I had dish long back in a restaurant in India. And couple of days back when we were almost out of vegetables in our kitchen with just some frozen stuff in the refrigerator, I thought of trying out this dish. Checked couple of recipes in net, and tried it out with some variations of mine. The dish came out pretty good, with comments from my friends as: it tasted somewhat like veg kurma (Chennai style).

Ingredients:

1. 2 medium potatoes - chopped into small cubes
2. Cut beans - 1 cup
3. Carrot cut into small cubes - 1 cup
4. Cauliflower (small florets) - 1 cup
5. Green peas - 1/2up
6. Onion - 2 medium
7. tomatoes - 2 medium
8. Cashew - 8-10 nos
9. Green chili - 3-4 nos
10. Cumin seeds - 1 spoon
11. Ginger Garlic paste - 1 table spoon
12. Cinnamon stick - 1/2 inch
13. Cardamom - 2-3 nos

Preparation:

1. Fry the vegetables in one tablespoon of oil for some time. Cover it and cook in medium heat for sometime till the vegetables become tender.

2. Fry green chili, and cashew in little oil. Grind it along with one onion, 2 tomatoes, ginger garlic paste.

3. Take out the vegetables from the pan, and keep in a separate bowl. Heat some more oil in the pan, add cumin seeds, cinnamon, cardamom. Add diced onion after a minute and fry it till golden brown.

4. Once the onion is fried, add the paste that was prepaed earlier. Add some turmeric powder (optional), and chili powder (according to taste, if required) and fry the paste until the oil separates. Mix it frequently and add 2-3 tablespoons of warm water if required, to ensure it does not get stuck on the bottom of the pan.

5. Once the masala is done, add the vegetables and mix it for sometime. Add a cup of warm water, cover it and let it boil for 5-10 minutes in low to medium heat. Garnish with coriander leaves.

This can be served with rice or chapati.

Etiquette is a defined (or undefined) set of mannerism and behavior in a community or any social occasion. This is what makes a civil human being and its the first step to sophistication. Work etiquette is a basic requisite for any corporate job, well actually any job for that matter. This might vary a bit from country to country, based upon the culture and social structure; but ground rules are the same almost everywhere. Etiquettes at work help building a healthy work culture and reduce the stress level to quite some extent.

Lets have a few points jotted down here.

1. Be at work on time : This would be he ground rule one. This one never goes unnoticed by your boss and co-workers, and needless to say this is a much appreciated trait anywhere and anytime. No one would expect you to stay till late (unless there is some urgent deliverables). You would not have to make excuses, or answer anyone. And most important, it gives you a feeling of satisfaction; and thats a great way to start your day at work.

2. Dress appropriately : Be very careful about what you wear to office, your attire gives the first impression about you. Your clothes do not need to be expensive, all it needs is to be neat, ironed, of proper fitting, and makes you look smart. Flashy colors and designs are a strict no no. And of course no low or revealing cuts in your clothes. Accessories are always welcomed, but they should suite your clothing and appropriate for work attire.

3. Do not discriminate based on gender or race: How much educated and civil we may be, or portray ourselves to be, discriminations are not non-existent yet in our work cultures. Be it race, gender, social status or any other kind of discrimination, it makes people uncomfortable, increases the workplace stress, and decreases productivity in a longer run. Avoid making racist or gender specific jokes. And treat all your co-workers the same way.

4. Be cautious while using phone at work: Using your cellphone for longer duration, while you are at your desk could be disturbing for your colleagues. So go outside finish your conversation, if you think its going to be longer than a few minutes. While using your work phone, keep you volume low while on the phone, make use of headphones instead of speakers if you have long calls or meetings over phone. Avoid using work phone for your personal calls, or giving the work number for on line registration for your subscriptions etc.

5. Stay away from office gossip: Gossip has never done anyone any good. It can just hurts other people, breaks friendships, and makes people less trustworthy. And in office especially, others personal life, or even professional stuff as long as you are not directly involved with this; should be none of your botherations to care for.

