A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

 
It’s the season to be merry, it’s a season full of joy, it’s the season when the heart grows happy, though it knows not really why! :) (ahem, I’m in a ditty mood)

It’s that time of the year again and like every time, it brings a smile to me. I happened to bump into the Capricorn characteristics (by the way, I am keenly interested in astrology!) on a page on MSN, and one of the things it said about a Capri was “A Capricorn loves nothing more than holidays such as Christmas that bring people together with a variety of activities". I would have to admit it’s true.

Talking about fun activities—me and my colleagues planned a Secret Santa gift exchange for Christmas. I love playing Secret Santa; for one, I love giving and receiving gifts, and two, I love solving mysteries! Even so, I never expected it to be as enjoyable and exciting as it turned out to be. The very day we drew names, there was much guessing about who is whose Secret Santa. The next day, I got a mail from my Secret Santa (from an email ID called Secret Santa!) giving me a clue about his/her identity. My excitement knew no bounds! I was also told I would be given a clue every day, till the day of the official gift exchange (which was the 21st). When I told the others in office, there was more excitement, and from then on till five days later on 21st, the first thing we did in office was to read my mail and try to decipher who my Secret Santa could be based on the latest clue. The grand finale on 21st turned out a huge surprise and a really nice one at that!

I guess all of us like the idea of a Santa out there, who brings us gifts and makes us happy. I guess, in a way, God is also something like a Santa figure—one who we can pray to, and who will make our wishes come true. The other day someone was saying, that as kids, they would hang stockings at night and find them full of gifts in the morning—they grew up to realize it was their parents playing Santa. But what are parents if not Santas? (though they’re not always jolly like the good old man!). hmm…there have been many Santas in my life too in that sense…and am feeling like thanking all of them…for bringing the gift of friendship, good cheer, happiness, warmth, and all those goodies that are far more precious than the material ones…into my life.

Wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a wonderfully bright New Year! :)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:33 pm 0 comments

 
The CD-DVD drive of my laptop conked off recently! If one knows me a little, one would know that this is a calamity of no small proportions for me. I palpitate to think of what may be wrong, why did it go wrong, who can set it right, and will it ever be right—I guess it's called fear of the unknown :(

My affinity with electronic items is extremely weak, to say the least. My friends however say that I only pretend, because I have some of the most "hi-fi" electronic gadgets (they say). I would only so far agree that when I "do" go for some electronic thingie (as with anything for that matter), I do buy the best there is in the budget I have. It's nothing to do with hi-fi-ness or anything—because, frankly, I use only the most obvious features—but more to do with ensuring am buying good quality (like I said, if it conks off or something, I shall suffer mini heart attacks till it's back on its feet).

I am waiting for my poor dear laptop to come back from the Service Centre now...

Been reading Frueud's Psychoanalysis and Feynman's Surely, You're Joking. Interesting, both.

I read about a phenomenon in Psychoanalysis that I had never delved into before. It's the "slip of the tongue". What it says is that a slip of the tongue is in most cases not a meaningless act; it has meaning and indicates a parallel thought process. I found this intriguing, though when I think about it, and even when I analyse the slips of tongue I make, I find it difficult to be convinced that "most" of these cases are meaningful. Most times, I can detect no connection or thread or meaning or cross intention.

I can think of one kind of slip that I usually make or stop myself from making at the very nth minute. It is that sometimes when I am going to mail a person or ping a person, I may accidentally (slip!) write the name of the person I'm right then thinking of, in the To field, instead of the name of the person I am intending to write to. Here the conclusion is that while the conscious mind intended to write to person A, the subconscious mind was ruminating about something related to person B, and I type the name of person B which is contrary to my conscious intention.

Hmm...It does make me wonder though, if certain slips one makes, and which one absolutely cannot relate to consciously as one's subconscious thought, can actually be residing in one's subconscious? A bit scary to think of...what if someone said kissed instead of missed—does that mean they were thinking of kissing someone while talking of missing the bus? (all unbeknown to themselves!)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:00 pm 0 comments

 
A dear friend, in the course of correspondence, happened to mention to me an oft-repeated quote "absence breeds fondness". To which I agreed, but couldn’t help countering with another equally oft-repeated quote "out of sight, out of mind".

