Sachy's BLOG - GET INSPIRED.

worth reading

2006-04-27T23:19:00.000+05:30

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/27spec.htm

Stanford University Birth-- true story....

2005-10-05T18:02:00.000+05:30

A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in ahomespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston and walk timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President's outeroffice. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country Hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn't even deserve tobein Cambridge.

"We want to see the president," the man said softly. "He'll be busy all day," the secretary snapped. "We'll wait," the lady replied". For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couplewould Finally become discouraged and go away. They didn't.... and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted. "May be if you see them for a few minutes, they'll leave," she said to him. He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn't have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward thecouple.
The lady told him, "We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed . My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus " , The president wasn't touched.... He was shocked. "Madam," he said, gruffly, "we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery."
"Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don't want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard. "The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dressand Homespun suit, and then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard."
For a moment the lady was silent.
The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don't we just start our own?" Her husband nodded. The president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, travelling to Palo Alto,California where they established the university that bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.

True story - Nice Moral

2005-09-04T16:22:00.000+05:30

Madan Mohan Malviya was trying to build a good university; he had to overcome many difficulties and barriers. He worked with determination to start the university. There was fund crisis, but he did not get disheartened. He went from town to town, met many rich people and traders to collect donations.
He went to the Nizam of Hyderabad to request him for funds.The Nizam was furious, 'How dare you come to me for funds... that too for a Hindu university?' he roared with anger and took off his footwear and flung it at Malviya. Malviya picked up the footwear and left silently. He came directly to the market place and began to auction the footwear. As it was the Nizam's footwear, many came forward to buy it. The price went up.When Nizam heard of this, he became uneasy. He thought it would be an insult if his footwear were to be bought by someone for a pittance.
So he sent one of his attendants with the instruction,'Buy that footwear no matter what the bidding price be! Thus, Malviya managed to sell the Nizam's own footwear to him, for a huge amount. He used that money to build the Benares Hindu University.

Moral: It is not what you have, but it is how you usewhat you have that makes the difference in your life

Message from Subroto Bagchi - COO, Mind Tree - Too GUD.

2005-09-01T18:40:00.000+05:30

Subroto Bagchi - COO, Mind Tree
I got this touching and thought provoking piece today. Thought I should share it with you.

Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore on defining success. July 2nd 2004

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simplelesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light. Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.

nice image

2005-09-01T14:37:00.000+05:30

Vivekananda -- simply awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-08-23T10:44:00.000+05:30

When I Asked God for Strength ,
He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face.
When I Asked God for Brain & Brown ,
  He Gave Me Puzzles in Life to Solve.
When I Asked God for Happiness ,
He Showed Me Some Unhappy People.
When I Asked God for Wealth ,
He Showed Me How to Work Hard.
When I Asked God for Favors ,
He Showed Me Opportunities to Work Hard.
When I Asked God for Peace ,
He Showed Me How to Help Others.

God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted He Gave Me Everything I Needed
- Swami Vivekananda

Mother Teresa- nice

2005-08-19T16:16:00.000+05:30

A group of working adults got together to visit their University lecturer. The lecturer was happy to see them. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. The Lecturer just smiled and went to the kitchen to get an assortment of cups - some porcelain, some in plastic, some in glass, some plain looking and some looked rather expensive and exquisite. The Lecturer offered his former students the cups to get drinks for themselves. When all the students had a cup in hand with water, the Lecturer spoke: "If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal that you only want the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all you wanted was water, not the cup, but we unconsciously went for the better cups." "Just like in life, if Life is Water, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold/maintain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change."

"If we only concentrate on the cup, we won't have time to enjoy/taste the water in it."
-Mother Teresa

Few good ones.....

2005-08-19T14:58:00.000+05:30

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. -George S. Patton

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. -Bill Cosby

A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him. -Elmer G. Letterman.