6. Do not mix personal and professional life: Your personal and work life should stay separate. Your friends and colleagues are connected to you in different level of emotions, and that distance or barrier should be there for all good reasons. You can share some of your personal stuff at work, but that has to have a limit, especially the 'not going so good' parts. You can end up being the topic of office gossip, or be looked upon by your co-workers, as a guys who says it all to everyone. On the other hand, avoid asking people questions, that they could be uncomfortable answering. Or even giving advises without being asked for.

Following some basic etiquettes makes our and our co-workers life easier and the work-place becomes a better place to spend a major part of our day.

In the past few days, people seem to contact me through my personal site or KalaaLog.com with either some 'kudos' mails or asking some questions. Then there are some, who are starting out on some venture and want my assistance.

There is nothing wrong in reaching out and taking assistance of others on your venture. It is a choice to either do it on your own, or join forces with others. But when it comes to pitching, there are something that you can keep in mind that will save a lot of your time and also the one to whom you are pitching the idea.

Before I get into that, here is a summary of the chat I had with the person (who I will not name), where he wanted my assistance in a venture of his.

Him: Hi!
Me: Hello!
Him: I am planning on creating a website that does 'XYZ'. I intend to get revenue from that.
Me: Do you have a business model/business plan?
Him: Hmmm ... no.
Me: How are you going to generate revenue?

He explains for around more than hour, with some clarifying questions in between. By the end of it, he had a lot of 'ifs' in his explanation.

Me: So, in my opinion, this is not a feasible business approach.
Him: Should I try it?
Me: Sure you can.
Him: Ok I will. I need the website created. Will you do it for me?
Me: Will you pay me for my effort?
Him: Ha ha! No. But if I get revenue from the website, I will give you 50%.
Me: But you were not able to give explanation on the business plan. So, no - I will not work for free.

And the chat ended with usual nicety.

By the end of it, we both had wasted more than an hour and it felt fruitless to me. It would all have been avoided if he had just sent me the business plan/model with all the analysis. The chat window does not allow for transfer of such information.

So, if you are going to pitch an idea, please do so with a proper business plan documentation. It should have these details:

1. Summary - A birds eye view of the plan. Some may not be interested in some areas. Save them time, by giving a brief overview that lets them decide if they need to put an effort or not.
2. Business Plan - The actual plan, which describes in detail all the stakeholders.
3. Revenue Potential - This is part of the business plan, but needs to be given emphasis. Basically, there should be a ROI (Return On Investment) with all the risks stated, and also the assumptions made.
4. Partnership Plan - This basically describes who does what, and what is the revenue split.

Having a business plan/model handy while pictching for an idea increases the potential for further work, partneship and/or investment. With out it, not all may have the patience, or time, to hear you out fully.

Day 3:

Day 3 started as a lazy day, we got up late and by the time we got ready it was almost lunch time. Our desi taste buds had started craving for Indian food, after 2 days of deprivation. Plan was to cover Empire State building and Time square etc, so we searched an Indian restaurant near Empire state building and headed there. It was a bit difficult to find, we found it just when we were about to give up looking for it. The food was okay, but I got to eat pani-puri, that I was carving for it for don't know how many days. So I was happy with the food.

Empire State building was couple of blocks away, and when we reached there the crowd was as expected on a weekend. I really could not imagine, so many people would come to get to top of that building to have a view of NY city. And I would not think a lot of New Yorkers would come here on a normal weekend, to spend 20 bucks and wait 2 hours to see the very city they have been living for ever. So, that meant they were all them tourists(!). On any normal weekend, day time! I would guess the city looks much lovlier on the night and crowd would be much more during that time. Well we had to wait in the unending queues for the ticket, then for the lift and then to get to the balcony of 87nd floor. It was a long and tiring 2 hours wait before we could get to the top; actually the top floor is 102nd floor, with probably another long queue and another 15 bucks to dispense. But we were not quite in a mood for that. All this waiting and the crowd at the 87 th floor made us loose our interest in viewing the lovely city. The skyline, high rise buildings and the water bodies were adorable from the top though. But the central park was not as green as I thought it to be; it was silly of me to expect a green park at end of winter . We stayed up there for about 15-20 minutes and came down, luckily that was quite fast.

