The grass isn't always greener on the other side!!

Mr. Gopalakrishnan succeeds Mr. Ratan Tata as Chairman of Tata Sons Ltd., the holding company for many of the Tata Bluechips - like Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, Voltas, etc. Possibly, he is the first non-Tata person to head the Tata Empire.

The below article, written by him, is really interesting!

The grass isn't always greener on the other side!!

Move from one job to another - but only for the right reasons. It's yet another day at office. As I logged on to the marketing and advertising sites for the latest updates, as usual, I found the headlines dominated by "who's moving from one company to another after a short stint", and I wondered, "why are so many people leaving one job for another? Is it passe now to work with just one company for a sufficiently long period”?

Whenever I ask this question to people who leave a company, the answers I get are "Oh, I am getting a 200% hike in salary"; "Well, I am jumping three levels in my designation"; "Well, they are going to send me abroad in six months".

Then, I look around at all the people who are considered successful today and who have reached the top - be it a media agency, an advertising agency or a company. I find that most of these people are the ones who have stuck to the company, ground their heels and worked their way to the top.

And, as I look around for people who changed their jobs constantly, I find they have stagnated at some level, in obscurity!

In this absolutely ruthless, dynamic and competitive environment, there are still no short cuts to success or to making money. The only thing that continues to pay, as earlier, is Loyalty and Hard work. Yes, it pays! Sometimes - immediately, sometimes - after a lot of time. But, it does pay.

Does this mean that one should stick to an organisation and wait for that golden moment? Of course not. After a long stint, there always comes a time for moving, in most organisations. But, it is important to move for the right reasons - rather than superficial ones, like money, designation or an overseas trip.

Remember, no company recruits for charity.

More often than not, when you are offered an unseemly hike in salary or designation that is disproportionate to what that company offers its current employees, there is always unseen bait attached.

The result?

You will, in the long-term, have reached exactly the same levels or maybe lower levels, than what you would have in your current company. A lot of people leave an organisation because they are "unhappy". What is this so-called-unhappiness? I have been working for donkey's years, and there has never been a day when I am not unhappy about something in my work - environment, boss, rude colleague, fussy clients, etc.

Unhappiness in a workplace, to a large extent, is transient. If you look hard enough, there is always something to be unhappy about. But, more importantly, do I come to work to be "happy" in the truest sense? If I think hard, the answer is "No".

Happiness is something you find with family, friends, may be a close circle of colleagues who have become friends. What you come to work for is to earn, build a reputation, satisfy your ambitions, be appreciated for your work ethics, face challenges and get the job done.

So, the next time you are tempted to move, ask yourself "why are you moving" and "what are you moving into”?

Some questions are

• Am I ready and capable of handling the new responsibility? If yes, what could be the possible reasons my current company has not offered me the same responsibility ?
  

• Who are the people who currently handle this responsibility in the current and the new company? Am I as good as the best among them ?
  

• As the new job offer has a different profile, why have I not given the current company the option to offer me this profile ?
  

• Why is the new company offering me the job? Do they want me for my skills, or is there an ulterior motive?

An honest answer to these will eventually decide where you go in your career - either to the top of the pile, in the long-term (at the cost of short-term blips), or to become another average employee who gets lost with time in the wilderness?

- By -
Dr. Gopalkrishnan Chairman - TATA Sons.



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Wont it be really amazing if somebody pulls off a feat like this, Spotting an UFO.
UFO or Unidentified Flying Objects or Flying Saucers for people who don't know the technical name of this object have been an always ever elusive object which aren't available to everybody everywhere, obviously then why will we call in Unidentified Flying Object. If it was observable to everybody everywhere, then the conversations will be like, "Hey this is the same UFO we saw in front of supermarket yesterday", "This Red UFO makes too much noise, the Blue one is better". hehehe :-)

UFO are always believed to be something related to Aliens. UFOs were first spotted during mid 1940s i.e during WW 2. They are always believed to carry Aliens who visit earth on a mission which is always something related to destruction or something to know more information about the place the UFO is visiting. I will more or less stick to the latter motive for reasons you will know before you finish reading this post. UFOs are spotted everywhere, nearly everywhere. From a densely populated NY skyline to a insignificant South Asian village. But the most spotting have been in Eastern Europe region like the Soviet bloc regions of Siberia, Russia and the scarcely populated regions of USA like Utah, Arizona desert. And a few months back, an UFO was reportedly spotted in Baghdad. BAGHDAD ..? What does Baghdad has that an Alien wants to find out ..? Oil reserves ?Don't this makes us feel that there is kind of a strange co-incidence between where UFOs are been spotted and where USA has some strategic interests..?