* If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won't, you most assuredly won't. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad. -Denis Waitley

Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. -Groucho Marx

There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet. -William Frederick Halsy, Jr.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. -Warren Buffett

The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. -Benjamin Mays

Size isn't everything. The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine. -Bill Vaughan

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas A. Edison

A good article on IT myth in India

2005-06-25T19:31:00.000+05:30

Wanted: Out of the box thinking

Ask any well-informed person on the street about her impressions of the software industry and chances are she would tell you that we are a world leader in software services; the industry is doing extremely well; and if all our other industries performed as well, we would be one of the most developed countries by now. Face in the Mirror The Indian software industry is one of those feel-good stories that make most Indian hearts swell with pride. It is a story that has been told umpteen times. In 2002-03 the size of the Indian software and services industry totalled $12.4 billion, with exports accounting for $9.6 billion and the domestic sector $2.8 billion. The corresponding figure for 2003-04 was $15.9 billion, with exports amounting to $12.5 billion and domestic sales $3.4 billion. In 2004-05, the figures are estimated to climb to an industry size of $20.5 billion, with exports of $16.3 billionand domestic sales of $4.2 billion. Three Indian companies—TCS, Infosys and Wipro—have already crossed the billion dollar revenue mark, and several others like Satyam and HCL are waiting in the wings. They are also huge in terms of headcount: TCS (37000 approx), Wipro (37000 approx) and Infosys (37000 approx), and each day you hear not only of them but even smaller companies hiring by the thousands. But as someone once commented "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." So consider these statistics too. The revenue of Microsoft was $32 billion in 2003, and $36.8 billion in 2004. So that makes the entire Indian software and services industry less than half the size of just one global giant. Currently India's share of the world's software and services market is only 3.5%. We do not have any consumer or desktop software to our name. Big Question In a country so short of global success stories, whatever has been achieved by the software industry is remarkable. But the reality is that we haven't done anything earth-shattering. Let me explain. Save for IBM, there are not many well-known software companies from the pre-1950s still around; EDS was founded in 1962, but most of the marquee names in the global software industry came up in the 70s and early 80s: SAP in 1972, Microsoft in 1975, Oracle in 1977, and both Sun and Adobe in 1982. The Indian poster boys too came up in the same period. TCS was founded in 1968, Patni in 1978, Wipro IT in 1981 and Infosys in 1982. Today SAP, Oracle and Sun are all over $ 10 billion companies while TCS, Wipro Technologies and Infosys are $1 billion companies. Why such asymmetrical growth? After all, most of these Indian companies make their money from selling to the world, and therefore are in an equally good position to compete with their global corporate peers dollar-for-dollar. My hypothesis is that we as a nation are immensely adverse to risk-taking, and prefer the easy way out wherever possible. And this holds true as much for the average individual as for the big software companies. Why take risks, why innovate when there is so much easy (risk-free) money to be made?Just think: How many Indian parents would gladly accept their child not choosing a mainstream career like medicine, engineering or chartered accountancy, in favour of, say, sports or music? Even among the mainstream careers, how many engineers would say that they prefer the dust and grease of a shop-floor or construction site to the air-conditioned ambience of an office job? All through the 1970s and 80s, Indian software companies made their money by body-shopping. Their value proposition was simple: wage arbitration. If your American programmers charge $X to do a piece of work, our programmers can do the same at the same location for one-fourth or even less. With the coming of the internet and better network connectivity, the logical progression from onsite body-shopping was offshoring. If our programmers can do the same piece of work at your American location for one-fourth the price of your American programmers, let us do the same from India and we can lower costs to one-tenth. This continues to be the reigning mantra of the BPO industry. As long as a couple of variables are in place—our people have a certain basic level of knowledge, we have mastered certain processes for smooth delivery, and our wage levels are lower—this value proposition will work. Our software giants will go from the billion dollar mark to two billion to five billion to even 50 billion. And we will continue to uncork the bubbly. But the lingering doubt is: can we do better?Good, But Not Good Enough I would argue that Indian software industry is more a story of the lack of imagination, myopic vision, missed opportunities and plain lethargy. Why is it that none of the big Indian companies have been able to come up with a database product? In 1970 an IBM researcher Dr EF Codd published the paper titled A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. Based on this article, Larry Ellison and his associates founded a database product company that later took the name Oracle. Note that Oracle and Patni are near contemporaries. In the early 1990s, Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, released a new operating system called Linux. It was a little rough-edged in the sense that it did not come with the installation wizards of commercial OS like Windows, but then it was free for anyone to download and do whatever he or she liked. Several companies like Red Hat, Mandrake, Caldera, etc. did precisely that: they downloaded the software, added some tools so that non-techie people can install it easily on computers, wrote out help guides, and marketed it to the world. These days one regularly reads stories of how Linux is gaining ground and is poised to become a significant player in OS segment in the future. Why did none of our big guys think it worthwhile to create our own 'flavour' of Linux? Take another example—this time not of corporations but individuals—that demonstrates that we Indians have a serious lack of pluck. There is on the web a site called Source Forge that hosts open-source software projects. Software engineers can ut up ideas, invite people with specific skill-sets to join them, and start the software development work. Why do software programmers undertake such work? For most people it is out of a spirit of altruism, but there is an equal driving force in the challenge of creating something that can match the work of a commercial enterprise. It's like: if Microsoft can do it, so can I. There are about one lakh projects hosted on Source Forge and more than a million programmers work on them but there's very little participation by Indian programmers. Many years ago the founder of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs, while luring Pepsi veteran John Sculley famously asked: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?" The Indian software industry needs to ask the same question: do we want to keep making money, or do we want to change the world?