We saw a Macy's store when we were about take the subway, and that was the world's largest Macy's (found that out later taht evening) and some flower festival was going on there. Looking at the mannequins clad in gorgeous dresses made of flowers, enticed us to get in there and take a glimpse inside. It was worth the visit; the entire 3 storied shop was decorated with fresh flowers, it looked more like a florist's shop... a huge one.

Next on our list was the Time square; seemed half the city's people were there. Probably that was the normal weekend crowd in time square. Huge billboards, hoardings, neon lightings, and shop... shop... shops everywhere. Well I was really excited to be there, it was my kind of place. We roamed on the streets for a while, and then we went to Ripley's Believe it or not; the museum of the odd, the unusual and the unbelievable. We bought the ticket, got inside and browsed through all the weird stuff that was in there; shoes of the smallest and largest feet (on the world!), a head-less chicken that survived for several years, a two headed calf, a white giraffe, a happy man statue made up of shredded $500 bills and other stuff of that kind. The section that interested me the most was the one where the artifacts of treating prisoners in 17th-18th century was exibited. Another amazing (scary though) section was of the shrunken heads; which is specialty of the Jivaro clan and it probably had some religious significance. Once we were out of Ripley's, Madame Tussuad's was just next to it, but we had already visited the one in Las Vegas and not very much in a mood for another museum. I would recommend to visit this though, if you have not been to one already, and becasue the one here is one of the largest Madame Tussuad's in the world. We were tired already and planned to go back to hotel to take some rest before planning anything for that night.

After couple of hours of rest, we had the famous NY style pizza at a nearby pizzeria and headed for Rock feller center. It is the commercial and business center that was built during 1929's US stock market crash. Today it houses many top notch business centers; GE building, Radio City music hall, the fine art auction house Christie's just to name a few. Our main interest there, was the ice skating rink. We reached there very late (10 pm ish), but were really happy to ifnd out the last slot (10:30 pm - 12:00 am) for that night was still available. We rented the skates and got into the rink all enthusiastic and excited. Ah! did I mention it was first time for all of us. Boy! that was one tough job... slippery, hard, cold ice and you have to move on a pair of blades... huh! It took me about an hour to let go of the railing, I could not even remember how many times I fell (luckily not flat on my face even once). My friends were doing much better than me though, but then it really did not matter, neither were the tricks other amateur skaters were doing in the rink. But at end of the day (it was really end of the day.. 12:00 am in the morning), I was just happy that I could let go of the railings and was able to move over the ice. When we got back to the hotel, none of us knew how many muscles and limbs were sore and what would be the condition when we wake up next morning. But we all knew, it was hell lot of fun we had that night.

Day 4:

This was our last day at NY, and none of us were in a very good shape thanks to out previous night's adventure. We had to check out at 11 am from the hotel, so we packed our stuff and got ready. The plan was to visit Central park and the famous Metropolitan museum of art or the Met (I still could not figure out why they call it that though). It was a cloudy and lazy Sunday afternoon, and believe me, when we got into central park... with all the people jogging, or came with their pets for a walk and the kids with their parents or grand parents.. it really seemed like about 8 am in the morning. For the first time in NY I finally saw some trees (even though not green) and pools of water (lake... that's what they called it here), I could imagine how much the people of that busy city needed this park. Whoever planned to build that in heart of Manhattan, needs to be thanked for that.

We had started to get hungry when we reached the Met, and I had heard the canteen in there is quite good. So we got our entrance tickets, browsed the Egyptian section and headed for the cafeteria. Food was really good and price reasonable; we had a hearty meal with dessert (a yummy chocolate cup cake). The museum is really huge, I don't know how many days would it take someone to cover up all the exhibits. And we had just few hours before we had to catch the cab to get to the airport. So we checked out the map and decided to cover some of the art and photography sections. That took us good 2-3 hours and after that we had to get out of the museum. The modern art section was pretty interesting; we could not figure what most of the paintings were about and what message they intended to convey. But it was fun, going through all those paintings and trying to figure out what the purpose of that painting is. Also we troubled a friend asking him all these paintings and art pieces, who is little bit into art. So the Met was our last stoppage in NY city and it was time to go back home.