This photo of an UFO spotted in Baghdad

According to data and information collected through many sources UFOs are nothing but USA's advanced ( even more advanced than a child can imagine) reconnaissance flights which are usually used to survey the enemy side or the enemy war front. And as we are in the age where war attacks are not made in war fronts but on critical installations of a country, these UFOs are used to as a mechanism to find out the positions of enemy installations and security positions. There are even reports that Columbia space shuttle was actually shot down by a UFO flying the upper atmosphere of earth for reasons known only to people who controlled the UFO.

From mid 1940s when the first UFOs were sighted till now the UFO interest has come a long way. UFOLOGICAL RESEARCH, this term was coined to describe the collective efforts of those who study UFO reports and associated evidence. People who were much more interested have gone ahead and found out that there are some physical evidence on UFOs being from earth itself and not from far away planets and stars. Most of them been through Radar tracking. A lot of times the radars have shown up some 'pings' in the screen when people outside have reported to be sighted a UFO.

So, let me not deviate too much from what I wanted to say and start narrating all interesting stories which are otherwise available in Youtube as some hundred thousand videos each narrating a different story of spotting an UFO. All I wanted to say is that nothing is what actually it seems to our naked eye when we see it. But it needs interest and more research in finding out what it could be from different know reliable sources and coming to a conclusion which may be only I or you accept but are quite sure on what we believe in. For me the interest started a long time back and when I thought I had seen sufficient Discovery programs on UFO and done enough research on the Internet about the same that I thought I will write this post.

For more interesting links, information and photos on UFO, check these links
UFO news
UFO evidence

and last but not least
Wiki

Regular Posts!!!

Planning to put regular posts here. By jotting down important events in my life right from missing my office Shuttle and going in evergreen and ever-available BMTC to solving some show stopper issue @ work. All small interesting things happening in my life.

And how do you know i have put a new post ..? By checking it daily ..?
No way!!

Dont worry .. i will surely put it as my status msg in Gtalk.
All I need is comments, congratulatory msgs, brickbats from you guys!!

Are you ready ..?

Mozilla Firefox is back on my lappie

Finally Mozilla Firefox is back on my lappie after a one month's haitus.

It all started with my friend coming home and tempting me to install a lot of Add-ons for Firefox ( which arent recommended but are available in mozilla.org). And as u would have guessed by now I fell for the temptation and installed a huge number of add-ons. and Thats it .. I didn't even knew what all they did but went ahead and installed.

And within a Day my Firefox started crashing when I'm doing my work in the Internet. I didn't know whom to blame, either my friend or My OS ( Win XP SP2) or Mozilla itself. I cant blame Firefox as i really cant live without it, so i had to blame my friend, and even scolded him for doing what was completely unnecessary.

Then for a month I was away from my Firefox. Once in a while I used to simple try to install the the already existing "firefox.exe" and try to somehow make it work. All my efforts went in vain. I even tried to download with the help of IE ( the browser I hate to the core, but was the browser for me for about a month) and installing it. But none of efforts produced results.

Then all I did was just curse my friend and lived with IE, upgraded it to IE7 just to get the feel of Mozilla but it simply couldn't match Firefox at all!!.

I left the hope of having a Firefox on my sys till I get a "Laptop refresh @ office". So was just waiting for that time. But came to know that Laptop refresh is going to happen only in Sep 2008. Was feeling very low. All for this Software. You might find it very funny but I know there are lot more people out there feeling the same.

Then today all of a sudden I wanted to try once more. So instead of using the same old "firefox.exe", which I had in my comp, I downloaded the newer version from the Internet - 2.0.0.12. Then before installation I went to the properties of the newly downloaded "firefox.exe" and found that there was a "Unblock" button on the properties dialog box. Happily clicked it as it said "That some program might have blocked this program from running".

Then installed it hoping that this will at least give me the "Mozilla Firefox" window in my screen.
Then after praying for some time I clicked on the "Mozilla Firefox" shortcut on my desktop. and guess wot .......



No



The screen didn't open at all. Then now I cursed Microsoft for coming up with such a bad OS. Then in some hope i tried running it from the programs list, I went to All programs and clicked on Mozilla Firefox and also said "Safe Mode". Then I somehow had opened Task manager and was checking the firefox.exe process and wanted to end it and did it also. Then suddenly I saw a pop-up in the back., hurriedly closed the task manager and saw the pop-up. It said what all to block when opening in safe mode i clicked on "Disable all add-ons" remembering my friend. and said 'Continue' and Viola ... the next moment my fav browser was back on my screen. "Mozilla Firefox" is back on my lappie ..

I was so happy that I readily thought of putting it in my blog as I was thinking for months now as what would be my next post in the otherwise lousy blog.!!!

