No, I’m not talking about any animated character here. Son saw this ad posters in the train and got excited about it.
He calls it Sidee (CD). Yup, it does look like a CD, doesn’t it?
[24] Sidee
January 28, 2010
Old friends…
Reunited.
Actually my only non-indian friend so far!
She was new to Singapore when I met her and had just started to learn English. We had a lots of communication challenges and after a long struggle, I learnt to speak broken english to match her at that time. She is getting better at her language these days. Thanks to her, I don’t have to speak word-after-word anymore.
[22] More photos
January 27, 2010
Taken during my 8th month pregnancy…
[19] How ‘not’ to write a business email
January 20, 2010
Today I received this email in my inbox. It was from a sender I do not know with the subject ‘meeting request’. I was just about to delete when the words “inconvenience” and “meeting” caught my attention. I continued to read.
It started like this.
Hi,
Greetings from ABC, erstwhile PQR.
First of all, I know neither ABC nor PQR but I didn’t give it much thought because the second line was more interesting.
Regret the inconvenience caused to you by this unsolicited mail and would like to apologize for the same.
Oh so Mr. X who sent this mail confirms that his mail is “unsolicited” and goes on to the extent of apologizing for sending the same. And then he expects me to read on!
Seriously, I thought this was darn funny, and I continued reading because I really wanted to find out what Mr. X was up to. The mail went on like this.
We presently offer the following solutions which are exclusive in our service offering.
Yeah so they are offering exclusive “solutions” to problems I don’t have.
We also offer the following on a financial planning basis in case you feel there is a need to explore these options as well.
And then the “following” talks about everything on the face of the earth that I might possibly ‘need to explore’. More interestingly, the mail ended like this.
It would be great to meet you at a time convenient to you and explore how we may be able to add value to your portfolio.
Looking forward to meeting you.
Warm regards,
Mr. X
ABC
My reply should be this:
That’s a great positive business-like ending, Mr. X. Adding value to my portfolio and your confidence in looking forward to meet me are great. But do you really think I would have come this far in your mail after reading the second line unless I wanted to write an interesting blog post?
People are busy and they want to make best use of their time. Amidst all the work and personal mails and hundreds of forwarded mails (forwarded mails may not be important but we do prioritize them as ‘urgent’ and even mid day at work, we read them and keep forwarding, don’t we?), do you think we will have the time to read and respond to a ‘meeting request’ that is unsolicited and apologetic?
Come on Mr. X. I’m sure you don’t receive a favorable reply often and unsolicited mails easily hit the ‘junk mail’ folder unless the reader is either jobless or is intending to make a funny blog post about it.
Leave your apologetic mask behind and meet people with confidence. Or try picking up the phone and say hello with a smile.
I tell you, I bought most of my credit cards and insurances from sales people who were nice (and who came with a good free gift) even when I didn’t need them.
[18] Sail
January 19, 2010
[17] Dream we must!
January 17, 2010
I have always been a big dreamer. As a child, I would sit and dream big things for hours together. Most of those hours, I used to hold a book in front of me so that people will think that I’m studying. But my mother was smart. She always found out but I tried to reason ‘most geniuses were high school drop-outs’. I didn’t have a statistic but I knew that many were.
I was called a day dreamer. They said that day dreams never came true (not that night dreams do either). As in any household from a developing community, I had pressures too, pressures of coming first, of winning and of doing better than the child next door. I took it all lightly so I gave in to what the community expected of me and became an engineer.
I don’t put education down, it’s during my engineering college days that I changed a lot positively and it’s only because I had this 2 letter degree that I’m married to this man whom I love. Seriously, we give lots of value to education even when it comes to arranged marriage.
I worked and managed to earn for a decent living in bangalore but my dream was different. I wasn’t so clear about what I wanted but I was so sure that I wasn’t doing what I wanted. I didn’t want to work hard and be a mediocre engineer while I can dream hard and become a genius in something I like. That kept bothering me day and night.
It was not until many years from then, that I realised that dreams do come true, but we need to make it solid. It’s important to set a date to the dream, this makes it a goal. And it’s even more important to write it down. It’s okay to have too many dreams like I used to have but writing them down helped me to prioritize them, and tackle them one at a time.
I don’t understand why dreams are so underrated in many communities. Shouldn’t children be taught to dream the right way to make sure that they don’t end up doing the wrong thing in their future?
One might argue that mere dreaming with no action is not going to work. But when the dream is strong, and when there is a burning desire to be, then action is inspired and inspired action is not work. It’ll give as much pleasure as doing a hobby only with greater results.
Here’s something I heard about dreams:
‘Dogs don’t do tricks so that they save up for their puppy’s education in the future. Only we, humans can dream. And if only we have the ability to dream then DREAM WE MUST!’
I find cats not that scary anymore 
I had a tummy bug last week when hubby was working late. Incidently I hadn’t taken Pappu out for the whole day, so he had started behaving differently when my bug was at it’s peak. Well, it’s not fun when you are sitting in the toilet bowl and trying to catch your vomit in a plastic bag when your 1.5 year old son stands next to you and tries to imitate your vomiting inside the same bag. So I just let him loose and allowed him to have a liberal day. As I was sitting and watching him do things, I realized how different he was, when he is not under my authority.
Some time in between, he digged his favourite shirt from the dirty laundry basket and insisted that he wear it. Guess what I did? I let him wear it.
And then he wanted to wear the pants that are rather loose for him and keeps coming below his diaper. I let him do that too.
This was followed by several activities that were performed while I just watched. Then he hanged my camcorder bag around his neck and wanted to go out. By this time I was already fed up and wanted fresh air too. So I took him out for a walk. As soon as we were near the next block, he returned the bag to me and didn’t want to carry it any more.
I called my friend to the play ground so that I can sit in the play ground bench for a while. She was running behind Pappu and advising him what to do when he was playing football with other kids’ balls without their consent and climbing on their big cycles. I wanted peace so I just pretended that I didn’t see anything.
Not that these are big things but everytime he did these things before, the outcome was different. I never told him ‘no’ but I made up my own custom ways of telling him what he should rather do. And he would listen to whatever I say and follow my advice.
That day was different for both of us…
