Ruma 的个人资料A Brand New Day照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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6月26日 InflationEven before the OPEC ( Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) had driven the price of oil to over $130 per barrel, the inflationary trends in the markets were being felt world wide. Now, it is hitting at the pockets of people all around the globe. Go to any super market and tally your bill and spending with what it was a few months back, and you’ll find that it has risen by at least Rs. 200-300 ( approx. $5-6). Circumstances today will force you to become cautious in spending, even if you aren’t exactly a money conscious person. We hear of home loans, and other bank loans becoming dearer, prices of luxury commodities like cars and electronic items rising, and with it the price of food and essentials. The present Indian government, led by Dr. Manmohan Singh, is balanced precariously in power as it has been unable to tackle inflation. The question is, can another government succeed in reversing the trend? Several Indian corporations are adopting various cost cutting measures. Innovative initiatives, like deferring hiring decisions, minimizing travel costs of executives by opting for video conferencing, experimenting with work from home, and cutting down on entertainment allowances. Since the rise in prices of air tickets, due to aviation fuel costing more, business executives will have to cut back on travel and this will adversely affect the airline industry. On the individual level, we will have to undertake several measures to cut back costs. For example, saving on electricity, car-pooling when possible, and, maybe weighing options of using other brands/qualities of daily necessities like cooking oil and cereal, that cost marginally less than their superior counter parts. Let us hope that the current inflationary trend is a speculative bubble which will burst soon…but until that happens, we will have to be prudent in our money spending habits. ********************* Thought for Today.
One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. All work takes place in, and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource. - Peter F Drucker.
6月13日 Unsolved Murder Mysteries. Through the months of May-June '08, all that the papers and news channels seem to have on offer are murder mysteries. First, the local police bungles up the case grossly, and then the help of the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) is sought, much after the actual occurence of the case. Naturally, the CBI, inspite of it's advanced methods of investigation, is up against a wall when it comes to getting clues, because by then much of the evidence has been wiped away, both physically and from memory. The survivors of the victims are left in the lurch, often ending up as prime suspects themselves, and being subjected to never-ending scrutiny, questioning, harrassment, and, often, prolonged detention.
1. The case of Arushi Talwar, a young school girl aged 14, found dead in her bedroom in the early hours of the morning,is a case in point. No one, not even her parents seem to know how and why this took place. Apparently, they had all had dinner together and packed up for the night. The parents' room and their daughter's room were adjacent to each other, yet no one heard any untoward noise through the night, although the house is moderately sized at approx. 2000 sq.ft.
However. someone who chanced to go to the locked terrace stumbled upon the decomposed body of the domestic servant, one Hemraj, who, apparently had been killed hours before Aarushi....and his body had been transported up by an unknown person. Till today, Aarushi's hapless father remains prime suspect, detained by court; the mother still running after evidences along with the investigating agencies. 2. A model cum aspiring starlet, Maria Susairaj, along with the help of her Navy Officer boyfriend, Jerome Mathew, jointly murder one Neeraj Grover, a young creative director of a tele-serial. They didn't stop at that: they hacked his body in 300 pieces and tried disposing of it in a nearby forest land by setting it on fire. Of course, this didn't escape the attention of the Law. The motive for the crime: a very promised role in a tele-serial by Grover was not yet forthcoming for Monica.
Status of the case: Although both have confessed to their crime, the defense for Monica is that there is no evidence to get her behind bars.
3. A domestic servant poisons an entire family, ransacks the house, and is absconding. The lady of the house, succumbed to the poison and is now dead. The accused is still absconding and very much at large.
4. An elderly lady is found gagged and dead in the bathroom of her large house, while the family was away at the club. The house has been looted but the culprit has vanished into thin air.
5. A beautiful, married, airhostess, Sucheta, is found hanging in the Ramada Inn PalmGrove hotel. She was last seen in the company of a co-pilot of a domestic carrier in the same hotel (Arjun Menon). Hours after the pilot left the hotel, the hotel staff noticed the suicide (?) committed by the girl.
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All the above cases remind us that we no longer live in a safe world, and, sadly, cannot trust anyone. Yesterday I helped an elderly gentleman with his car, but, since I am subjected to a slew of negative news by the media, started thinking later, whether I had taken any risk in doing so. The times we live in have made us so negative....I want all this negativity to end NOW. I don't want to live in a world full of suspicion, doubt, hatred and jealousy. Yes, the world sorely needs a lot of positivity. How can this be achieved? 6月6日 A Genius with a Heart of GoldMeet Mr. Anand Kumar, a demure, soft spoken and humble young man, whose achievements belie his appearance. Felicitated and hailed by industrialist Mukesh Ambani as a Real Hero, Anand today is responsible for uplifting the lives of several impoverished children, who had no way out to tap their intellectual genius. He lives in the state of Bihar...where the struggle for survival throws up heart rending success stories. *********************** Anand's father, a government employee at the post office, died suddenly while trying to gather resources to send his academically talented son to Cambridge for higher studies. Left on their own, Anand's mother sold home made food products (papad) to eke out a living. This was ironical, given the fact that Anand's research paper on Numbers Theory was published in Mathematical Gazette & Mathematical Spectrum, in UK in 1992. In order to help out his mother, Anand started taking maths tuitions. His coaching centre, the Ramanujan School of Maths (RSM) started out with only two students, which later swelled to 1000 in the year 2000. By now, Anand was earning reasonably well from his classes, but his eyes opened when one day, when a poor student declared that he'd be able to pay his fees only when his father's potato crop was ready to be sold. The incident motivated Anand enough to start a special class for poor but academically bright children who would be coached free of charge, to crack the country's toughest engineering entrance examination- the IIT-JEE (Indian Institute of Technology- Joint Entrance Examination). He named the group of select students as the 'Super-30'. There has been no looking back for Anand Kumar since then. As if God himself had come down to bless him, the National Geographic Channel broadcast a tele-documentary on the Super-30 last year. The NHK Channel in Japan too broadcast a program on this exemplary group of students run by a noble teacher. This year, newspapers are full of the
amazing success story of Anand's Super-30. All 30 students have cleared the
country's toughest engineering entrance examination. The point to be noted is
that these children come from families who couldn't afford two proper meals a
day, leave alone the whopping fees that coaching institutes impose. 6月1日 Ever suffered from a Crick in the Neck?
Ever suffered from a crick in the neck? |
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