The trip was quite satisfying and we had tons of fun. And even though we went back with sore muscles and tired limbs, it was an experience that would be in our memories for a long long time. Well, anyone who is a planning a trip to NY for the first time, just a piece of advice, plan your trip before getting here; that would make the trip much more enjoyable.

New York : the city of lights, tall old buildings, bridges, subways, suits and dark glasses, and fashion on the streets. This never sleeping city also has narrow crowded roads, honking yellow taxi cabs, roadside vendors. After a continuous work week of about 45-50 days I really needed a break, planned for the NewYork trip. Though this could not the ideal vacation when you want get away from everyone and everything (probably I needed a vacation in a beach)...but it worked out pretty well. Came back tired but yet rejuvinated.

Day 1:

We started from Denver in the evening and reached New York La Guardia airport at about midnight. The view of the glimmering city below from the airplane was awesome. It was a neverending canopy of light. Funny thing was though when we tried to identify the Brooklyn bridge from the top, we really got confused.. all the bridges looked beautiful , huge and covered with green lights and all of them looked almost the same. Finally we let go of the curiosity of ours, and decided to wait to see the bridge in the daylight. We checked in our hotel, which was in the center of Manhattan; the room was really small and clumsy even though the hotel was a four star and I had read a pretty good review. I knew New York and especially Manhattan would be costly and clumsy, this was a bit too much for my expectation. The room was neat though and the service was pretty good. Another boo was, there was no free internet.. later turned out that was a blessing in disguise. Life without cellphone, pager and internet ... now that is a vacation!! However we paid about ten bucks and took internet on the last day, when we needed to check out online for our flight to denver and needed some help from Google map. Well that night, we did not worry much about the room and internet and the next days plan and just dashed into the bed.

Day 2:

Got up at about 8:00 am, got ready, had some quick breakfast and Statue of liberty was on our list first, as it was a friday we expected the crowd to be a bit less on that day, and that turned out to be true. We checked with the hotel consigliere, and he suggested us to take the subway to go to the Battery park from where we can take the ferry to Statue of Liberty. The subway was just outside the hotel, we bought a one day unlimited metro pass each, and boarded the metro train. And yes, we took a map of NY and toutist guide from the hotel reception, which was very helpful during our entire trip. The metro train was pretty crowded, which was expected, it being a work day and ofcourse peak hour. My first impression on the NY subway, it was old and unclean (when things get so old, it really difficult to keep them clean - that was my friend's logic), there were grafittis all ober the underground walls. But I have to admit, subway makes the commute in NY so much easier and convenient. It is like an underground grid, which covers almost the entire city. And you can find metro staions every cuple of blocks, especially in the busy areas.

Well, lets get back to our trip. We could find Battery park quite easily, got the tickets, and stood in the queue for the ferry. The crowd seemed quite a lot, but when we saw the ferry we realized, it really not one of busiest of days. Just after one hour of reaching battery park we were in the ferry, security checking time included. It was cold, cloudy, foggy and a bit windy. But have survived Denver cold, we really did not care for the weather in NY. And the sun kept coming out of the clouds once in a while, making it quite more pleasant. We got to the top floor of the ferry, and finally we were able to see the real Brooklyn bridge . And ofcourse Statue of Libetry and Ellis island; which relates to the history of US immigration. It took us about 15-20 minutes to reach the Liberty island. We could get into the monument; the pedestal of the statue. There was a small museum inside, with the history of the statue and how it was designed, built and assembled in ths island. We climbed about 300 steps to reach the top of the pedestal and just below the feet of the statue. That is how far the visitors can get to, there are steps within the statue to get to the crown of the statue.. but thats closed for visitors, probably only the maintenance crew can get to the top. We could see the entire island and Newyork skyline from the top (of the pedestal), the view was lovely. The best part was it was not too crowded, thanks to our plan of coming here on a weekday.

