expectation”, or rated 1. This year I was assessed as “Meeting the expectation”, or rated 2. My manager saw my performance degrading compared to last two years. On a later one-on-one with my manager (a director), I was pointed to my behavioral changes. 1. My work hours got reduced by an average 1:30 hours a day, it is a right observation, instead of spending 11+ hours, I was spending only 10 or even less. This might sound ridiculous to you but, I am fine with that number of hours. I feel hard work is necessary to grow in career or

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OCAAT Weekly Roundup and A taste of India : Diwali Edition

October 29, 2011
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OCAAT Weekly Roundup and A taste of India : Diwali Edition

Welcome Readers to the Deewali edition of my weekly roundup. As many of you know I am an immigrant to USA from India where I spent 28 years of my life. India’s population consists of 80% Hindus. Diwali is the biggest Hindu festival of the year except few corners of the country where one or two local festivals have more acceptance over Diwali. Last week on 26th October people in India celebrated Diwali. Here in US, we celebrate over week end as its more convenient for the people at work. Needless to say back in India its a national holiday. Each year the date varies in accordance with ancient Indian lunar calendar. Diwali, often called the festival of lights, have been celebrated since thousands of years. We light earthen lamps to welcome good spirits (in the form of god and goddess) in our home and we burst fire crackers to keep evil spirits away.  Diwali is a celebration of victory of good over evil. Imagine a scene where millions of people come out of their homes and are firing firecracker and lighting lamps (and modern lights) around their home, patio and balconies., windows, doors. It’s a Christmas on a much much

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