byProdyut Bora

The author is CEO,Brahmaputra Infotech

Message from Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computer)

2005-06-24T14:55:00.000+05:30

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much

Best One

2005-05-25T15:34:00.000+05:30

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of CANCER. From worldover, he received letters from his fans,one of which conveyed : "Why does GOD have to select you for such a baddisease"? To this Arthur Ashe replied:The world over -5 crore children start playing tennis,50 lakh learn to play tennis,5 lakh learn professional tennis,50,000 come to the circuit,5000 reach the grand slam,50 reach Wimbeldon,4 to semi final,2 to the finals,When I was holding a cup I never asked GOD "Why me?". And today in pain Ishould not be asking GOD "Why me?"Happiness keeps u Sweet,Trials keep u Strong,Sorrow keeps u Human ,Failure Keeps u Humble,Success keeps u Glowing,But only God Keeps u Going.

Does God Exist?

2005-05-25T15:30:00.000+05:30

This is one of the best explanations of why God allows pain and suffering that I have seen. It's an explanation other people will understand. A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists." "Why do you say that?" asked the customer. "Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine a loving a God who would allow all of these things." The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist." "How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!" "No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside." "Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens is, people do not come to me." "Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

BALL THEORY OF LIFE...

2005-05-25T15:26:00.000+05:30

BALL THEORY OF LIFE....Speech by Bryan Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola).

There are 4 GLASS BALLS & 1 RUBBER BALL. 4 Glass Balls represent FAMILY, FRIENDS, HEALTH, SPIRIT 1 RUBBER BALL represents JOB . In life we keep on juggling these balls , and the lifecontinues. A small mistake and any ofthese balls might fall. If the rubber ball falls it wouldbounce back. No matter in what time it would bounce back , 1 month ... 3 months... 6 months, perhaps suddenly but it would definitely bounce back. But the Glass Ball, Very delicate, once it falls, can never be brought to its original shape again.

"WE EARN TO LIVE ......NOT LIVE TO EARN "!!!!

Nice One

2005-05-25T14:33:00.000+05:30

A very good message which we need to remember through out our life....

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a Rs. 500/- Note. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this 500 note?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this note to one of you but first let me do this.". He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up. He then asked, "Who still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the air. "Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. "Now who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air. "My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth Rs. 500/-.Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special - Don't ever forget it! Never let yesterday's disappointments overshadow tomorrow's dreams"......