We spent there couple of hours and took the ferry, which has another stop at Ellis island. We decided not to get down there, as we were getting hungry and were not really in a mood for another museum on the very first day. Another reason was we did not have much to do with US immigration history.. none of our forefathers came to US and setteled here. We took the ferry back to the city and went to Wall street, the financial district. First thing and probably only thing you would notice there is.. its all black. Limos, suits, dark glasses everything was black and people were in such a hurry as if the entire world's operating machine runs from here. Streets were narrow as usual and buildings were tall; sunlight could barely touch the ground. We walked past those busy bustling street and went to the WTC site, now which is just a construction site for the new WTC; which is being planned to be built in a bigger and more vibrant fashion than the earlier one.

I had always wanted to try the street food in New York, but most of it being meat was a real constraint. While roaming around near the WTC site, suddenly the aroma of hot and yummy falafel distracted us. Without any difficulty we found out the mobile food station, and we ordered some falafel combo. The order and delivery was fast, and we sat on the marble chairs nearby under the open sky (whatever piece of it was visible from the concrete jungle) and enjoyed our late lunch. Ah! the food was heavenly (some contribution was of our very hungry tummys). With our stomach full, we roamed around a bit.. did some window shopping and started for the Brooklyn bridge. We had to walk a bit more this time to find out the bridge...but streets of NY
would never let you get bored. The bridge was evidently very old and the had a rustic and romantic feeling about; I still could not point a finger at the exact reason of my feeling so though. We just took a walk along the bridge, while sun went down; and I could feel the bridge is so serene and peaceful even being inside one of the busiest cities in the world, and among the bustling traffic over it.

It was getting dark when walked back from the bridge, we were quite tired to visit any other places. We just went to 5th avenue, the shopping district and did some window shopping on guess what.. some jewelery stores (which none of were are even remotely in to). But it just happened that we got down from the metro and ended up in that jewelery street and really did not put much effort to get out of there. So we just roamed around for a while and got back to hotel. After getting freshened up and taking rest for could of hours we went out in search of some good food. Did not have to go too far, just below our hotel was a Greek restaurant. Food was okay, but I could not get some proper dessert as it was too late and they were out of stock (dessert ). All I could get was chocolate ice cream, which was not so bad either.

So there ended the second day at NY, it was a day well spent, though tiring. We all went to bed to gain back our energy for the next day..............

Had heard about Mid life crisis earlier, a much discussed topic it has been for quite some time now. I had never really understood what this is, and to tell the truth never actually cared. Few days back, came across some forward message from a friend of mine about 'Quarter life crisis'. Just scanned that mail, as I rarely read forwards these days (too busy and too old for that ). Suddenly this crisis in life, started to make sense; Mid or Quarter. All that is not good and confusing in life can be named it as a crisis.. Quarter life crisis. And it applies to most of twenty something people across the world.

This is how it all starts; You are out of college, and managed to find a decent (or nor so decent job). Earn enough that you do not have to ask Dad for your expenses, and may be you can spend some of it on your hobby and other interests; something that you had always wanted to do.. but it was too much to ask Dad for, or it was just your self esteem. You would have moved out of your parent's house now, and staying alone or with friends. Now you can stay out till late nights; late night movies, pubs, bars ...you can afford those all. You can do almost what you want to, without seeking someone's permission. This is the first taste of freedom; in all possible ways that you could think of. Sadly this top of the world feeling does not last for longer.. some time (months.. years..it depends) later you start sinking into this so called crisis in life.

Life: You start seeking the answers of questions that life throws at you, actually life has always been, you just come to notice about it now. What am I going to do with my life; anything good and meaningful or would I end up doing: eat, sleep, breed and die like any other species in the planet. There is an shadowing worry; time is getting out of your hand..would it be too late by the time you realize what you really wanted to do.

