Kevin Carter 1961 – 1994
This was found in his diary ,
I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery. I pray that we will be more sensitive towards the world around us and not be blinded by our own selfish nature and interests.
I hope this picture will always serve as a reminder to us that how fortunate we are and that we must never ever take things for granted.
Read on if you have the time in this fast paced world…
It’s been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It’s a rule.
Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to posses a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.
Said in another words:
1. Sweden is about the size of San Pablo, a state in Brazil.
2. Sweden has 2 million inhabitants.
3. Stockholm , has 500,000 people.
4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, Nokia are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies the NASA.
The first time I was in Sweden, one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn’t say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, “Do you have a fixed parking space? I’ve noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot.” To which he replied, “Since we’re here early we’ll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don’t you think? Imagine my face.
Nowadays, there’s a movement in Europe name Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.
Basically, the movement questions the sense of “hurry” and “craziness” generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of “having in quantity” (life status) versus “having with quality”, “life quality” or the “quality of being”. French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US ’s attention, pupils of the fast and the “do it now!”.
This no-rush attitude doesn’t represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the “now”, present and concrete, versus the “global”, undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans’ essential values, the simplicity of living.
It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do. It’s time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.
In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there’s a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, “I can’t, my boyfriend will be here any minute now”. To which Al responds, “A life is lived in an instant”. Then they dance to a tango.
Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.
Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalized world.
As received by email
Song for this post : Radiohead – The Tourist ( which has a chorus…”Hey man slow down, slow down / Idiot slow down, slow down”)
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Earth seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990.
Of the “pale blue dot,” astronomer Carl Sagan said, “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Have a great New Year.
I have always been struck by this photograph when I laid eyes on it for the first time way back in 1996… somewhat similar to what Douglas Adams conceived in that glorious scene in The Hitch Hikers Guide…have always wondered how I would get it into a post…
Its all about perspective…about how we look at significant and insignificant things in a relative way…how we forget to see the larger picture…
How P told S that a particular post on Funny Emails is a bait for people with smaller minds or something to that effect…how PP complains about a bad day to himself forgetting the magical rainbow he lives in now… how relatively insignificant eveyone / everything is when you can put it in a larger perspective.
Live the moment…smell the lillies… It’s a dawn of a grand new year…Oh!the possibilities…. Live your dream… do your bit… remember you are riding a sunbeam… have a great new year people… truly, we are all blessed even with all our limitations…
Source unknown
Gmail has an interesting quirk where you can add a plus sign (+) after your Gmail address, and it’ll still get to your inbox. It’s called plus-addressing, and it essentially gives you an unlimited number of e-mail addresses to play with. Here’s how it works: say your address is pinkyrocks@gmail.com, and you want to automatically label all work e-mails. Add a plus sign and a phrase to make it pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com and set up a filter to label it work (to access your filters go to Settings->Filters and create a filter for messages addressed to pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com. Then add the label work).
More real world examples:
Find out who is spamming you: Be sure to use plus-addressing for every form you fill out online and give each site a different plus address.
Example: You could use
pinkyrocks+nytimes@gmail.com for nytimes.com
pinkyrocks+freestuff@gmail.com for freestuff.com
Then you can tell which site has given your e-mail address to spammers, and automatically send them to the trash.
Automatically label your incoming mail: I’ve talked about that above.
Archive your mail: If you receive periodic updates about your bank account balance or are subscribed to a lot of mailing lists that you don’t check often, then you can send that sort of mail to the archives and bypass your Inbox.
Example: For the mailing list, you could give pinkyrocks+mailinglist1@gmail.com as your address, and assign a filter that will archive mail to that address automatically. Then you can just check in once in a while on the archive if you want to catch up.
Cant wait for the next Philip K Dick adaptation for the screen to hit theatres in India. I have thouroughly enjoyed all his other movie adaptaions - Blade Runner ( Do androids dream of electric sheep) was brilliant, one of my all time favorites. Total Recall ( We can
remember it for you wholesale) was a
dispapointment actually… Imposter ( Imposter) was quite well done but not well received and of course Minority Report ( Minority Report) technically brilliant…although a disappointment for me that I have never seen it once on the large screen.
