Friday, March 23, 2007

Few days back I read the famous book titled Fish. This book is all about enjoying your work life (which I do :-)) and the author explains it effectively through a story. The story is about a manager called Many Jane who goes to a fish market and realizes how people their enjoy their routine work which might be sound very boring to others. This helps her in transforming her whole department.

The four ideas expressed by the author are :
  1. Choose your attitude - You can decide our response
  2. Play - Have fun at work and make it enjoyable for others too.
  3. Make their day - Do something for people in your team which they will cherish
  4. Be Present - Give 100% focus to your audience (friends, family, colleagues etc.)
If it sounds interesting you can read the book or go here

When I came to office one day, I was pleasantly surprised to see my desk decorated with balloons, paper frills and my desk white board had lots of wishes (it was my first birthday as an employee). My friends (more than colleagues they are friends) made my day and it still remains the best day in office.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Cricket World Cup Tragedy

Usually this title will mean the ouster of a favorite team from the World Cup, but in this world cup the death of Bob Woolmer is a big loss to cricketing fraternity. Whatever might be the cause of his sudden demise, people will associate it with the loss of Pakistan to minnows Ireland.

As the popularity of cricket is sky high in the India and Pakistan (where no other sport comes even a close second) the expectations are also similar. The same fans who cheer like mad, burst crackers and dance on the streets when their team wins a match do a volte-face and burn effigies of the same players, lapidate their houses in case of losing a match. I will not give any opinion on this but one thing is certain, the fans are very emotional about their game and react in extremes.

Addition:
Even the Indian team is like their fans, after losing to Bangladesh they scored the highest runs in World Cup history again Bermuda and won the match (also take into account that Bermuda is playing their first world cup and are very low on experience and skill).

May the best team win the world cup [will it be Australia again ;-)]

Monday, March 19, 2007

Suggestion for Indian Railway

When lots of travel sites such as TravelGuru, Yatra, MakeMyTrip etc offer big discounts on online purchases, our very own Indian Railyway online booking site still charges customers extra money for booking online tickets. I can understand the extra money required to book 'i-tickets' where the ticket is couriered but in case of 'e-ticket' why do they need extra money when the person will take a print out of the ticket and travel with it.



So instead of giving discount to passengers who book tickets online and thus help our already strained railway infrastructure, they charge them more (Rs 30-70).



Hope God Gives some common sense to Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav (our very own railway minister) and he correct this anamoly in online ticket booking system.