Love: Gradually all the crushes, flings, one night stands seem meaningless. And you seem to yearn for that single person with whom you can grow old. All of a sudden there is room for compromise. And if you already have a boyfriend/girlfriend, there would be times where you are pounded with questions from inside, there would be glitches.. did I make the right choice? Is this what I really wanted?

Family: At this point you start realizing the responsibilities in a family, so far it has been just the love compassion and care . Its no more take, take and take..its time to give back. Your parents, your siblings, and your relatives start expecting from you. And you can probably put up with that, with little bit of effort. But there is a more serious matter to be taken care. You have to start your own family now. For which you can really barely make up your mind; the money is not enough, I am not mature enough, what if things do not work out so well with my life partner.

Friends: You would stand on your balcony and feel kind of friendless staring at the dimly lit sky. It's not that you do not talk once in a while, or have occasional get-togethers to celebrate the big events in your lives. But you do not hang out everyday, do not share the crush you had on that cute girl at work (until it becomes serious), or discuss about possibility of a fifth dimension, your plans in life, the last good movie you watched with beer bottles in hand, during a night out at a friends place (of course when parents are out of town). You know your friends are there for you, you can always call them in the middle of
night and they would come to you if need there be. But somehow you have become distant, left all your friend behind and become lonely. The distance could be physical or its just that you had been busy for no apparent reason you can think of (work?) and so are they. And the new people you meet, you can manage to make acquaintances, not friends.

Job: Now this is the worst of all. The job you are in is not even remotely close to what you had planned for, when you were in college. You slog for extra hours, are not happy with your unreasonable boss, and there is no learning and growth. The work is monotonous, the atmosphere is sterile, the attitude of
people around is barely professional. You look for better opportunity and switch your job and later realize that the opportunity is just a better salary; the work, the workplace, your colleagues are almost the same everywhere.

Is there is a solution for this Quarter life crisis? Well..this is another of life's unsolvable questions. Seeking the answer would not suffice, basically there would be no one to enlighten you. You would have to discover the answer, and sadly enough one has to find their own answers. I did not find mine yet.....still looking.

Lunch break is the most awaited and cherished one hour at work. But as much we all love it, the question is do we make the best use of these sixty minutes? Well, of the 8-9 hours at work, this one hour is completely our. It's up to us how we spend it. Five better (might not be best) ways to use up the lunch break:

1. Pack your lunch: Get the lunch packed from home, and have it at your desk when you are sorting out your mails or doing some such light work. You would be done in about 10-15 minutes, and technically because you were working in parallel, you have your full one hour break still.

2. Go out for a walk: Just get out of the office, and take a walk outside in the sun (if the weather is good that is). You can just go to a close by bookstore, and checkout some new arrivals. Or do some window shopping, if you are a shopping freak like me. The best part is, it would clear up your mind, and you come back to work rejuvenated.

3. Ask your boyfriend/girlfriend to join you for lunch: You think only candlelight dinners are romantic? This suddenly planned lunch at a small cafe can work its magic; especially when time is of most essence.

4. Go out for a quick bite: And when you are back you would have a good 40-45 minutes in your hand. Browse the net, write a blog post(if you are a blogger), read your favorite comics online, or check some news sites to find out whats happening around the world.... just anything in the Internet that interests you.

5. Take a short nap: this might sound funny, but trust me, a 15-20 minutes nap after lunch and you definitely would get back to work all energized. If your desk is too public a place for it, your car in the parking lot could be the second best choice. I have seen people doing it, never tried myself though. But it's got to be effective; sleep being the best energizer in my opinion and of course many others.

So make the best use of your Lunch break. You owe yourself those 60 minutes... 3600 seconds of luxury, and it's definitely not worth wasting.

