Came across this in a chain mail...made me smile...hope it makes you too...

WHY ARE INDIANS SO EASY TO IDENTIFY...

1. Everything you eat is savored in garlic, onion and tomatoes.

2. You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil.

3. You are always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport.

4. You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think it's normal.

5. You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp.

6. You recycle Wedding Gifts, Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts.

7. You name your children in rhythms (example, Sita & Gita, Ram & Shyam...)

8. All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere, close to their real names.

9. You take Indian snacks anywhere it says 'No Food Allowed.'

10. You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house.

11. You load up the family car with as many people as possible.

12. HIGH PRIORITY ***** You use plastic to cover anything new in your house, whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch. *****

13. Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won't let you do certain things because of what the other 'Uncles and Aunties' will think.

14. You buy and display crockery, which is never used, as it is for special occasions, which never happen.

15. You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table.

16.. You use grocery bags to hold garbage.

17. You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible.

18. Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff)

19. You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes).

20. You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker.

21. You fight over who pays the dinner bill.

22. You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. (And they prefer it that way).

23. You don't use measuring cups when cooking.

24. You never learnt how to stand in a queue.

25. You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are traveling by bus, train or plane.

26. If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel proud to spread it at the velocity of more than the speed of light.

27. You only make long distance calls after 11p.m.

28. If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight

29. You call an older person you never met before Uncle or Aunty.

30. When your parents meet strangers and talk for a few minutes, you discover you're talking to a distant cousin.

31. Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls.

32. You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty.

33. Its embarrassing if you're wedding has less than 600 people.

34. All your Tupperware is stained with food color.

35. You have drinking glasses made of steel.

36. You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping.

37. You have really enjoyed reading this blog

I think we stand out because of some of our habits...but I guess most of them are good habits like we like to recycle and reuse stuff...which is good..right! Above all most of the above points also indicate that we are caring people... :-)

Chak De India...:-)

AEUJNGGUF42E

Reality vs Virtuality

Not really sure if the word 'Virtuality' really exists...but I wanted to blab about Reality vs Virtuality...I have been doing a lot of reading on Social Media stuff over the recent past and I realized that today's world is shifting towards Virtuality and we are slowly losing our ground in Reality...

To cite an example, today we have our profiles scattered all over on the web in the form of LinkedIn profiles, Facebook profiles, MySpace profiles, Twitter Tweets, Second Life personalities...gosh...but are we losing our real self while we are busy building our online self...???

People today are more interested in meeting folks in a virtual chat room or restaurant rather than talking to their neighbor who lives next door! Forget talking, I bet they don't even know who their neighbor is...it might be the same person they are corresponding with online but they will never know!

What is it that makes us all cocooned into our rooms fastened to our mouse...creating virtual personalities? What is it that prevents us from going out and meeting our neighbors or friends? What is it that scares us from doing things in reality which we so easily do in the virtual world?

There may be lot of arguments for 'virtuality' where people may say it is a 'safer' option...but really...Safer??? Is it really safe or are we just scared to put our true self out to the world? To what extent do people's online personalities match their real-life persona? Why all this pretense going on?

Today people blog and have online diaries...while in the good old days a diary was a really personal private property! So have people lost the discretion of what is private and what is not? True the virtual world does give the power to the people to choose what they want out there and what not, but is whatever out there really real ...or just an elaborate fragment of somebody's imagination...

There is a lot of different perspectives from which this topic can argued on, but one thing is definitely true...thanks to virtuality...we have lost touch with reality...no arguments about that!

Keyword based reading…what’s that again???

You must have all heard about ‘Keyword based Searching’, ‘Keyword based Testing’ etc. ‘Keyword based Reading’ is a new phrase coined by Moi…This is a technique which will help you to read up on stuff and get specialized in a orderly way and also harnesses the power of the Internet as you all know we are not living in the age where we just had to depend on the neighborhood library for our daily dose of knowledge. You can use this technique if you are currently working on building your skill-set for the job market or even if you just want to build up your knowledge in a particular field. This technique uses the power of the Internet to sharpen your skills. It is something which everybody already does but I am just putting it in a package...and this is something which works for me…atleast… J

So the process goes like this. Say you want to learn more about the field of Testing.