Not too long ago I had comes across two lines that I absolutely loved, and that sum up how I feel about this matter on the whole. Here goes --

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire,
It extinguishes the small and enkindles the great."

If I were asked to devise a test of friendship or love, I would say it would have to be "separation" (albeit a temporary one). As they say, if he comes back, he is yours. If he doesn’t, he never was! :)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:46 pm 0 comments

 
Nothing much been happening worth the writing.

I have never been comfortable sharing private thoughts/reflections on my blog, but it was far easier to do when I started out...these days I find myself thinking far too much. Maybe the fact that more and more people know about my blog makes me more conscious; it defeats the purpose of the blog to some extent.

I have been reading many views/opinions/articles for quite some time now on the kind of junk proliferating in the name of blogs and who would want to read such junk anyway, etc. Definitely makes one think. As to what I think—blogs are meant to be a personal space, a diary—what people write in their diaries, junk or otherwise, should not be a point open to judgement. The next question, quite logical, is why do people take to writing these diaries in the online medium? You write trash in your diary; nobody reads it but you. Why would you subject this trash to the world's eyes, if not to find a doting audience? And if you expect to find an audience, doesn't it suggest that the worth of what you write is far more than "trash" in your eyes? There's the catch. One man's trash may be another man's truffle? (I just made that up!). Coming to my point, at least the way I personally feel about it—one looks forward to discovering like-minded people, like-feeling people, people with whom one can relate to, with whom one strikes a common chord—and not an audience.

I have myself come across blogs that made me wonder about their existence (and sometimes the author's). Forget about relating, I could tear my hair at the juvenility of it all. But, who am I to complain or cry "crap"? As Voltaire said, "I do not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it".

The funny thing is: blogs are not obliged to represent facts or live up to the expectations of their readership. They can be themselves, silly, boring, titillating, or totally false. Compare them with today’s mainstream media—which carries a heavy responsibility and which the public looks up to for the “truth”—and it appears there’s not much difference anyway!
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:24 pm 0 comments

 
Ranjani has tagged me to share "8 things about myself". I have once before done a tag on five of my topmost quirks... so maybe I'll try to make this non-quirky? :)

hmm...here goes...

1. I am keenly interested in astrology. Not so much forecasts or predictions, but personality characteristics. The star sign is one of the first few things I tend to ask about a person!

2. I am geographically-challenged (if there is such a word!). I have a very good memory in general, but somehow its worse than pathetic when it comes to remembering places. I have always joked that I could get lost in my own backyard :(

3. I am more fond of old people than I am of kids! When I was a kid, my grandmother used to call me "vodlimai" which means "grandmother" (in Konkani). I had this habit of sitting among all the old ladies and listening to their gossip!

4. That brings me to this point -- I love talking and conversing and debating and gossiping and... people who don't know me well enough, would never suspect it, because I come across as a person of few words! (the only exception to this rule, I can't make small talk -- not for the life of me!)

5. I have this thing for completing things; I hate leaving something half-finished, even if it's an activity I don't particularly like. I also prefer to finish it myself; don't let others.

6. I have a special affinity for the number 7; I thought it was just my thought, but it's uncanny how the number keeps popping up. For example, the numerical values of my name add up to the number 7!

7. I always find it difficult to close a phone call; I somehow feel it would appear rude. I most often wait for the other party to talk of hanging up.

8. I am very bad at aiming at things (or at least, I think so). I am bad at games where you've got to aim -- table tennis or even carrom! I am also bad at multi-tasking with my limbs -- or maybe it's just my excuse for not being confident enough to drive :(
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:56 pm 0 comments

 
I’m into a new mode of cooking these days — baking! All thanks to the new “convection” microwave we’ve got.

Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to bake stuff at home, and now that we’ve got the oven, I’m letting my fantasies loose, so to speak! :)

Last weekend I made Nakhatai and Pizza! Both turned out great, except that the Nankhatais were slightly crumbly in texture. I’ve decided that I added less flour than I should, so next time it should be pretty perfect. Then yesterday, I made this thing called Banana Bread (check out all the pictures here!). I had never had this delicacy before, but this is the thing: if, when I read a recipe, my mind conjures up a delicious image before me, I am more or less sure the recipe is good, and if it doesn’t manage to conjure this image, then I feel there’s something either missing or wrong with the recipe. Also, I tend to browse through many recipes of the same dish before fixing on one — on one hand I may get confused because it becomes more difficult to decide which is better, but on the other I am sure I haven’t fixed on one which is way off the mark.

My mom has somehow decided to make me the microwave cook in the house (just another of her ways to get me cooking more often). The microwave came with a free cookery class, which of course I was made to attend. The lady who conducted the class has been doing it for 10 years apparently; a Sindhi lady with a heavy school teachery air. One fellow attendee started asking a question when the pizza base with cheese and all toppled from our Sindhi lady’s hands and fell smack face down the floor. After that episode, she barked on anyone bothering to interrupt. I had personally many questions to ask, for one, why did my biscuits turn out crumbly? But frankly, I wasn’t brave enough. Thought I’d wait after class, when any insults would be dealt in private.

I am looking forward to trying out quite a few new things; next in line is grilled chicken! I have never made any non-veg except prawns before, that too, because the prawns came all pre-packaged, and all one had to do was dip them into the gravy. Chicken is a different ballgame, am sure, but am guessing I need to start now if am ever going to start :(
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:16 am 0 comments

 
We’re moving into a new house next week. We have lived in this house ever since I was two — when my parents relocated to Bombay from Mangalore.

I’m going to miss this house very much…needn’t say…

The new house is pretty close to this one; just a few blocks away in fact. Probably this is why I am not feeling as emotional as otherwise I would. Though the house itself will be different, the surroundings, the familiar sights, the shops, lanes (everything amidst which we have grown up) will be around (It may not be a big surprise that I had a big hand in selecting this house!)

As of now, we’re waiting for the renovation in the new house to get completed. Our current house is in a mess because some of the movable things have been dismantled and taken to the new house. The computer (and accessories) are all laid out on the floor (hence been avoiding using it).

This is probably one of the biggest changes in my life so far — I will have to get used to calling a different house ‘home’…

I must say I’m excited too…looking forward to all the trials and travails of packing and moving and settling …promises to be both chaotic and fun! :)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:06 pm 0 comments

 
Just read this book—What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack.

The book provides practical or “street-smart” techniques for effective marketing and selling. I am personally not a marketing oriented person, or at least the sense in which we understand marketing, which is “pushing”. I don’t think I can push a hat to a cowboy! Jokes apart, I could attempt to market only that idea or concept which I “personally” believed in strongly, but a marketing person I guess would have the knack to sell something he probably does not even have a clue about!

There’s this chapter in the book (shared below) that relates with a subject close to my heart. I believe that if more importance is given to “selling a thing” (Profit) instead of to the “thing itself” (Quality), we stand to gain neither. Imagine you were given a wonderfully packaged gift on your birthday; somebody has gone out of his way to see that it is packaged beautifully; you will no doubt be charmed to see it—but if you were to open it and find nothing inside or nothing that came anywhere close to what you were made to expect by the outward package—you’re going to be disappointed. In fact, much more than if the packaging had been ordinary.


Beating Dead Horsemeat

A dog food company was holding its annual sales convention. During the course of the convention the president of the company listened patiently as his advertising director presented a hot new campaign, his marketing director introduced a point-of-sale scheme that would “revolutionize the industry,” and his sales director extolled the virtues of “the best damn sales force in the business.” Finally it came time for the president to take the podium and make his closing remarks.

“Over the past few days,” he began, “we’ve heard from all our division heads and of their wonderful plans for the coming year. Now, as we draw to a close, I have only one question. If we have the best advertising, the best marketing, the best sales force, how come we sell less goddamn dog food than anyone in the business?”

Absolute silence filled the convention hall. Finally, after what seemed like forever, a small voice answered from the back of the room: “Because the dogs hate it.”

Sometimes an idea, product, a concept is just plain bad. No matter how you flog it, no matter how you restate it, it simply won’t work. The only solution is to walk away, to cut your losses.