Ever had trouble juggling with about a hundred emails, 5-6 meetings, and ending up with couple of missed deadlines; in a day's work? This is my experience every 2-3 days in a week. And I heard quite a few of my friends and co-workers whining about the same; not being able to manage such a busy day at work. Well, we all know out of those hundred odd mails a whole bunch would be just FYIs and another bunch would be just irrelevant for us. We see those mails and keep wondering, why would my name be there in that mailing list! And same holds true for the meetings; in half of those, people try to impose the “expert” opinions on others and argue over some matter thats remotely associated with the purpose of the meeting. And while attending all these meetings and getting lost in the unnecessary emails, at the end of 8 hours of the day you realize you missed some important stuff that was time critical. After struggling with such crazy days for few months, I finally came up with some tricks to have a more organized day at work. Here goes a few of those;

1. Make use of email client: Whether you are using MS Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes or any other such application as your email client, leverage its functionalities. They have tons of features to help you manage your everyday work. Calendar, tasks, follow ups are the functionality on Outlook, that I make the most use of. The tasks those are time specific and critical, a calendar entry can be set up for those with a reminder, so the message pops up before 15 minutes on your screen. Helps you in two ways; you wont miss things out and have some buffer time in hand. Your calender will show busy to other people, so that they cannot set up another meeting at that time, and you can use the blocked time to finish of your work. Similarly, using follow up in the messages, those need to be addressed at a particular time (after 2 days, at 10 am) or have some other dependency. Or may be, if you are waiting for your DBA's response about some details you asked for; a message sent with follow up pops on their screen.
2. Use a daily planner or PDA (if you are a tech savy): Investing some money on a PDA and some time updating it, never goes useless. If you are stuck in traffic getting late for work you can check your reminders and calendar entries and end up not missing an an important meeting. You can always join the meeting through your cell phone. Or if something comes up when you are at middle of your lunch or away from your computer for some reason, you could probably make use of the contact info or other such minute detail, and respond to a call, without having to go back to work or near your computer.
3. Organize your mailbox. Create folders and sub folders based upon individuals or a group of people or even different applications; whichever works out best for you. Take the backup of your mailbox every month, or may be more frequent if so needed. An organized archive of mails could save you lot of effort on a work. You get into an issue, that you had worked upon several months back, and found the fix after. Now you can just go back to your archive, and get the resolution. If not, at least you would not have to start from the scratch again. And most important, archived mails can work as very good proof at times, and save your butt justifying your claim of doing something (or not for that matter), sometime in past.
4. Utilize the time when you are in some unnecessary meetings (the telephonic ones). Well this might sound a bit rude, but you would agree to me that of the 4-5 meetings you might have in a day, there will be at least one to which you would have been invited just for no apparent reason. You can always decline such meetings, or accept tentatively, but at times you just can not avoid those. Another such type of meeting could be, the meeting would be for one hour, with twenty people invited and your job is done once your questions answered in 5 minutes or so. In such meetings, you can join the call, have the headsets on, put it on mute and do some multitasking; sort out your mails, put some follow ups, reply to few of them, or do some work that does not need you cent percent attention.
5. Talking to people instead of sending a bunch mails; at times I have seen tons of emaila going back and forth among just two people or may be a group of them. Someone needs some clarification, you reply back explaining it, but its not enough for them, they have few more questions, and then some more. Matter worsens if more people involved. Another reason, people do not respond to emails immediately and you cannot blame them, always, they could really be busy. I have seen things getting pushed for days and weeks, due to this kind of communication gap. If that kind of situation arises; just pick up the phone and call the person. At times ten minutes talk is much more fruitful than sending ten emails back and forth. And if there ate more people involved, you could set up a meeting with all those people for 30 minutes or so. Everyone can get together and talk, and get the clarifications they need from each other. Email has its own importance, in communication at work, but a phone call or just going to the person who sits two aisles away from you and talking to him in person does its trick most of the times.

There could be a lot more to add to this. Anyone has anything more to share!

Learning a new language - how fascinating and romantic does that sound!!  Quite a lot, does it not?  But how many of us at some point of time; have started learning and new language, and left it half way through. Because, it is tough.  Because it is frustrating, how awfully slow we make progress.  Because, how much we have to twist our tongues for the pronunciation to become perfect.  Because, trying to remember the grammar of new language, we almost forgot grammar rules of our mother tongue.  You can go to language schools, take language courses from affiliated institutes,  go for an online subscription of a language course,  use a 'learn Spanish in 100 days' book, or just learn it from a friend ...this arduous effort can have all these and lot more such 'becauses'. Tough part is, these are not mere excuses.

