Marathon

Missed the Mumbai Marathon as my busy travel schedule didn't allow me to register.

Any donated some money for charity (in the donation box kept at the shop) and ran 10 kilometer in the Gym to make up for it.

Though missed the whole environment as what was shown on the TV relay. 'll try to make up for it in the neighbourhood marathon due in next few months.

Marathon beside promoting the health living, also inculcate the team spirit, charity in us beside giving us chance to break from the routine.

Starting Point of Happiness

Today, I was reading the book “The Starting Point of Happiness” by Ryuko Okawa.

The crux of living positively and courageously, and cut through difficulties lies in few points (highlighted in the book) which I would like to share with readers:

1. The Frontier Spirit: Only with a willingness to live positively and accept challenges, one can break new ground and start new projects. Never lose sight of the area you want to move into, anticipate the risk and obstacles and devise ways to overcome them.

2. Invincible Thinking – Winning in every situation: All the events that occur in one’s life serve as lessons for you and provide you with spiritual nourishment. With this attitude one can always win. No matter what the circumstances, you can be a winner in every situation, if one learns from every facet of his life.

3. A Positive Attitude: Create an image of yourself as a person who is always happy, constructive and active. Only with a positive attitude and showing courage, one will be able to create true happiness.

4. The Snowball Effect: If one tries to learn the lesson and find seed of success in every situation, no matter what happens, one will grow in the same way as a snowball that expands automatically as it rolls downhill. With the attitude of interest and discovery, victory is inevitable.

5. Time to take flight into infinity: Cultivate positive self-image. Take command of your thoughts, turn them to the light and start living positively so as to automatically solve many of your problems. If one want to fly high, one should make a great effort, then help will come from others but before everything comes a positive attitude to life

I have no doubt that this is the key to become one of life’s winners.

voice against racism

I am being dished the news channel coverage of assault on Indian Students in Australia.
It is a matter of shame for Australia who gains lot of money from Indian students and tourists and accomodate if any only the much desired skilled (see the skill based residency program of Australia) people or highly educated Indian students.

I was myself an international student having done my MS and MBA in foreign countries, and knw the pain of staying away from family and familiar surroundings while trying to meet the individual/collective expectations and targets.

On top of that being subject to such behavior and racism, is totally unacceptable.

As i student i was well briefed by the local indian student association about the safe practices which toed but still remember few instances in the most developed country of world which are shameful e.g. bullying of fellow students by the landlords (who own multiple apartments near the college campus and rent to students looking for better bargains than on campus apartments), not sitting on the same seat on which an Indian is sitting in campus/local bus, vulgar language against indian by drunk people in Bar, abuses on indian students by the local umemployed/fired and drunk people. I managed to avoid such instances and also advised fellow students.

Any act of racial abuse need to be condemned, deplored and resisted to act as an deterrant to such acts.

Management Actions and Long Term Actions

Few years back, I had a chance to interact with the management of three major telecom companies who have consistently delivered superior shareholder (stakeholder) return over the last two decade. I took time-out to look for an answer to question “How they kept creating value over the years?”
Here is the list of management actions / decisions (in random order) noticed by me as part of creating superior value to their stakeholders over the last two decade or so. I hope it is not too long…
- Build good domestic base (go for acquisitions if required).
- Leverage on sectoral development. Build on goodwill network as well as government connections (Go for advanced technologies being promoted by government and use them to capitalize on business opportunities)
- Incrementally build regional base and then international.
- Target high growth markets (Look for markets getting deregulated as a good opportunity for sales and business).
- Joint venture to get technology and enter / understand new markets.
- Scale (organic and acquisitions) post experience.
- Start with exports then focused pursuit of international opportunities (marketing effort tied to growth)
- Technological development - Bet on key new technologies. Invest in R&D (value add , no need if available cheaply from third party supplier)
- Enhanced customer recognition of the brand name (associate it what consumer desire)
- Try to gain leadership in the targeted market segment. Build on reputation.
- Regular business rationalization (divest if required, consolidate and eliminate excess capacity, streamline product line)
- Include new products with future significant growth in the business portfolio (management will always have an explanation)
- Clear segregation of business units. List spun off business to realize latent value
- Use flexibility in raising capital (holding company and operating company level). Bring down cost of capital as low as possible
- Prudent cost management
- Create a strong team work among top management. Keep alive the entrepreneurial spirit
- Top guy to hold and control the top 25 managers and let similar scheme go down the ladder incrementally
- Good MIS is necessary for operational and financial control. Put process in place as early as possible
- Corporate communications is critical for keeping the investor / public interest
- Buy / opt out the competition if threat. Play on core strength and differentiate.

