Sales Techniques Guaranteed to Lose the Deal

Just had a look at this amazing Sales video. It tells one in no ambiguous terms that what not to do at sales. Btw such tactics are still being taught at a lot of B-schools for sales. And, i'm afraid to say that i've found that most times this doesn't work at all.

Have a look and see for yourself!

Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs west -- the myths that mystify

Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another. Must See and Hear :)

Twitter has taken me away from blogging

Yes, this is a fact.

I was never a prolific blogger. But, I managed to blog and write atleast 6-7 posts every month. Yeah, it certainly is nothing to brag about. Blogging was my way of expressing my thoughts and feelings to anyone, everyone or no one. I found that it helped satiate my creative cravings. And so I blogged.

Infact, I’ve become so addicted to tweeting now, that I find myself getting less and less time to blog.

But ever since I started tweeting I’m getting away from blogging. I was sitting and trying to find out the reasons behind this. It was then that I realized that all my tweets if clubbed together, will make a small blog. It just hit me then that ‘tweeting’ is nothing but blogging at micro-level.

But, I promise that tweeting or not, I’ll blog J

Sunday nights

This is by far the best possible depiction of how i feel every on Sunday nights, all the while dreading the approaching Monday morning...




Sunny Kris - The Webcomic on Indian Workplaces

Off to work

This cartoon wonderfully explains my emotions when i start for work every morning.



Sunny Kris - The Webcomic on Indian Workplaces

India vs the US: A Visual Comparison

I found this article here: http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/india-vs-the-us-a-visual-comparison/

Loved it and posted the contents here again. (all credits to the original article, hope I’m not doing any copyright violation here) Here it is:

The Story of Johnnie Walker - The Man Who Walked Around The World

The iconic brand that Johnnie Walker (which has several legendary brands to its name such as Black Label, Red label, Green Label, etc.) is has an even more iconic story which i read thanks to Tata Crucible.

Later i found out the same story narrated beautifully in short on youtube.

Here is the same:

How Men and Women think in an argument?

This one is absolutely hilarious. Check out how amazingly different are the ways of thinking of men and women during an argument. The source of these pics is Maxim.

Man's Brain:


Women's brain

Ever heard of Cucumber Abuse

I read an article online and was laughing to my wits end. It is about cucumber abuse and ladies. I never knew that people even fight for something as naïve as cucumber. I wonder how much time people have.

Without dwelling on it further, here is a “Sarah’s secret commercial’ that will give you a hint of what I am talking about.

Problem with Wifi Connections

I heard this story today that says that some Japanese crackers have developed a crack that can break WPA (Wireless Protected Access) encryption on a Wi-Fi network within a minute.

Kobe University's Masakatu Morii and Hiroshima University's Toshihiro Ohigashi together developed a practical attack that exploits a vulnerability in the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol, or TKIP, that underlines WPA. While not providing full details of the attack for security reasons, the new approach is much faster than a previous technique that took between 12 and 15 minutes to expose the network.

The creators of the technique stressed that it won't work with WPA2, the second-generation wireless encryption method that uses the much toucher Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) at its root. AES is frequently used for safeguarding permanent storage, such as on some flash drives and in Apple's FileVault for Mac OS X. Virtually all routers and end devices that support 802.11g and 802.11n also support WPA2.

More details should become public at a Hiroshima conference on September 25th. There are no indications of a likely patch for routers or other Wi-Fi equipment.

Details here:

http://macnn.com/rd/139481==http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/082709-new-attack-cracks-common-wi-fi.html

Is there too much money in the global economy?

I got a forward today morning that had a url which pointed to website, rather a blog. I was surprised to read through half of the stuff there.

This gentleman did not agree that the things for Global economy are looking up. He was of the opinion that this is a temporary phase and the world economy will relapse into recession mode very soon.

The culprit as per him was too much money in the Global economy. He blamed overprinting of money in the last 20 years. He talked about ‘animal spirits’ in stock market as something that may be linked to the global recession.

He was of the view that the world economy will turn for the better when ‘real expenditure’ will return to the market.

I dunno how much was true as I’m a novice into things too economic. Hope that things turn for the better soon. Amen!

