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As we rush through life!

In Washington, DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. About 3 minutes: The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk. At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. At 45 minutes: The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.  After 1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He...

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is disease found in 8 to 10% school going children. The boys are three times more susceptible to this syndrome than girls, reason is not known yet. Diagnosing ADHD; sans any clinical tests like other common diseases. Clinical judgment taking into account of all symptoms associated with ADHD is the method of diagnosing ADHD. Doctors need to collect information from both the parents and the teachers. Children with ADHD act without thinking. They may understand how they are expected to do but may not be able to act accordingly. They are inattentive, cannot sit idle; at the same time know not what to do. Of course all the kids behave sometimes this way but not all the time. With their growing age they gradually get collected and settled. ADHD is diagnosed when such behavioral pattern prolongs for long time and does not show the sign to recede. The symptoms of ADHD may be absent in doctor’s chamber. The children face different challenges at h...

Ramadan War and Oil crises

The cars are in long queue for gasoline, 1979 Great depression was confronted with “New deal”, mooted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. That comprised many relief program for jobless and farmers. It undertook business reforms, including minimum wages and maximum weekly working hours. It’s fruits are still very much in system till today in US like social security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authorities. After World War II, American economy got stabilized and continued to swell till 1970s. In 1973, in the month of October Syria and Egypt declared war against Israel, on the very day of Jewish atonement or Ramadan. The war lasted for 20 days and is known as Ramadan War or Yom Kippur War. The Arab forces were defeated by Israel and that angered them. They stopped exporting oil to US, Western Europe and Japan. The oil price skyrocketed, the Wall Street rocked again. It l...

Safeguard Middle Class's Money!

It is observed that middle class suffers most or lose maximum in terms of their money or savings, when any financial crises creeps in. Every time the share markets go tumble tosser, they are caught napping or on wrong foots. The rich and super riches can withstand the blow of market crash. The poor are not directly affected by it due to their non exposure. So, the victims are middle class people. The current crash in stock market is a global phenomenon. The Wall Street is the origin, the sub-prime crisis is responsible and the result is global recession. There is hue of demand slump, layoffs, and interest rate cuts all over. India is not totally insulated from these vagaries. This the time one should be more wise to safe guard his investments or savings. No one knows for the sure; when stock market will bottom out. It may take any length of time. It took 3-4 years for the market to bottom out after the Wall Street crash in 1929. Finally when market bottomed out, the stock prices lost t...

A Poem "DEATH"

Here I post a poem , once sent by one of unknown fried in Google's community. The title of the poem is "DEATH"; the most mystic, blurred and obscure fact in our life. Thought to share with you; It was early in the morning at four, When death knocked upon a bedroom door, Who is there? The sleeping one cried. I'm Malkul Mawt(the angel of death), let me inside. At once, the man began to shiver, As one sweating in deadly fever, He shouted to his sleeping wife, Don't let him take away my life. Please go away, O Angel of Death! Leave me alone; I'm not ready yet. My family on me depends, Give me a chance, O please prepense! The angel knocked again and again, Friend! I'll take your life without a pain, Tis your soul Allah requires, I come not with my own desire. Bewildered, the man began to cry, O Angel I'm so afraid to die, I'll give you gold and be your slave, Don't send me to the unlit grave. Let me in, O Friend! The Angel said, Open the door; get u...

My Experience as a Writer !

After a long gap, I am here at it again. You may be thinking that I am on long vacation or busy elsewhere! No, I was neither on vacation nor busy elsewhere. In fact I remained busy here, trying my hands on some other job. The jobs, I heard much about available on the net, is the job of writer. And that is paying. This wooed me. I thought adding few bucks besides my salary is not a bad idea. After all, who does not like add something more to his purse that can be spent comfortably? So I jumped in to it. Tell you frankly, it kept me quite busy after my office hours. I forgot to watch good many days the news channel in TV or my evening session of news paper reading. My wife encouraged me, finding I am less badgering to her for cups of tea or smoking; sitting by the side of her in my drawing room, compelling her to passive smoking. After all these days, one of our minister has vowed to take up the cudgel against the smokers, compelling them to smoke nowhere except in toilet! The experienc...

