Nikhil Gandhi's rags-to-riches story

Today, I was referred to this article. It is really inspiring and interesting. Values in his life has moved him up. 

Shades of grey in Pipavav Defence & Everonn Education's Nikhil Gandhi's rags-to-riches story - The Economic Times:

Living leaders who can make changes in our career.

Airgonaut - Word Adoption

Have you ever heard about adopting WORDS? I come across the site www.savethewords.org - a project to promote unused words by Oxford fajar with Oxford University Press. The site is well designed and has thousands of words. Absolutely new words that is very much unfamiliar.

The word which I adopted is "AIRGONAUT". The OUP says AIRGONAUT is one who sails in air. Just fly above the land. Float in air etc. Wikipedia slips 'i' in the word and says argonaut referring to greek mythology, yet meaning similar.

Any way I have adopted and used and published about the word that I adopted. I got a cute certificate also from the organization. Here it is...

Bapuji writes…

Here you go with a fictitious letter but with factual feeling!! This is written not to hurt anyone’s sentiment but to share some of my feelings.

Bapuji writes…

Dear Friends,

I wish that every Indian will see this appeal and give thoughtful attention to it.

For the past few days, I was just watching drama that is going on across the globe. News paper, news sites, TV channels milled my name many times. It is on the auction of my personal belongings. I want to share few things with you on this openly.

First of all, I really don’t know whether those materials are the ones which I used. I didn’t even have time to give attention to those worldly possessions. My heart and soul was focused only towards my beloved GOD and Nation. When my people were living without food, should I think about my old metal dinner bowl? When my heart was pulling me to read a letter from my fellow fighter, should I think of the shape of my spectacle? When I was thinking about the destination to reach, should I care for my sandals? All these material items are mere sand and dust when compared to the values which we need to embed in our lives.

Yet, I was much touched by your love and national feeling. I appreciate you all for making one single voice irrespective of religion, political party and other divisive forces. I still see traces of patriotism sitting inside, which made me to write to you all friends.

At the same time, I want to put few questions before you all. I ask for no patronage, I merely point out to you as a friend, a value namely Ethics, is open to you. The questions are:

• When you are ready to pay any amount of money for my possessions, why are you not ready to pay your life with values which I emphasized?

• When you value my sandals so much, why not you buy Truth and Discipline to walk in your life, which I practiced?

• When you are very keen in getting back my spectacles from foreigners, why are you not getting my Vision of Ram Rajya (Now, a politically misused word) for our nation?

• Have you ever thought of practicing values like Cooperation, Freedom, Happiness, Honesty, Humility, Love, Peace, Respect, Responsibility, Simplicity, Tolerance and Unity by which I lived and loved to practice?

After so many years of independence, still I am only hoping and praying and I want all the friends here and in other parts of the world to hope and pray with me that this blood-bath of morality will soon end.

I am,

Your faithful friend,

M. K. GANDHI

Connect Now*

Every time when we plan to have a demo to the on-site or to the client, there appears a uninvited guest to spoil the game. It will come out suddenly to dampen the show. It is non other but Screen sharing tool. I have used tools like Gotomeeting or Glance or Yuuguu or Zoho. Sometimes felt handicapped for not taking / giving control over the screen or not having chat options. Above all we may have to pay a good price for the tool.

Recently, I found out one such toll with Adobe. ConnectNow works really fine. It has screen sharing, remote control, video chat, cross platform, requires only host to install a component, guests can view it from browsers, and a white board to scribble. Hey a cool one. Just give a try. You will enjoy. After all it is a free one.

* Neither this is a promotional article nor am I legal advertiser for Adobe ConnectNow :)

Gone are those days...

Amdist of The stunning victory, The maddening reception or The raining rewards of Indian cricket team, people were talking about Small Town Cricket.

My wonderful school days spread in my mind screen. Gone are those days... Fearful cork ball cricket at playgrounds, spearing rubber cork cricket at paddy fields and streets, soft rubber ball cricket on the roof top. After sunlight hours, inside house, with ball made of paper and sometimes long notebooks as our bat. Srikkanth and Shastri as our heros in dotted black and white TV screens. Gone are those days... Will they return again anyway? Gone are those days...

My eyes get wet...Gone are those days...

What "Chak De" really means?

We hear lot about word Chake De. Root of this phrase is really wonderful.

'Chak de' is a Punjabi expression.

It's slightly abbreviated from 'Chak de Phatte' which literally means 'Throw up the floorboards', and is used whenever something brilliant or great is done, when something is done stylishly and sexily, when you want to inspire and stick your chest out with pride, like saying 'tear the roof off', or something like that. It's a common Punjabi colloquialism, often heard in bhangra songs, a phrase that exhorts as much as celebrates. So it's an exhortation as well as a statement of intent, like let's party, let's blow this place apart, let's kick it. If somebody does something so well, and you want to say they hit the ball out of the park, that kind of thing.

Ballae ballae ballae ballae huuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaye
Chak De India!

Are you Bad Good Boy or Good Bad Boy?

In my favorite News channel, an Anchor was questioning a famous, expelled, recently re-entered Cricketer(where else, India only). "Are you Bad Good Boy or Good Bad Boy?" Wow. So nice question. Can anyone have answer for it?
Sometimes we are good and sometimes we are bad. We do something good and something bad but are we good or bad? There is an old movie in the name Good Bad Boys
When we introspect, we could find one thing that basically we are all good. May be we become bad later. Even when we tell a small lie for a late coming in office(usually), our conscience pricks-in. Appreciating or ignoring it is immaterial. The sub-conscious underneath is oriented towards good. The inner mind is always not devilish. But we become mischievous when we ignore the call of conscience. First we are Good but then we become Bad or Good.
So the answer may be that we are Good Bad or Good Good Boys.

Adobe Apollo - one more to add?

"Apollo killed the chthonic dragon Python, which lived in Delphi"
These words of myth no more give cognizable meaning. For techies Python, Delphi gives different meaning and now Apollo is also added in to that.

I really felt excited when we watched what Macromedia Flash 2.0 can bring in. Later so many developments like, Action Script, Ajax, Flex etc and Now it is Apollo in RIA (Rich Internet Application)

Lets fold our hands and watch.

Wishes with word of warning

Everybody is wishing for the success of indian team in WC 2007. But our Lokh sabha speaker have expressed a different wish. It connects to both cricketers and our MPs. It sounds like warning or even criticise. 'It needs some discipline. Let the players not follow the parliamentarians.'

But both deserve these words.