Yet a lot of people try just the opposite. The more the evidence mounts that an idea may not be salable, a concept may not be workable, a product may not be desirable, the more determined they become, the more time they spend, trying to prove otherwise.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 12:54 pm 0 comments

 

I have entered the Market. Not the shopping market—that I had entered when I was two, and have been a major force in keeping it up and running ever since. I mean THE Market.

I have always been a savings-oriented person; even though I love splurging on clothes and other things of taste, somewhere at the back of my mind, a small niggling voice always cautions me to ‘save’. It is probably an innate result of being brought up in a middle-class family.

The funny thing is that though I have been conscious about saving, I have thought very little about what are the best ways to save in. I have more-or-less stuck to conventional routes that my father, and probably his father before him, stuck to. The money would either lie in the savings account or the fixed deposit account (when it became a decent enough sum to put there). I guess I thought of the bank as a place to accumulate my savings as opposed to them lying around in the house. I don’t remember ever thinking much about ‘interest rates’ or ‘returns’ or such like.

When I started working, or I should say when I first had to deal with the monster called Taxes, I was faced with a unique problem in that I was told I would have to save a certain sum (put it aside in certain things) not because I wanted to save, but because I would rather not give it away. It made sense to me at that time. Put Rs. 200 in an NSC as opposed to give Rs. 100 to the Government made perfect sense (please ignore the math). NSC, PPF, etc. were all new terms to me then (for someone who hadn’t traveled beyond the local bank), but they have become extremely familiar now, after many years of working, and many years of playing hop-scotch with my money in March. Should I go for PPF or should I put in NSC or wait! should I buy a house?

One day an Insurance Agency set up a workshop in my office; they were aggressively selling the idea of Insurance + Investment + Tax Saving. Insurance being another one of those conventional things that I knew we all must have (for the life of me I couldn’t have told why!), I went in for the session. I couldn’t understand the figures (that may be no big surprise), but what appeared to me was if I took the insurance policy, I would be getting insurance, plus getting tax benefits every year, and if that wasn’t all, my premiums would be invested to give me a something extra at the end of the term (if not me, my family—it was easy to forget the point of insurance!). Seemed like a win-win deal at the time.

This was my situation till about a few months ago: I was saving my money in banks. I was buying insurance to save tax and to invest. I trusted the agents to make decisions for me; I bought whatever they sold if they told me it was good enough—after all, they would know!

Thankfully, that is not the situation anymore.

An article at Rediff Money where a person gave their profile and asked some investment-related questions hooked me. The article was well-written, and explained concepts in a very easy-to-relate manner, avoiding all sorts of jargon. I was interested enough to read more articles, more financial literature, and the more I read, the more I learnt, the more I understood, and the more interested I got.

I discovered that I had committed many bloopers without even knowing so, and never explored opportunities worth exploring, because nobody ever told me so.

Let me list some of my discoveries—:

* I had never thought of ‘investing’ as seriously as I had thought about ‘saving’; I realized that all the hard work one does saving amounts to nothing if one does not invest the saved money well. You can make your money ‘work hard for you’, instead of letting it idle in the bank!

* I realized that having clearly defined objectives or goals for investment enables one to plan better. It seemed that investing ad hoc for the sake of investing, or worse still, investing for the sake of avoiding tax, leads one to make not-so-good decisions. Unfortunately, most of my investments were an offshoot of tax planning!

* Investing and Tax Saving should be viewed as two separate things. Tax saving should happen as a result of good investment planning and not vice versa.

* One keeps hearing that March is not a good time to start looking at your investments; I find it is true. The thing is, one naturally looks at tax saving modes of investment at this time in an unthought, unplanned manner. I myself was sold something last February with a ‘tax advantage’ tag, and only now I figure it was a dud investment!

* Insurance is not the best investment vehicle, though agents and advertisements fool us in thinking so. We almost forget the purpose of Insurance, we’re so drugged by what we see and hear. Buy insurance only to insure your family against what might happen to you in future. The best way to do this, I found, is to go for a Term Plan, which is a basic insurance policy that gives you highest possible life cover at lowest possible price. The other insurance schemes that also promise to invest your money, offer very inadequate covers at very expensive rates, because of the investment component. Not just that, they do not even generate as much returns as other investment choices. A lose-lose deal actually.