So as a first step do a research on the set of all the keywords related to the field...in this case System Testing, Unit Testing, Black-box testing, Functional Testing, Regression Testing...etc. So once you have gathered a good set to start from proceed to the next step. Keep this set at a high level and do not have words which are very specific to a sub-field within…

The next step would be to take each keyword and research on the Internet. So document each keyword and the relevant links associated to each of them. It is always good to have a mix of the below for each keyword:

- General info sites like wikis

- Sites with people who have blogged/discussed on the topics

- Sites with podcasts, videos on topics like Youtube, ...

- Sites with white papers

- Sites with online books (good to have a subscription with sites like 24 X 7, Safari)

As a third step, if you are parts of some networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook you might also get additional information related to these topics like webinars, discussion topics etc. Go ahead and attend and be part of these. You can also post questions at different forums to get answers from the expert community. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds of the topic that interests you.

Also to top-off read off-beat things related to the topic like jokes, cartoons etc...if there are any available

So once you have gathered this information go ahead and read and gather as much information as you can. It would be good to first read at a high level and then go deeper in whichever topic appeals to you.

Then finally to ensure that you remember all that you have read, blog about the main points on your personal blog and share with all. If it is something related to a tool or programming language go ahead and download the free trial of the tool if one is available or start cooking…ahem..I meant coding!

Enjoy building your skill-set!

Blowing life back into my blog after 2 years... :-) Life can get very busy sometimes... ;-)

How to write an effective Emcee speech - some tips

18 Must-not-forget Guidelines to make an effective Emcee Speech

As I have the had the opportunity of hosting around 7 shows as an MC (Master of Ceremonies) until now which have also given me the good fortune of having some bloopers...and having learnt from them, I just thought it is time I started preaching (yawn!!!)...so here goes...

1. Always include the ‘Name of the Event’ in the opening statements

2. Signify why the name was chosen for the event by outlining the agenda for the event

3. Welcome the ‘Guest of Honor(s)’ for the evening in the order of importance. Make sure that you have the names of the spouses of the dignitaries too so that you can welcome them too. Always make sure that you get an accurate/updated profile of the dignitary.

4. Invite the performers/guests for the evening on the dias for their performances/speech with a good pre-introduction.

5. If humor/casualness is allowed always try to co-relate some of the names/events which you are announcing to any generic things to which the audience can relate to.

6. Always try to make the announcements more interesting.
For e.g. if you are calling a group of people on to the stage, try to use different analogies to relate to them. Say for instance, you can call one group as the Diamonds, another as Pearls and so on

7. It is not always possible to script any funny anecdotes in advance without knowing how the occasion/audience is going to turn out. Hence ‘Presence of mind’ is very very essential for an effective emceeing, so that you can cook up effective anecdotes/ gags at the time of delivery. Spontaneity always adds more color to your emcee speech.

8. Always have a hand the ‘Pulse of the audience’. If the audience is having a bored look on their faces, then try to bring them back by cracking a few funny jokes. But at the same time try to gauge what the impact would be on the audience. It doesn’t make a good impression if a joke falls flat…

9. If you are announcing prizes always try to pause for a second and have pin-drop silence to build up the tempo so that when you announce there is greater enthusiasm in the crowd.

10. Dress appropriately for the occasion. Wear dresses which would enhance would your complexion. Have generous amounts of make-up especially if you are gonna be up on stage for more than an hour.

11. If you have an Oops, don’t panic. Just say a simple ‘Sorry’ and continue. Admit the mistake and there ends the matter.

12. Learn the names of the people whose names you will be calling out.

13. Always end with a good punch-line. Something which will remain in the audience’s memory when they kind about the occasion.

14. If you know that you will be hosting occasionally, it is always a good habit to collect/keep in mind interesting anecdotes/proverbs/one-liners/jokes over a period of time. It is not always possible to start putting all these ‘audience-punchers’ on the day of preparing the presentation since you may have very less time to prepare.

15. Always make sure that you have the right agenda. Always be prepared to make last minute changes to the schedule and modify your speech appropriately.

16. Always try to use synonyms to not make it sound repetitive. For instance, use 'Please give a big hand', 'They deserve another round of applause'...etc.

17. Ensure that you are not hurting the sentiments of any group of folks gathered while cracking jokes.

18. Always SMILE while you are up there…always makes a big impact.