Awaiting A scanner darkly for me is what Don was to most anxious Bollywood watchers…
Whats more exciting is they’ve designed ” much of the film in animation. Also, most of the animators for this project are coming out of the world of illustration and are graphic novel artists – so what we’ll eventually get when it is done will be the closest thing we’re likely to get to a living graphic novel telling of A SCANNER DARKLY… and that… that’s way cool.”
A scanner darkly stars Keannu Reeves, Winona ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson….
When I heard the DVD’s are available in Bangalore I flipped…but would like to catch it on screen… neways will wait
Posted a few more images of the restaurant. These were taken during the day. Images captured by Mr Subhash Koppula of ‘third eye’, Bangalore.
You may view the new images by clicking here
We do things a little differently hence this greeting message… Enjoy your festive season and be safe….
Tibetans, Mongolians, and people in parts of western China put salt in their tea instead of sugar.
In 1978 the average French meal lasted one hour and 22 minutes. Today it takes about 38 minutes. – Enjoy France.com
In Australia, no hormones have been fed or otherwise administered to meat chickens for at least 40 years. -Chicken.org.au
After eating onion, you should eat two teaspoons of honey in order to remove the unpleasant smell of the onion.
McDonalds use(d) beef extract to flavor their french fries.
Received an email today which is posted below… you may make your opinions independant of this email posted here
BEWARE OF THESE BANKS here
Looking at the rising complaints against ICICI Bank, Citibank, ABN Amro and Standard Chartered Bank, we request consumers to properly read their documents and keep a record when dealing with these banks, especially regarding credit card and housing loan. These three banks are biggest defaulters and do not resolve consumer problems easily. Be aware of their terms in writing. Keep a perfect record of all correspondence with them. If they do not agree to written communication, immediately stop their services. If you ask some nationalised bank to take over the housing loan from ICICI Bank, even after paying full amount, you will not get back your original documents for months. You will be told that the documents are in Mumbai and they are trying to retrieve the same. This is the answer you get everyday. In case of ABN Amro Bank’s credit cards, one has to be extra careful if he has opted to pay the amount is EMIs. He has to check the closing balance of previous month and opening balance of current month before making payments. ABN Amro very cleverly ensures that there is an increase in the amount and unsuspecting customers will pay the bill without referring to previous month’s statement.
BEWARE OF NOKIA
Nokia assures that their handset is covered under insurance. They even provide a certificate of insurance. But the condition is that if the handset is lost/stolen, you have to lodge an FIR to seek claims. The catch here is that the police station does not lodge FIR for loss of handsets, they only register NC. So you will never get insurance claims on basis of NC.
Nokia is selling some of its degraded products that have software problems. If you come across such problem in a new set, do not waste your time in running around service centres as it is not going to help much, ask for a replacement with a new set. All those who have purchased 3230 set, have experienced that there was software problem in every set. Nokia is simply dumping the sets, which can not be sold in other countries.
BEWARE OF AIR DECCAN
Their confirmed bookings are highly unreliable and of no guarantee that you will be allowed to fly. The booked tickets get cancelled without intimation to consumer only to be known by him when he goes to the airport to catch his flight. You will not get refund immediately, if you have booked your ticket through credit card. If you call up their call centre, if you press numbers relating to refund, you will not be attended at all even if you try for hours together. If you talk to somebody regarding refund, you have to press options relating to ticket booking, so that someone will attend to you. Then you can ask for refund. They are following very good trick.
BEWARE OF COUNTRY CLUB, BANGALORE
They advertise that if you take their membership, a plot of land will be given free of cost near Golden Spa at Coconut Grove. Please note Golden Spa is 35 Kms from Bangalore and the said plot of land is over 100 Kms from Bangalore. Based on false promises and with arrangement with Citibank and ICICI Bank, this team cheats the consumers of his money by asking payments through credit card.