Married life is like that !!

Many great personalities opined about their conjugal life or observation of married life; few of them are compiled here for your perusal: David Bissonette When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. Sacha Guitry After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together. Hemant Joshi By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. Socrates Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them. Dumas The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want? Sigmund Freud I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me. Anonymous "Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." Henny Youn...

A Joke

Here goes a joke, that I received from one of my friends.Though I feel bit crude about it but at the same time can not deny it's reality. Can anyone tell me , what the joke suggests, why at all it should be in that way? Read carefully, if you can, Before marriage...... He: Yes. At last. It was so hard to wait. She: Do you want me to leave? He: No! Don't even think about it. She: Do you love me? He: Of course! Over and over! She: Have you ever cheated on me? He: No! Why are you even asking? She: Will you kiss me? He: Every chance I get. She: Will you hit me? He: Are you crazy! I'm not that kind of person! She: Can I trust you? He: Yes. She: Darling! After marriage.... Simply read from bottom to top !

A sweet song

The American Rock musics or other songs are the heart throbs of young generations. I do not appreciate them sometime for the extra decibels they pour in my ear drums. But what captivates me,is their lyrics; with so simple terms they carry such deep meanings of life is truly amazing sometime. Such is this I quote here from one them, what I have been sent by one of friends, whom I must salute ,for introducing them to me: You got a fast car I want a ticket to anywhere Maybe we make a deal Maybe together we can get somewhere Anyplace is better Starting from zero got nothing to lose Maybe we'll make something But me myself I got nothing to prove You got a fast car And I got a plan to get us out of here I been working at the convenience store Managed to save just a little bit of money We won't have to drive too far Just 'cross the border and into the city You and I can both get jobs And finally see what it means to be living You see my old man's got a problem He live with t...

A STORY --- THAT TOUCHED MY HEART

You never know if these stories are true but this is a good one 'Watch out! You nearly broad sided that car!' My father yelled at me. 'Can't you do anything right?' Those words hurt worse than blows. I turned my head toward the elderly man in the seat beside me, daring me to challenge him. A lump rose in my throat as I averted my eyes. I wasn't prepared for another battle. 'I saw the car, Dad. Please don't yell at me when I'm driving.' My voice was measured and steady, sounding far calmer than I really felt. Dad glared at me, then turned away and settled back. At home I left Dad in front of the television and went outside to collect my thoughts. Dark, heavy clouds hung in the air with a promise of rain. The rumble of distant thunder seemed to echo my inner turmoil. What could I do about him? Dad had been a lumberjack in Washington and Oregon. He had enjoyed being outdoors and had reveled in pitting his strength against the forces of nature. He ha...

A Poem so Touchy !

One of my friend forwarded me a poem what has been sent by one of her student from US. She is currently engaged with some research work that relates to the most critical (!) subject at least for me- Mathematics. But that never made her to lose her taste buds for mellifluous, touchy poems. I know not who is poet but my kudos for him or her. Here it goes.............. ..I kept the right ones out And let the wrong ones in Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins There were times in my life When I was goin' insane Tryin' to walk through The pain When I lost my grip And I hit the floor Yeah, I thought I could leave but couldn't get out the door I was so sick and tired Of a livin' a lie I was wishin' that I Would die It's Amazing With the blink of an eye you finally see the light It's Amazing When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright It's Amazing And I'm sayin' a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight That one last shot...

Cooling Time !