Indian Summer, IPL and Elections

Mumbai is facing the sweltering heat (the mercury is running bit high this time) and successfully bore the euphoria of general elections. On top of that IPLs is keeping the people at home.

Excercised the voting right after ten years (was overseas on the last occasion - how about extending the easy options for NRIs holding Indian Passport) .

The name finding the voter list was quite a mess though after that the vote exercise subsequently was breeze. (the computerization is there then it has to be used and delivery handed to private company (who do the good job keeping the view the bills that are delivered to me always on time) .

Hats off to people who walk miles to vote and election officer who are on duty whole day even at the most remote locations (may be next time the elections shall be in late Jan or Feb.).

Voter turnout on my booth was good though saw (while driving through) less crowd at posh areas of the city (47% good but not good enough to catch up with approx. 57% in AP/Kanataka). On personal level Impressed by the work by youth (Jago re), local NGO (Rotary), celebrity, journalists and leaders (on TV) though the wave factor was missing to increase the voter turnout.

IPL is a good time filler but find it shameful (even if SA is doing a good job hosting and local junta supporting it) that India teams are fighting it out on foreign land. Better not make it another karry packer serious. Anyway, will soon pick up my favorite team among the two contenders and watch them till semi/finals. I wish the same exposure/importance is given to Olympics

Anyway, learning the energy saving tips to keep my electricity bill in control (while my AC runs full blast).

Aura and Energy Circle Increase by Yoga and Prayer

just read a pocket book on an offbeat topic of individual aura and energy circle increase.

Gist of the whole 100 page book is:

Increase your personal aura and energy circle by:
1. Prayer
2. Pranayama Yoga (bramari, anulom vilom, kapal bhati, Bhastrika, udgeeth, Bahya)

I found the above to be certanly beneficial, but how useful in they increasing the energy circle.....i keep ths issue open.

International Personal Communication

Here is something I wrote something few month's back, posting it on the blog.......to make one of diversion from normal topics of health, fitness and motvatonal to personal effectiveness....

International Personal Communication: Expanding Choice of Telecom Services

India is emerging as a communication hub with significant share of global traffic. The increasing global activities are resulting in upward moving telecommunications traffic flowing in and out of the country. Similarly, Indian telecom companies with global operations through organic growth are ramping up inorganic growth via acquisitions e.g. Teleglobe by Tata, Flag, Vanco, Yipes and eWave by Reliance GlobalCom and EIG, Unity, I-Me-We Consortium participation by Bharti.

For corporate India, to cater to new realities of 24*7 business operations the reliable international communications services has become a necassity. The Indian telecom service providers now make available required services via the point or presence in numerous countries and owned network ensuring quality and cost. Few services available to international business and trade companies include bandwidth (managed, capacity and IPLC), IP (transit, Ethernet, MPLS VPN and direct routes), Co-location (cage, hosting, remote hand and eyes) and voice (A-Z voice termination, SIP trunking, VoIP, hosted contact centre and IP Centrex) services.

Similarly, international business professionals increasing need to match or surpass the personal productivity standard. Let me suggest few convenient and user friendly services that shall be beneficial for the International business executives many of whom take at least fifty percent travel during a working month. An increasing number of such executives find International communication services as critical component of their productivity and efficiency matrix. These services not only save travel time and communication cost but also help put together result oriented virtual teams.

Virtual Calling Card shall help user make substantial savings while making India outbound or inbound calling. Through a toll free or toll number and access PIN, user can make overseas calls from any mobile, landline or payphone at economy rates. The virtual calling cards are available in select or flexible denominations

Using exclusive Call forwarding Service, user can transfer calls on his local number(s) (handheld or landline) to a number of his choice in the country of travel. This service provide major saving over other international roaming services plus one do not need worry about missing important calls

Global and Country specific SIM Cards allows mobile user to use it as a local postpaid connection to make local, national and international calls while travelling abroad. These SIM can be bought in India and even provide individual with dedicated own number of the country of travel. Call rate plan differs but in general provide substantial savings on the local and international calling.

Audio Conferencing help user talk with several people in real time. The service is available via both a regular telephone and a computer telephone. Along with audio interchange, audio conferencing also involves photo or video conferencing, using internet and personal computer. The latest version even allows users to work on the same document or other software application at the same time. Whatever is on a user's screen; will also show up on all the screens of other users in the conference. With the use of a digital whiteboard and a special pen, users can even draw pictures and diagrams for each other to demonstrate visual ideas.

Web based Dialer, mobile (client installed) and Broadband (adapter installed) Internet Telephony services like Skype are getting popular and widely available with significant increase in the peer to peer traffic. A number of Indian providers are already providing the variety of internet telephony services. The services are expected to become widely available post liberalization of VoIP regulations.