Kodachadri ... you touch the sky here ...

Kodachadri forms the picturesque background of Mookambika temple in Kollur, Karnataka Situated in Hosanagara taluk of Shimaga district in Karnataka, Kodachadri is one of the tallest peaks in Western ghats range. It is most famous for its Leeches ("umbaLa" in kannada) and curvaceous road to its peak.

I had been to Kodachadri on June 16th 2007 along with my friends. We actually tried scaling the mountain twice, once on 16th when we failed because one of my friends was too tired even to keep 2 steps ahead. And then on 17th, when we easily scaled the peak as went on a jeep!!.

The road to Kodachadri is through Kollur and Nittur. Get down at kollur if you are starting from places like Mangalore or Bangalore. Then take a local bus to a place called “Sampe gatte”. We had a amazing time in getting to pronounce the local places’ names in the local’s language. We actually pronounced “Sampe gate” as “sampige gate”, ‘sampige katte” and one of my great friends even pronounced it as “Somwarpet” which is totoally a different place altogether in Karnataka in Kodagu District, far away from “Sampe gatte”

So as I said we thought of making our base as kollur but because of too much interest in trekking we went to a place called Ramachandrapura a place slightly off from the main road leading from Hassan to Kollur. Ramachandrapura houses a Mutt, which has a temple as well as a “Go-shala” which happens to be a ‘must-visit’ location for all animal lovers and especially for Cattle lovers. We had our usual shower etc there had a nice breakfast there in teh mutt and started for our main destination, ”Kodachadri” not knowing what the peak holds for us within a few hours into the day.

We took a local bus from main road junction and got down in sampe gatte and as usual enquired with the locals about the distance from there to kodachadri base, a tea stall cum resting place called “ka-ka angadi”.
And coming to know that its some 6 kms we started our actual motive behind the trip, “TREK”, which means nothing but strenuous walk through forests and hills. And as I had told before too by the time we reached the base one of my friends was too tired and wasn’t even able to carry his own luggage. So we thought that may be “kodachadri” isn’t our peak and started back a slow dull walk to nittur. Once in a while looking at a peak amidst the clouds which beckoned us, the Kodachadri peak. From nittur we took a bus to kollur and rested there for the night.

Next day morning when we went to the mookambika temple and were about to start for the next unknown lap of out trek trip to murdeshwar, one very nice policeman told that “if you haven’t seen kodachadri, then there is no use coming to kollur”. That really got the nerves back in us, we decided that we have to scale mountain even if it means that we are going away from our main motive of trek and taking a jeep to the peak. We did that as we didn’t want to miss out the peak that waited for us.

The route to kodachadri peak is too treacherous, even for walk, and a 2*4 jeep was supposed to travel in it!! I think the driver of the jeep must have driven a 4*4 in Dubai desert safari for the amount of knowledge he knows to handle the roads!!

After a 30 mins journey we reached the peak, not actually the peak, but a final destination for all jeeps, the adi-shankarachraya temple atop the hill. It was this place that Shankarachraya sat and meditated. I am sure why Shankaracharya choose this place, because you almost touch the sky here. The clouds are your neighbors here!! And may be shankaracharya thought that he can easily speak to the almighty easily from here, I am pretty sure that he was right.


From there we started our walk trek about 3 kms leech infested walk towards the highest peak of the mountain. We had just covered abt 3/4th of the km when we had the actual taste of what a “leech attack” can be, we were literally surrounded by leeches from all directions trying to drink our blood. 2 of my friends ran back to the jeep station, while 3 of us including me thought that we have to cover some more distance before retiring back to the jeep station. We covered another ½ a km when we thought that if we go further we will come back thinner because ‘leeches’ everywhere!! Even falling on us from tree leaves!! Just think when people just don’t even want to see a leech, we were having a taste of leeches falling on us!!. That’s when we decided that it was enough, took a few photos by somehow managing to stay away from leeches even though if it was simply impossible. Then started our way back to jeep station running on the slippery, slant mountain walk path. If we had missed one step, that would have been our last steps of our lives!! But as you must have guessed by now, we didn’t miss step anywhere and came back hale and hearty to write this Blog Post!!!

By the time we reached the jeep station near the temple , it had started to rain heavily and we took shelter in the jeep while all others who had accompanied us went to the temple priest’s home, and had a sumptuous lunch, while we munched on plain bread in jeep.


Then as usual we took some more pictures which I am attaching here and left back to kollur with our leech infested shoes, looking back at the peak which didn’t want to meet us the previous day, but gave us a nice experience of a life time today, thinking that one day, really dont know when, but the day when we will actually trek meaning walk the whole the path leading to the peak, including the leech infested mountain slant walk path. We are still waiting for that day.