Oracle CEO Speech

2005-05-02T12:07:00.000+05:30

Oracle CEO speech to Yale undergrads REUTERS:

"Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude. In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers."You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not."Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college dropout, and you are not."Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not."And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not."Hmm... you're very upset. That's understandable. So let me stroke your egos for a moment by pointing out, quite sincerely, that your diplomas were not attained in vain. Most of you, I imagine, have spent four to five years here, and in many ways what you've learned and endured will serve you well in the years ahead. You've established good work habits. You've established a network of people that will help you down the road. And you've established what will be lifelong relationships with the word "therapy." All that of is good. For in truth, you will need that network."You will need those strong work habits. You will need that therapy. You will need them because you didn't drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to #10 or # 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer."Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, "Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all ? Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar boards on your heads. "Hmm... you're really very upset. That's understandable. So perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. Not for you, Class of '00. You are a write-off, so I'll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000 a year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago."Instead, I want to give hope to any underclassmen here today. I say to you, and I can't stress this enough: leave. Pack your things and your ideas and don't come back. Drop out. Start up. For I can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you down just as surely as these security guards dragging me off this stage are keeping me dow...
The Oracle CEO was ushered off stage.
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GOOD One

2005-04-22T15:50:00.000+05:30

Must Read

This speech was delivered during the commencement exercises of the University of Philippines graduating class of 2003 by Mr. Butch Jimenez, the youngest commencement speaker in the university's history. He once dreamed of doing so, and it came true !!! Students wished they had a pencil or paper to jot down notes during the speech; some even wished they have a tape recorder. Some members of the faculty found his speech practical, refreshing and funny. Butch Jimenez, head of PLDT's media and strategic communications department, delivered this speech at the UP Diliman Class 2003 commencement exercises. What's better than ..... By Butch Jimenez As college students, you're just about to set sail into the real world. As you prepare for the battleground of life, you'll hear many speeches, read tons of books and get miles of advise telling you to work hard, dream big, go out and do something for yourself, and have a vision. Not bad advise, really. In fact, following these nuggets of truth may just bring you to the top. But as I've lived my life over the years, I have come to realise that it is great to dream big, have a vision, make a name, and work hard. But guess what : There's something better than that - So my message today simply asks the question, what's better than ...? What's better than being negative ? Let's start off with something really simple. What's better than a long speech ? No doubt, a short one. So, you guys are in luck because I intend to keep this short. Now, let me take you through a very simple math exam. I'll rattle off a couple of equations, and you tell me what you observe about them. Be mindful of the instruction. You are to tell me what you observe about the equations. Here it goes : 3+4=7, 9+2=11, 8+4=13 and 6+6=12. Tell me, what do you observe ? Every time I conduct the test, more than 90 percent of the participants immediately say, 8+4 is NOT 13, it's 12 That's true an they are correct. But they could have also observed that the three other equations were right. That 3+4 is 7, that 9+2 is 11, and that 6+6 is 12 What's my point ? Many people immediately focus on the negative instead of the positive. Most of us focus on what's wrong with other people more than what's right about them. Examine those four equations. Three were right an only one was wrong. But what is the knee-jerk observation ? The wrong equation. If 10 people you didn't know were to walk through that door, most of you would describe those people by what's negative about them. He's fat. He's balding. Oh, the short one. Oh, the skinny girl. etc. Get the point ? It's always he negative we focus on and not the positive. You'll definitely experience this in the Corporate World. You do a hundred good things and one mistake-guess what? Chances are, your attention will be called on that one mistake.. So what's better than focusing on the negative ? Believe me, it focusing on the positive. And if this world could learn to focus on the positive more than the negative, it would be a much nicer place to live in. What's better than working hard ? We have always been told to work hard. Our parents say that, our teachers say that, and our principal say that. But there's something better than merely working hard. It's working SMART. It's taking time to understand the situation, and coming out with an effective and efficient solution to get more done with less time and effort. As the Japanese say, "There's always a better way." One of the most memorable case studies I came across with as I studied Japanese management at Sophia University in Tokyo was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetic companies. The company received a complaint that a customer had bought a