The oil price is cooling, it touched $99 per barrel and settled around $103 today. At the same time dollar is firming against INR and hoovering around Rs44-45/- per dollar band. Obviously the gain in the fall of Crude price is being off set by the appreciation of dollar for the oil importing companies (that includes all) in India. So, the concerned ministry has announced that they are not mulling any immediate reduction in oil price. In fact they are projecting how much being subsidized per liter of petrol,diesel, kerosene and LPG cylinder. What is surprising they never highlight how much direct and indirect taxes are levied on any petroleum products. Subsidy on them means just ploughing back a slice of taxes collected on them. The inflation rate has shown the symptom to take a downward trend. May be the better time is back or likely to be back in another two months. Monsoon appears to be good , though it has caused havoc in some areas causing flood or river overflowing or changing it...

Compensation in Italian Style

Not many remember, in late 60s or early 70s, three movies from Hollywood in a series brought Italy in the forefront of cine-goers mind. They were “Marriage in Italian Style”, “Divorce in Italian Style” and “Ghost in Italian Style”. I remembered them with a recent development of dispensing compensation in Italian style. News of Associated Press suggested that Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country in the last century. This has been to by Libyan foreign minister Mr Abdel-Rahaman Shalgam. He further claimed that Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who is visiting Libya at present, is set to sign a memorandum pledging a $5 billion compensation package involving construction projects, student grants and pension for Libyan soldiers who served with the Italians during the Second World War (too late to consider!). He further said “It is a material and emotional recognition of the mistakes that our country has done to yours duri...

LOVE LETTER

Perhaps the present generations would laugh at ; exchanging love letters or mailing them to distant lovers at our times. The e-mail, SMS, cellular phones have made those things obsolete. With mobile phones they feel they are always in touch with each other. I feel pity for them, why you know? They never come to know after dropping the first love letter in the mail box, how we kept waiting for its reply for days. How those intermediate days use to lose its pace with every passing days. Looking at letter box , off and on, in odd hours when usually there use to be no chance of mail delivery, with a hope against hope for the desired mail. Intense the wait, intense the love that usually got projected in the next letter that followed the previous one`s reply. There is no account how many hearts might have broken for the missing mail that contained the first lover letters of the lovers. Obviously they were never responded, frustrating their writer, who always took it granted she was not for h...

CATCH THE LIAR

If you are a teacher or anyone associated to grill the pupil or public as a matter of routine job, you must surmise how to separate them who lie at ease than who speak the truth. Truly it is a tough task. In a school where hundreds of students throng, one comes up with specific complaints alleging other for the sin. But the guy looks so innocent and narrates his story so naively that it is hard to think that he ever could commit such follies. I remember a story of Mogul style of detecting the criminals by some courtesan on Mogul empire. Some suspects were brought to the court for alleged thefts. All denied having committed the crime. The courtesan, Bribal (Emperor Akbar`s court) came forward and sought permission to find the thief from the emperor. The permission was granted. He asked for some flour. That he distributed everybody one or two spoonful and put that on their palm. Asked them to make paste of flour, with their spit instantly, all did except one. He could not spit a drop, hi...

Small Bird.. Magpies Have the Best Brain !

We all know that other that human, few other mammals have intellectual prowess to recognize self. This faculty is gifted by nature to apes, elephants and dolphins were known so far. Surprisingly recently it has been observed that a small species, non mammal, a bird, the magpies have the same prowess. They too can recognize themselves in a mirrors or where ever their image is reflected. Self recognition is considered to be one of the skills of highly developed brains. It is observed that these birds can recognize themselves like chimpanzee despite being separated from mammals from 300 million years of evolutionary history. Helmut Prior, of Goethe University in Frakfurt, says the findings demonstrate that the ability to recognize a reflection as you self, rather than seeing it as another individual, does not necessarily depend on the sophisticated mammalian brain. “Our findings provide the first Malian species” he says. “They suggest that essential components of human self-recognition ha...

HAD THEY BEEN ALIVE !