Prelude to my Trip to Pune

I always look forward to visiting Pune. I love travelling and infact, Pune is one place I love to visit. There are several reasons for the same. One is the amazing drive on expressway (yeah, I don’t own a vehicle and go by company car, still the feel of the car jutting ahead at over 140 km/hr on 8 laned road with plush greenery on both sides of the road is an amazing experience). The other is that you get to see amazingly picturesque surroundings. One crosses two hill stations – Lonavala and Khandala on way to Pune from Mumbai. There are several others, but then they are too personal for me to add here :P.

Just to get you started, I work for a company where Parsi New Year is a holiday. Today I was celebrating the parsi new year (naah not literally, but the holiday was welcome so the celebrations came automatically).

I decided to welcome the parsi new year by not sleeping and enjoying life. I was joined in this crusade of mine by a friend and we watched movies, talkshows, music videos, soaps, and every other thing possible to avoid sleeping. And yes, we managed to not sleep and were awake for more than 36 hours at the last count. We exulted at our naïve feat, but were nevertheless physically and mentally exhausted due to lack of sleep and rest.

Just as I was planning to hit the sack, I got a call from my boss asking me to go to Pune the next day. And I started my preparation for the trip. Just to bring the readers up to speed, I work as a Business Development Manager at an IT company. As a part of my role, I need to meet up with a lot of people. So as a part of my preparation for this trip, I started calling companies based in Pune requesting for a meeting the other day. Although, I was not successful in getting a meeting, I was atleast able to re-energize myself. In the ensuing enthusiasm I received a distress note from a client and had to go to Saki-Naka area.

I had a really really torrid time there. I got stressed out, to the point of freaking out. I was disgruntled, dissatisfied with life in general and began to wonder if I’m in the wrong place. To add to my misery I was supposed to talk and confirm with my company admins about a vehicle that should come at dawn break next day to take me to Pune for the meeting. Just as I was trying to get in touch with the admins at my company, one of the two cellphones that I carry decided to switch off on account of low battery. This appeared as if somebody wanted to add misery to my already complex situation.

When I took the other phone out of my pocket, I checked for the battery and was relived to see that it was flaunting nice strong looking battery bars. I smiled and dialed a number. But, to my utter surprise instead of Tring Tring or the now commonplace caller tunes, I head a lady saying in my year ‘to subscribe to this service please dial *&*’ . I tried a couple of times more and realized that outgoing was blocked due to some strange reason. I was stuck at an alien location and was not reachable and I on the other hand couldnot contact anyone else L.

It is at times like these when I think that Peter Principle seems so true (anything that can go wrong will go wrong).

I was amazed that so many things that have all decided to wrong at the same time. I was cursing everything that I could think of. And to be honest, today was one such day when I felt very sad and wanted to be with myself, primarily to introspect and to mourn also :P.

But, alas it was not to be. I got a call from a friend saying that he wants me to be watch a movie with his gang (remember:my incoming on one phone was working, but no outgoing-no sms,no outbound calls). I did all that I could; to explain that I am not in the right frame of mind for a movie and that at this time I’d want to introspect and just be with myself. But as some people have it, this friend of mine is very persuasive. He had his way and I agreed to reach to watch the cinema hall.

The time now, was around 8:25 pm and I was standing at Saki Naka area (in Mumbai-western suburbs). I was to reach Vashi (Navi Mumbai-some good 35 plus Kilometers from where I was) to watch this movie that was supposed to start at 9:00pm sharp. It was a hopeless cause from the start, but I said that since my friend was so adamant, I better try my level best and see by what best possible time I can reach the theatre. I in my quest to reach early started to wave frantically to every possible ‘autorickshaw’. But, as faith had it, there were only a handful that were empty and the ones that were empty didn’t want to go to Kurla (a station on Central and Harbor line-Mumbai).

I was in a fix. I did not want to disappoint my friend. But, I nevertheless had no clue as to how soon I’d be able to reach Vashi. Just as I was weighing my options, viz. Taxi, Train, Bus, etc., as if by stroke of luck, I spotted a city bus (BEST- as they are called in Mumbai) going to Kurla and ran to get onboard. It was as full as all government buses and I was barely about able to manage to hold on.

Through, this way and that I reached the cinema hall by 9:40 pm. Just as I entered the hall I saw the song playing ‘Pehli baa mohabbat ki hai’ from the movie Kaminey. So I kept my word.

In hindsight now, I feel that my going for this movie was a good idea. It made me forget what I ought to have forgotten. And I secretly (non-verbally) thanked my dear friend for that.

Life moves on!