box of soap that was empty. It immediately isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management tasked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two to ensure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast. But a rank-and-file employee that was posed the same problem came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electrical fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, an as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line. Clearly, the engineers worked hard, but the rank-and-file employee worked smart. So what's better than merely working hard? It's working smart. Having said that, it is still important to work hard. If you could combine both working hard an working smart, you would possess a major factor toward success. What's better than dreaming big ? I will bet my next month's salary that many have encouraged you to dream big. Maybe even to reach for the stars and aim high. I sure heard that about a million times right before I graduated from this university. So I did. I did dream big. I did aim high. I did reach for the stars. No doubt, it works. In fact, the saying is true "If you aim for nothing, that's exactly what you'll hit : nothing." But there's something better than dreaming big. Believe me, I got shocked myself. And I learned it from the biggest dreamer of all time Walt Disney. When it comes to dreaming big. Walt is the man. No bigger dreams were fulfilled than his. Every leadership book describes him as the ultimate dreamer. In fact, the principle of dreaming and achieving is the core message of the Disney hit son, "When You Wish Upon a Star". "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are; anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme. When you wish upon a star, as dreamers do, " as Jiminy Cricket sang. But is that what he preached in Disney company? Dream? Imagineering...Well, not exactly. Kinda , but not quite. The problem with dreaming is if that's all you do, you'll really get nowhere. Infact, you may just fall asleep and never wake up. The secret to Disney's success is not just dreaming, it's IMAGINEERING. You won't find this word in a dictionary. It's purely a Disney word. Those who engage in imagineering are called imaginers. The word combines the words "imagination" and "engineering". In the book " Imagineers," Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, claims that "imaginers turn impossible dreams into real magic." Walt Disney explained there is really no secret to this approach. They just keep moving forward-opening new doors and doing new things, because they are curious. And it is this curiosity that leads them down new paths. They always dream, explore and experiment. In short, imagineering is the blending of creative imagination and technical know-how. Eiser expouns on this thought by saying that "Not only re imaginers curious, they are courageous, outrageous, and this creativity is contagious." The big difference with imaginers is that they dream an then they DO ! So don't just be a dreamer, be an imagineer. What's better than vision ? You must have all been given a lecture at one time or another about the importance of having a vision. Even leadership expert John Maxwell says that an indispensable quality of a leader is to have a vision. It is also very clear that Without vision, people perish." So no doubt about it, having a vision is important to success. But surprise ! There's something more potent than a vision. It's a CAUSE. If all you're doing is trying to reach your vision an you're pitted against someone fighting for a cause, chances are you'll lose. The Vietnam War is a classic example. Literally with sticks and stones, the Viet Cong beat the heavily armed US Army to surrender, primarily because the US has a vision to win the war, but the Vietnamese were fighting for a cause. In the realm of business, many leaders have visions of making their company No. 1, or grabbing market share, or forever increasing profits. Nothing really wrong with that vison, but take the example of Sony founder Akio Morita. He did not just have a vision to build the biggest electronics company in the world. In his biography, " Made in Japan" he reveals that the real reason he set up Sony was to help rebuild his country, which had just been bettered by war. He had a cause he was fighting for. His vision to be an electronics giant was secondary. What's the difference between a vision and a cause? Here's what sets them apart. · No one is wiling to die for a vision. People will die for a cause. · You possess a vision. A cause possesses you. · A vision lies in your hands. A cause lies in your heart. · A vision involves sacrifice. A cause involves the ultimate sacrifice. Just a word of caution. You must have the right vision, and you must be fighting for the right cause. In the end, right will always win out. It may take time, and it may take long. But if you have the right vision and are fighting for the right cause, you will prevail. If not, no matter how sincere you are, if you are not fighting for what is right, you will ultimately fail. It is said : "To whom much is given, much is required." Having been given the opportunity to study in UP, no doubt, much has been given to you in terms of an excellent education. Don't forget that in return, much is now required of you to use that education not just for yourself, but for others. And as you move up and start reaching the pinnacle of success, even more will be required of you to look at the welfare of others, of society and of the country.

A final review :
· What's better than focusing on the negative ?
Focus on the positive
· What's better than working hard ?
Its working smart
· What's better than doing something for yourself ?
Doing something for your country
· What's better than a vision ?
A cause
· What's better than a long speech ?
Definitely, a short one
"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."