Every year the month of August is august to every Indian. It was in this month on 15th day of 1947, we won our independence. We celebrate with much pomp and show every year this day, the other being the 26th January, the republican day. The history of Indian freedom struggle is a long one. Many parties with various ideas sprang up all over Indian subcontinent, all with the one goal to end the British rule. Smaller parties favored the rout of arms struggle, the bigger chose more safe, wise rout and off course the never heard before non-violence rout. What actually made British to leave this country in a hurry is a matter debate now. However, Congress, Muslim league and the Prince`s Club (consisting 30 Maharajas of erstwhile States during Raj) were together on the same side of negotiation table. Later only those who were at the helm of affairs in these parties remembered most and applauded by this country as the heroes of masterminding India`s independence. Many like Netaji Subhas Bose, ...

Valley of Bandits turns to bio-fuel hub

It is reported that the famous or ill famous Chambal Valley is going to transform a great national energy hub. How! Having liquidating several gangs of robbers and eliminating the most wanted few, the Madhya Pradesh government is mulling with the idea to let out the valley to corporate on lease to cultivate jatropha. This jatropha seeds are used for making bio diesel; what is on top most national agenda. Mr. Shivraj Singh, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh said “Most of the infamous dacoits of the area have been eliminated. I`s time to convert Chambal into a future energy hub. I am glad that several private companies have shown interest in developing the area and cultivation jatropha under our wasteland development policy”. The global energy crisis reached it`s zenith, has sent a shock wave with the threat of impending food crisis. Since most of the farm lands diverted to cropping bio-diesel, thus creating a shortage of cereals. The food grains price have sky rocketed too all over ...

DARJEELING - THE HISTORY

“DARJEELING”, the very name of this hill station in India reminds you the colonial days and tea. Because it was the British colonizers; who were constantly on look out for cooler places, obviously in India it uses to be in hills what would remind them their home. The temperature in tropical countries, particularly in summer months use to be unbearable for them for mercury touching anywhere between 35 to 44 degree Celsius! In India Shimla and Darjeeling earned their reputation for hosting the colonial administrators with their staffs with families during summer months for running colonial administration for years. Though with English rulers, gone are the colonial days and prestige of Darjeeling, but it still holds name in world for its tea. It still the producer of world number one flavored tea and sold at a price, unthinkable for we ordinary mortals! Off late, a new hue for Gorkhaland is raised time and again. It stared in the decades of 90s, lot of agitations, number of strikes call...

PETROL FROM PLASTIC WASTE

A recent report in news paper suggests that Nagpur ( a city in India ) is leading for the cause of waste management in India. Most of the metro or mega cities in India have undertaken various projects for waste management. Particularly, recycling the waste into fertilizers or bio-gas for environment friendly purposeful usage is becoming popular. In Nagpur, a company; The Unique Plastic Waste Management and Research Pvt. Ltd is engaged in recycling plastic wastes (including carry bags) into fuel oil. It is sulfur free equivalent of industrial crude. This can be readily used as furnace oil and can be subjected to fractional condensation to produce petrol. It offers enormous opportunity for such conversion, if done in a big way. The company presently purchasing 5 tons of plastic waste form the rag pickers and offering them good price for their sale. This can be followed in all urbane area to recycle the plastic waste, which is menacing otherwise by plugging drainage system or blocking the...

HOW TO HANDLE IRATE CUSTOMERS

While handling with angry or irate customer, one must first of all give a patient hearing. Customer is the king in the modern world. Mind it , that as the old adage is `The King is always right`, thus the present marketing mantra is `Customer is always right`. But ironically, many a times you find that the angry or irate customer is not totally right, either he might have failed to note what was on offer or missed few lines in documents of offer , may be he might have failed to comprehend the matter sometime. Listen him carefully, in which ever service sector you are, listening is a must. You may not be able to solve the problem of the customer you are handling, but definitely you are able enough to calm him down at the first step. If the anger of the customer is for a just cause and due to negligence on the part of you or some of your colleague,immediately resolve the issue then seek his excuse, expressing your regret. One thing may work magic, when you handle a irate customer. Offer ...