So here are some tricks that could make things easier.

1. Before you decide upon learning a new language, give it a good thought.  Its not just all fun and romantic. It is a rough and bumpy road ahead.  There would be times, when you would really want to quit.  It needs patience, determination, endurance and most important... love.
2. Be positive.  Look at not how slowly you are making progress, but how many words or grammatical functions you are learning every day (or every week for that matter).  Well it took you years to learn your mother tongue, with people around you speaking that language all the time.  I am not even considering here the scientifically proven fact that, children learn faster than adults, especially when it comes to languages.
3. Plan your language learning. The schools or books would always give guidelines about this.  As a rule of thumb, you should first learn words; say nouns and pronouns, then verbs, and then adjectives and adverbs etc etc.  Than should come basic grammar rules, simple sentence formations.  Next you can go for detailed grammar, and complex sentence formation.  There goes the rule, but you are the boss to decide upon which works the best for you.
4. Make use of a Notebook. Do not try to remember everything, believe me it is difficult.  We are so many things going on in our lives; work, family, friends, hobbies... we cannot use our brain to remember some new words with weird pronunciations we are learning.  Write down the words, grammar forms etc and have it handy most of the times.  Just open that notebook and go through it when you have some free time at work or when you are commuting. Write down when, you think of a new word, the translation of which you want to know to ask your teacher.
5. Try to learn the culture of the country/place this new language belongs to.  It makes the learning more interesting. Also you can get more familiar with the usage of the words or sentences you are learning.  Once you get a fair grasp on the language, try to learn the slangs of that new language.  It would bring you a step closer to the heart of that language and culture.

So keep these check points handy, and get set on a romanticendeavour.  Believe me, learning a new language is really fun!

Its not easy to say 'I Quit', just one fine day. Its not simple to break that bond with your work and the people you have had around for considerable time of your day, and the rappot you have built over the years (or months!). But at times its probably the best thing to do, the best of choices atleast for you.

We all get into this thought process of quiting at some point of time or other. Which could have been triggered by, a fight with the boss, or the constant work pressure eating up our personal time, or probably some obnixious colleague. But as normal human beings, we prefer to compromise a little bit to stay back, in our comfort zones, which we would have built over time. And well, its not wise too, to put papers for some silly reason. You could be just loosing it all, for yourself and the company you were working for; the reputation at work that was built with collegues and management, the knowledge of domain (of work), and the effort that was put all these days to achieve the above. At times it might not be simply worth it.

There is a limit though to everything, the crossover point for which could be determined only by the individual. So, its that simple. when it gets to the crossover point, you quit. And that holds good just not for work.. for relationships, habits (read obsessions) or anything else for that matter.

Just a few crossover points I am jotting down here;

• When your relationship at work, with your boss or collegue or management is battered beyond repair. That is when, all efforts to mend it have given up (from both sides possibly), its probably the best to just let go.
• When the ethics and culture at your workplace become polar to your principles and values in life. Working in such an environment, would just take away your peace of mind. And you can never be productive in such a situation.
• When you realize that your work life is consuming a major chunk of you personal life and time. When you leave work at 8 pm, carrying home some files to be worked upon over the night. And you cannot remember, when you took a day off last time or went for a vacation. Its probably time.. you say 'It's enough'.
• When your company is loosing its market shares, downsizing the work force, and loosing its customers, probably its time to say goodbye. It might not sound very fair.. but it is just what needs to be done.
• Moreover, when you realize that, this is not the job you really wanted to do ever. Your passion lies in something else. But be 200 percent sure before going for a change of profession. And give ample time to think about the pros and cons of taking such a huge step. A guy I know, quit his well paying job at a telecom company to join an university to study music. It was pretty difficult a decission for him and his family. But they had to plan for it well ahead of time, and make some sacrifices.

To be happy in life, just know when to QUIT.