* I found that Equity is the best choice of investment for earning superior returns in the long term, albeit one appreciates the risk involved. One could either invest directly in equity in THE Market or indirectly through Mutual Funds (MFs).

* I was introduced to MFs in a big way; they allowed you to be a part of THE Market—invest into equity—and also diluted some of the risk. I learnt that there are many types and varieties and brands of MFs too, with differing degrees of risk, and one would do well to understand them before jumping onto the bandwagon. If going in for one, the Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) route appears to have a lot of favour, by which one can put aside a fixed sum of money every month towards the chosen MF, instead of paying a lump sum.

* Not all of us have the time or knowledge to pursue investment options in detail for our own good; however, instead of relying on agents who sell insurance or investment schemes for commission and other personal gain, it makes sense to go for an Investment Advisor who will charge a fixed fee, and in return will manage your portfolio. Any which case, it is good to be in a position to at least be able to assimilate what advice you’re getting—I realize that now the hard way!

Enough of gyaan, I guess. Coming to my initial announcement again…I have entered THE Market. One of my New Year resolutions was to become more conscious about saving (avoid getting tempted by sales!), and more well-versed with how best to invest the money that I save.

I have only just opened a Demat account (don’t they say, better late than never?), and also made my very first investment based on my own research—I have opted for HDFC Equity Mutual Fund through SIP (check out this place for more information on good funds to go for). I hope to read more, learn more, exercise my decisions more…and not be a good bait for those insurance/investment agents anymore!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 4:08 pm 0 comments

 
Came across a lovely quote in the Sunday paper:

“A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for!”

Thought-provoking, isn’t it? And, somehow, seemed apt for the special day that is today -– when I grow a year older! Hope the weather is not rough along the way, while we go in pursuit of our dreams, away from the safety of our harbour, to achieve that which we’re capable of or built for… :)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:28 am 0 comments

 
Just read this book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It is a book about punctuation (!), but unlike how you’re systematically taught to hate punctuation in school, this book might convince you to love it! :)

An excerpt from the chapter That’ll Do, Comma ­--

“When the humorist James Thurber was writing for New Yorker editor Harold Ross in the 1930s and 1940s, the two men often had very strong words about commas. It is pleasant to picture the scene: two hard-drinking alpha males in serious trilbies smacking a big desk and barking at each other over the niceties of punctuation. According to Thurber's account of the matter (in The Years with Ross [1959]), Ross's "clarification complex" tended to run somewhat to the extreme: he seemed to believe there was no limit to the amount of clarification you could achieve if you just kept adding commas. Thurber, by self-appointed virtuous contrast, saw commas as so many upturned office chairs unhelpfully hurled down the wide-open corridor of readability. And so they endlessly disagreed. If Ross were to write "red, white, and blue" with the maximum number of commas, Thurber would defiantly state a preference for "red white and blue" with none at all, on the provocative grounds that "all those commas make the flag seem rained on. They give it a furled look." […]
Thurber was once asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up."

My personal favourite punctuation mark is the ellipsis or what the layman would call three dots (…). A funny anecdote from the book on the three dots –-

“Perhaps the final word on the ellipsis should go to Peter Cook in this Pete and Dud sketch from BBC2's Not Only But Also in 1966. (My memory was that the title of this show contained an ellipsis itself, being Not Only ... But Also, but in modern references the ellipsis has been removed, which only goes to show you can't rely on anything any more.)
Pete is explaining to Dud how a bronzed pilot approaches a woman on a dusty runway in Neville Shute's A Town Like Alice – a woman whose perfectly defined "busty substances" have been outlined underneath her frail poplin dress by a shower of rain and then the "tremendous rushing wind" from his propellers:
DUD: What happened after that, Pete?
PETE: Well, the bronzed pilot goes up to her and they walk away, and the chapter ends in three dots.
DUD: What do those three dots mean, Pete?
PETE: Well, in Shute's hands, three dots can mean anything.
DUD: How's your father, perhaps?
PETE: When Shute uses three dots it means, "Use your own imagination. Conjure the scene up for yourself."
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 12:10 pm 0 comments