BEWARE OF PRIVATE BUS OPERATORS/TRAVEL AGENTS
If you book your ticket in a private bus operator, you will find that your seat is allotted to somebody else also. Many a times, though you have booked your ticket to some destination, you will dropped few kilometres away, if there are not enough passengers for your destination. Then you will have to depend on other services to reach your destination. Keep the records/proofs and give a complaint to the nearest police station, when you come back. If you find that the police is supporting the travel agent, immediately inform his higher ups or give a complaint to consumer forum. Always try to use government transportation services. They may be bad in service but will never cheat you.
BOOK TELESALES & RECOVERY AGENTS
If you receive unwanted advertisement / telemarketing call from any company or recovery agents. You will find it annoying especially when you are on roaming network. Ask their telephone number and report to the police. File a police complaint against the Chairman of the company .
BEWARE OF SOME HOSPITALS
If you happen to get admitted (or admit your family person/friend/relative) for any operation in any hospital, keep all the records. Even if the doctor scribbles any information on a piece of paper and give it you, please keep it with you. In future, for your bad luck, if some adverse thing happens due to wrong dialysis or wrong operation, these things will come handy to fight it in a court. Please be clear that consumer forums are not of much help to you because they do not have good doctors in their panel. Many a times they do not have any doctors in their panel and even if they have, a doctor in the panel will try to help a doctor. In such a case you will have to fight tooth and nail. Hence keep all the records/proofs with you carefully.
BEWARE OF TATAINDICOM BROADBAND and WIRELESS FIXED TELEPHONE
Their promises to get you a broadband connection within a week is not to be relied upon. Once your money is stuck (about Rs. 2000), it takes lot of pains to recover it back. If you book Wireless fixed telephone, the Tataindicom sales person will tell you that you can send/receive fax, send/receive e-mails in other service providers’ account also (for example vsnl, touchtel etc). Once you install the telephone, you will find that the instrument can not support fax machine even if connected through EPABX, you will find that you can receive e-mails in other accounts and can not send e-mails at all. You have to send e-mails only through Tataindicom e-mail service.
CAREFUL WHEN DEALING WITH THESE COMPANIES / PRODUCTS
LIST OF WORST COMPANIES AGAINST WHOM WE RECEIVE COMPLAINTS VERY FREQUENTLY
AIRLINES: Air Deccan
BANKS: ICICI bank, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank
BUILDERS: Parimiti Buildcon (Thane), Madras City Co-op Bldg. Soc (Chennai)
CARS: Tata motors, Hyundai
CREDIT CARDS: SBI credit card, Citibank, Standard Chartered, ABN Amro
CELLPHONE SERVICES: Tata Indicom Broadband, Airtel, BPL mobile
HOME APPLIANCES: Videocon,
HOME BUSINESS: Kenya Star Tea
INSURANCE: National Insurance Co., New India Assurance, generally all private/Multinational Insurance Companies
MOBILE PHONES: Nokia 6260, 3230
TIMESHARE: Royal Goan Beach Club (Goa), Happy Home Constructions (Bangalore), Country Club India Ltd. (Bangalore)
TRANSPORTERS: Sky Packers and Movers (Mumbai), Packways Pvt. Ltd.(Mumbai), Sai Packers and Movers (Mumbai)
ARE U BEING HARASSED BY CONSUMER COURTS?
WE ARE GATHERING INFORMATION ON CORRUPT JUDGES, REGISTRARS & CLERKS
We have received many complaints from consumers that they are being harassed in the consumer courts when they go there to submit consumer complaint and attend hearings. They are not being served properly by the clerks, and the judges keep on giving hearing dates without arriving to judgment. These acts are contrary to the purpose of setting up of consumer courts that were basically meant to help the consumers. Please inform us if you have experienced or witnessed harassment or corruption. Inform us the exact time, date, and location of the incident in writing through duly signed letter. Your details will not be disclosed on this website, but you should be ready to co-operate when action against these people is initiated by nabbing them through proper channel.
For further clarifications you may contact:
Sri.ARUN SAXENA
International Consumer Rights Protection Council
B-9/55, Vijay Nagari,
P.O. Kasarvadavali,
Thane (West) 400601
Mumbai – India
Telephone: 91(022) 25972605, Cell: 9819598004, E-mail: mail@icrpc.org
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